Posted: June 20th, 2022
Book report
2-3 pages, connect book to the concepts.
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Book Review Assignment for Mgt. 405
This assignment is an individual assignment that requires you to read and analyze a book related to International Management topics, write a book review on your book in a format similar to that used for book reviews in leading newspapers and magazines (for example Business Week)
Write a book review of two pages, single-spaced using the two-column format. After providing a brief overview of the book as a whole, focus on the contribution you feel that your book makes to the skills and/or course topics from Multinational Management: A strategy Approach.
Tie key concepts from your chosen book to the course – How do ideas from your book relate to or augment concepts from the lecture or text or how could ideas from your book have been applied to the course topics/videos we have covered?
State of the World
201
3
is
SuStainability
Still Possible?
th e Wor ldWatch i n Stitute
Advance Praise for
State of the World 2013: Is Sustainability Still Possible?
“ State of the World 2013 cuts through the rhetoric surrounding
sustainability, providing a broad and realistic look at how close
we are to achieving it and outlining practices and policies that can
steer us in the right direction. . . . A must-read for those seeking
authentic sustainability.”
— Hunter Lovins, President, Natural Capital Solutions
and Author of Climate Capitalism
“ This is a book of hope for a world in profound crisis. It gives honest
assessments of the enormous challenges we face and points us
toward institutional and cultural changes that are proportional to
our dire situation. State of the World 2013 reaffirms that we are not
helpless but that we have real choices—and that transformation is
both possible and desirable.”
— Reverend Peter S. Sawtell, Executive Director,
Eco-Justice Ministries
“ State of the World 2013 cuts through ‘sustainababble’ with crisp
coverage that puts the news of the year in context and provides an
expert survey of today’s and tomorrow’s big issues. It’s a perennial
resource for everyone concerned about our common future.”
— Karen Christensen, publisher of the 10-volume Berkshire
Encyclopedia of Sustainability
“ Every elected official in the world needs to read this book. Mass
denial is no longer an option. An ‘all hands on deck’ approach to
transforming our culture and economy is the only path to a safe,
resilient future. This book is the blueprint for that safe path forward.”
— Betsy Taylor, President, Breakthrough Strategies & Solutions
and Founder, Center for a New American Dream
State of the World 2013
Is Sustainability
Still Possible?
Other Worldwatch Books
State of the World 19
84
through
2012
(an annual report on progress toward a sustainable society)
Vital Signs 1992 through 2003 and 2005 through 2012
(a report on the trends that are shaping our future)
Saving the Planet
Lester R. Brown
Christopher Flavin
Sandra Postel
How Much Is Enough?
Alan Thein Durning
Last Oasis
Sandra Postel
Full House
Lester R. Brown
Hal Kane
Power Surge
Christopher Flavin
Nicholas Lenssen
Who Will Feed China?
Lester R. Brown
Tough Choices
Lester R. Brown
Figh
tin
g for Survival
Michael Renner
The Natural Wealth of Nations
David Malin Roodman
Life Out of Bounds
Chris Bright
Beyond Malthus
Lester R. Brown
Gary Gardner
Brian Halweil
Pillar of Sand
Sandra Postel
Vanishing Borders
Hilary French
Eat Here
Brian Halweil
Inspiring Progress
Gary Gardner
Erik Assadourian and Tom Prugh, Project Directors
Linda Starke, Editor
Washington | Covelo | London
State of the World 2013
Is Sustainability
Still Possible?
Rebecca Adamson
Gar Alperovitz
Olivia Arnow
David Christian
Dwight E. Collins
Robert Costanza
Larry Crowder
Herman Daly
Robert Engelman
Joshua Farley
Carl Folke
Carol Franco
Gary Gardner
Russell M. Genet
Paula Green
Jeff Hohensee
Tim Jackson
Ida Kubiszewski
Melissa Leach
Annie Leonard
Shakuntala Makhijani
Michael Maniates
Jack P. Manno
Brian Martin
Pamela Martin
Laurie Mazur
Jennie Moore
Kathleen Dean Moore
Faith Morgan
Pat Murphy
T. W. Murphy, Jr.
Melissa Nelson
Michael P. Nelson
Simon Nicholson
Danielle Nierenberg
Alexander Ochs
David W. Orr
Sandra Postel
Thomas Princen
Kate Raworth
William E. Rees
Michael Renner
Kim Stanley Robinson
Phillip Saieg
Juliet Schor
Antonia Sohns
Pavan Sukhdev
Bron Taylor
Peter Victor
Eric Zencey
Copyright © 2013 by Worldwatch Institute
1400 16th Street, N.W.
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www.worldwatch.org
The State of the World and Worldwatch Institute trademarks are reg is tered in the U.S. Patent and
Trademark Office.
The views expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of the Worldwatch
Institute; of its directors, officers, or staff; or of its funders.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book
may be reproduced in any form or by any means without permission in writing from the publisher: Island
Press, 2000 M Street, N.W., Suite 650, Washington, DC 20036.
Island Press is a trademark of the Center for Resource Economics.
ISBN 13: 978-1-61091-449-9
ISBN 10: 1-61091-449-X
The text of this book is composed in Minion, with the display set in Myriad Pro. Book design and
composition by Lyle Rosbotham.
Printed on recycled, acid-free paper
Manufactured in the United States of America
Worldwatch Institute Board of Directors
Ed Groark
Chairman
united states
Robert Charles Friese
Vice Chairman
united states
L. Russell Bennett
Treasurer
united states
Nancy Hitz
Secretary
united states
Robert Engelman
President
united states
Geeta B. Aiyer
united states
Mike Biddle
united states
Cathy Crain
united states
Tom Crain
united states
James Dehlsen
united states
Christopher Flavin
united states
Satu Hassi
finland
Ping He
united states
Jerre Hitz
united states
Izaak van Melle
the netherlands
David W. Orr
united states
John Robbins
united states
Richard Swanson
united states
Emeritus:
Øystein Dahle
norway
Abderrahman Khene
algeria
Andrew Alesbury
Customer Relations Assistant
Katie Auth
Research Associate, Climate
and Energy Program
Adam Dolezal
Research Associate and Central
America Project Manager,
Climate and Energy Program
Courtney Dotson
Development Associate
Robert Engelman
President
Barbara Fallin
Director of Finance and
Administration
Mark Konold
Research Associate and
Caribbean Program Manager,
Climate and Energy Program
Supriya Kumar
Communications Manager
Worldwatch Institute Staff
Erik Assadourian
Senior Fellow
Christopher Flavin
President Emeritus
Gary Gardner
Senior Fellow
Mia MacDonald
Senior Fellow
Worldwatch Institute Fellows, Advisors, and Consultants
Matt Lucky
Research Associate, Climate and
Energy Program
Haibing Ma
China Program Manager
Shakuntala Makhijani
Research Associate and India
Project Manager, Climate and
Energy Program
Lisa Mastny
Senior Editor
Evan Musolino
Research Associate and Renewable
Energy Indicators Project Manager,
Climate and Energy Program
Alexander Ochs
Director, Climate and Energy
Program
Ramon Palencia
Central America Fellow, Climate
and Energy Program
Grant Potter
Development Associate and
Assistant to the President
Tom Prugh
Codirector, State of the World
Laura Reynolds
Staff Researcher, Food and
Agriculture Program
Mary C. Redfern
Director of Institutional Relations,
Development
Michael Renner
Senior Researcher
Reese Rogers
MAP Sustainable Energy Fellow,
Climate and Energy Program
Cameron Scherer
Marketing and Communications
Associate
Michael Weber
Research Coordinator, Climate
and Energy Program
Sophie Wenzlau
Staff Researcher, Food and
Agriculture Program
Bo Normander
Director, Worldwatch Institute
Europe
Corey Perkins
Information Technology
Manager
Sandra Postel
Senior Fellow
Lyle Rosbotham
Art and Design Consultant
Janet Sawin
Senior Fellow
Linda Starke
State of the World Editor
Each year State of the World comes together due to the efforts of scores of
individuals and organizations that contribute directly or indirectly to the vol-
ume’s theme, direction, support, content, shaping, or publication. Any book
is a collaborative miracle of sorts, but State of the World 2013 reflects the labor
of more contributors than ever appeared in a previous edition, as well as that
of a wide variety of donors, partners, and advisors from around the globe.
None of this would have happened without the support of the Town
Creek Foundation, the V. Kann Rasmussen Foundation, the Victoria and
Roger Sant Founders Fund of the Summit Fund of Washington, and Peter
Seidel—all of whom gave generously to underwrite this edition of State of
the World and the associated outreach work. A special note of thanks goes to
Stuart Clarke and his team at Town Creek, as well as to numerous other sus-
tainability organizations in Maryland, for their help in conducting outreach
events around that state.
In addition, we gratefully recognize the continued support of the Ray
C. Anderson Foundation. Ray, who passed away in 2011, was a sustainable-
business visionary, an active member of the Worldwatch board of directors,
and a steadfast believer in our work. His voice and ideas are sorely missed.
We hope State of the World 2013 will be taken as an expression of the honor
we feel he is due.
We are also deeply appreciative to our many institutional and foundation
supporters, including the Barilla Center for Food & Nutrition; Caribbean
Community; Climate and Development Knowledge Network; Compton
Foundation, Inc.; The David B. Gold Foundation; Del Mar Global Trust;
Elion Group; Energy and Environment Partnership with Central America;
Ford Foundation and the Institute of International Education, Inc.; Green
Accord International Secretariat; Hitz Foundation; Inter-American De-
velopment Bank; International Climate Initiative of the German Federal
Ministry for the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety;
International Renewable Energy Association; MAP Sustainable Energy Fel-
lowship Program; Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland; Renewable En-
x | State of the World 2013
ergy Policy Network for the 21st Century; Richard and Rhoda Goldman
Fund and the Goldman Environmental Prize; Shenandoah Foundation;
Small Planet Fund of RSF Social Finance; Steven C. Leuthold Family Foun-
dation; Transatlantic Climate Bridge of the German Federal Ministry for
the Environment, Nature Conservation and Nuclear Safety; United Nations
Population Fund; Wallace Global Fund; Weeden Foundation; The William
and Flora Hewlett Foundation; and Women Deliver, Inc.
We are delighted to partner, for our second year, with Island Press to
publish and distribute State of the World. Island Press is a preeminent pub-
lisher of sustainability content, and it is a pleasure to continue in the ranks
of their many estimable titles. We also owe a huge debt of gratitude to our
publishing partners outside of North America; without their indispensable
input and help in spreading the word, a volume about the state of the world
would be hollow indeed. Specifically, many thanks to Universidade Livre da
Mata Atlântica/Worldwatch Brasil; China Social Science Press; Worldwatch
Institute Europe; Gaudeamus Helsinki University Press; Good Planet Foun-
dation (France); Germanwatch, Heinrich Böll Foundation, and OEKOM
Verlag GmbH (Germany); Organization Earth and the University of Crete
(Greece); Earth Day Foundation (Hungary); Centre for Environment Edu-
cation (India); WWF-Italia and Edizioni Ambiente; Worldwatch Japan; Ko-
rea Green Foundation Doyosae (South Korea); FUHEM Ecosocial and Icaria
Editorial (Spain); Taiwan Watch Institute; and Turkiye Erozyonla Mucadele,
Agaclandima ve Dogal Varliklari Koruma Vakfi (TEMA), and Kultur Yayin-
lari Is-Turk Limited Sirketi (Turkey).
Although not the very first time a cartoon has appeared in State of the
World, this year i
s s
omething of a departure from tradition in that we used
several of them prominently for illustration and to help introduce the three
sections. Given the rather sober message of this year’s volume, an occasion
or two for a laugh, or at least a wry smile, did not seem out of place. Special
thanks for the cartoons go to Leo Murray, the webcomic xkcd.com, the Jay
N. “Ding” Darling Wildlife Society, and the Cartoon Movement.
We would be remiss if we failed to mention John Graham, Alison Singer,
and all the interns who work so hard to strengthen the Institute’s research.
Finally, our deepest gratitude goes to the authors of the 34 chapters and
30 text boxes who contributed so much of their learning, wisdom, time,
and patience to the long and sometimes laborious production of this book.
Every one of them has much more of value to say than we could print in
their individual contributions here, and we wholeheartedly urge readers to
explore their work further.
Erik Assadourian and Tom Prugh, Project Directors
www.worldwatch.org
www.sustainabilitypossible.org
Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . xv
Alison Singer
1 Beyond Sustainababble . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Robert Engelman
THE SUSTAINABILITY METRIC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
2 Respecting Planetary Boundaries and Reconnecting to the Biosphere . . 19
Carl Folke
3 Defining a Safe and Just Space for Humanity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
Kate Raworth
4 Getting to One-Planet Living . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
39
Jennie Moore and William E. Rees
5 Sustaining Freshwater and Its Dependents . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
51
Sandra Postel
6 Sustainable Fisheries and Seas: Preventing Ecological Collapse . . . . .
63
Antonia Sohns and Larry Crowder
7 Energy as Master Resource . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
Eric Zencey
8 Renewable Energy’s Natural Resource Impacts. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
Shakuntala Makhijani and Alexander Ochs
9 Conserving Nonrenewable Resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
Gary Gardner
GETTING TO TRUE SUSTAINABILITY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
10 Re-engineering Cultures to Create a Sustainable Civilization . . . . . .
113
Erik Assadourian
11 Building a Sustainable and Desirable Economy-in-Society-in-Nature . .
126
Robert Costanza, Gar Alperovitz, Herman Daly, Joshua Farley, Carol
Franco, Tim Jackson, Ida Kubiszewski, Juliet Schor, and Peter Victor
12 Transforming the Corporation into a Driver of Sustainability . . . . .
143
Pavan Sukhdev
13 Corporate Reporting and Externalities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
154
Jeff Hohensee
14 Keep Them in the Ground: Ending the Fossil Fuel Era . . . . . . . . . . .
161
Thomas Princen, Jack P. Manno, and Pamela Martin
xii | State of the World 2013
15 Beyond Fossil Fuels: Assessing Energy Alternatives . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
172
T. W. Murphy, Jr.
16 Energy Efficiency in the Built Environment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
184
Phillip Saieg
17 Agriculture: Growing Food—and Solutions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
190
Danielle Nierenberg
18 Protecting the Sanctity of Native Foods. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201
Melissa K. Nelson
19 Valuing Indigenous Peoples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
210
Rebecca Adamson, Danielle Nierenberg, and Olivia Arnow
20 Crafting a New Narrative to Support Sustainability . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
218
Dwight E. Collins, Russell M. Genet, and David Christian
21 Moving Toward a Global Moral Consensus on Environmental
Action . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
225
Kathleen Dean Moore and Michael P. Nelson
22 Pathways to Sustainability: Building Political Strategies . . . . . . . . . .
234
Melissa Leach
23 Moving from Individual Change to Societal Change . . . . . . . . . . . . .
244
Annie Leonard
OPEN IN CASE OF EMERGENCY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253
24 Teaching for Turbulence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
255
Michael Maniates
25 Effective Crisis Governance. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
269
Brian Martin
26 Governance in the Long Emergency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
279
David W. Orr
27 Building an Enduring Environmental Movement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
292
Erik Assadourian
28 Resistance: Do the Ends Justify the Means? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
304
Bron Taylor
29 The Promises and Perils of Geoengineering . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
317
Simon Nicholson
30 Cuba: Lessons from a Forced Decline . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
332
Pat Murphy and Faith Morgan
31 Climate Change and Displacements. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
343
Michael Renner
32 Cultivating Resilience in a Dangerous World . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
353
Laurie Mazur
33 Shaping Community Responses to Catastrophe. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
363
Paula Green
34 Is It Too Late? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
374
Kim Stanley Robinson
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
381
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
433
BOXES
1–1 Toward a Sustainable Number of Us, by Robert Engelman. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
3–1 Moving Beyond GDP, by Lew Daly . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
4–1 What Is the Ecological Footprint? by Global Footprint Network . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
5–1 Desalination, by Sandra Postel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
5–2 Services Provided by Rivers, Wetlands, Floodplains, and Other Freshwater Ecosystems,
by Sandra Postel . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
8–1 The Role of Efficiency and Conservation, by Shakuntala Makhijani and Alexander Ochs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
8–2 Land Use Priorities and Land Rights Considerations, by Shakuntala Makhijani and Alexander Ochs. . . . 98
9–1 What Is Scarcity? by Gary Gardner. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
9–2 Can Landfills Be Mined? by Gary Gardner . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
10–1 What Would a Culture of Sustainability Look Like? by Erik Assadourian . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116
10–2 Shifting Norms with Choice Editing, by Michael Maniates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
10–3 Development and Decline, by Wolfgang Sachs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
125
11–1 The Social Costs of the U.S. Banking System, by James Gustave Speth. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136
14–1 Fossil Fuels by the Numbers, by Thomas Princen, Jack P. Manno, and Pamela Martin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164
17–1 Promoting Sustainable Agriculture through Village Banking, by Doug Satre . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199
21–1 Ethics at the End of the World, by Kathleen Dean Moore and Michael P. Nelson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 230
22–1 Multicriteria Mapping of Agricultural Pathways in Dryland Kenya, by Melissa Leach. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 237
24–1 Gaps and Opportunities in Environmental Studies, by Michael Maniates. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265
26–1 A More Sustainable Democracy, by Tom Prugh. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 285
26–2 Resilience from the Bottom Up, by David Orr . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 290
27–1 The Shakers’ Relevance in a Post-Consumer Era, by Erik Assadourian . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 298
27–2 The Relationship between Ecological and Religious Philosophies, by Erik Assadourian . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 302
29–1 Defining Geoengineering, by Simon Nicholson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 318
29–2 The Oxford Principles: A Code of Conduct for Geoengineering Research, by Simon Nicholson . . . . . . 330
29–3 Criteria for “Soft Geoengineering” Technologies, by Simon Nicholson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 330
30–1 Who Was Behind Cuba’s Response in the 1990s? by Pat Murphy and Faith Morgan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 340
31–1 Displacement and Migration: How Many People Are Affected? by Michael Renner. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 349
32–1 Saving Plant Varieties to Preserve Resilience, by Danielle Nierenberg . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 355
32–2 Empower Women, Build Resilience, by Laurie Mazur . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 356
32–3 Resilience Lost: The Coastal Mangroves of Vietnam, by Laurie Mazur. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 357
TABLES
2–1 The Nine Planetary Boundaries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
3–1 How Far Below the Social Foundation Is Humanity? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
4–1 Comparing Fair Earth-Share, World Average, and High-Consumption Countries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
7–1 Energy Return on Energy Invested, Average and High and Low Estimates, Different Energy Sources . 79
8–1 Renewable Energy Potentials, Impacts, and Constraints . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86
8–2 Energy Storage and Transmission Technologies and Constraints. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
9–1 Relationship between Ore Grade and Water Use . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
9–2 Innovative Practices That Reduce Consumption of Materials and Energy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
Contents | xiii
xiv | State of the World 2013
11–1 Basic Characteristics of Current Economic Model, Green Economy Model, and Ecological
Economics Model. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
19–1 Indigenous Peoples’ Resources: What’s at Stake? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
25–1 Outcomes of Violent and Nonviolent Campaigns Aimed at Regime Change, Anti-occupation,
or Secession, 1900–2006 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 272
30–1 Annual Energy Consumption and Carbon Dioxide Emissions per Person in Major Regions,
Cuba, and the United States . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 339
31–1 Definitions of Different Types of Population Movements. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 351
FIGURES
1–1 The Unsustainability of Sustainable . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1–2 1936 Cartoon by Jay N. “Ding” Darling. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1–3 Fossil-Fuel-Based Carbon Dioxide Emissions, 1965–2011 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
2–1 Temperature Variability over the Last 100,000 Years . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
3–1 A Safe and Just Space for Humanity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
3–2 Falling Far Below the Social Foundation While Exceeding Planetary Boundaries . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
4–1 Summary of Vancouver’s Ecological Footprint. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
4–2 Food Component of Vancouver’s Ecological Footprint. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
5–1 Share of World Irrigated Land, Renewable Water, and Population, Selected Countries, 2010 . . . . . . . . 54
7–1 GDP per Unit of Energy Use, 2003–09 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
9–1 World Extraction of Nonrenewable Materials, 1901–2010 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
100
9–2 Gold Grade, Selected Countries, 1835–2010. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
11–1 Happiness and Real Income in the United States, 1972–2008. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
11–2
Gross Domestic Product
and Genuine Progress Indicator, United States, 1950–2004 . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130
11–3 Relationship between Income Inequality and Social Problems Score in Selected
Industrial Countries. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 138
11–4 Relationship between Tax Revenue as a Percent of GDP and Index of Social Justice in Selected
Industrial Countries. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
11–5 A Low-/No-Growth Scenario . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
15–1 The Transient Phenomenon of Fossil Fuels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
15–2 Energy Source Properties: Fossil Fuels. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
175
15–3 Energy Source Properties: Alternatives to Fossil Fuels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 176
17–1 Number of Undernourished People in the World, 1969–2011 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
17–2 Food Price Indices, 1990–2012 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 192
23–1 The Behavior-Impact Gap (BIG) Problem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 246
23–2 Source of U.S. Waste . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247
29–1 Solar Radiation Management Options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 320
29–2 Carbon Dioxide Removal Options. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 322
31–1 Climate Change, Livability, and Possible Responses. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 345
31–2 World Food Price Index, January 1990–September 2012 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 347
32–1 Number of People Reported Affected by Natural Disasters, 1900–2011 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 354
Units of measure throughout this book are metric unless common usage dictates otherwise.
This timeline covers some significant announcements and reports from De-
cember 2011 through November 2012. It is a mix of progress, setbacks, and
missed steps around the world that are affecting environmental quality and
social welfare.
Timeline events were selected to increase awareness of the connections
between people and the environmental systems on which they depend.
State of the World:
A Year in Review
Compiled by Alison Singer
xvi | State of the World 2013
CLIMATE
Study finds that
global carbon dioxide
emissions grew by 5.9
percent in 2010, the
largest percentage
increase since 2003.
TOXICS
Study notes that toxic
releases in United
States rose 16 percent
in 2010, primarily due
to metal mining and
the chemical industry.
POLLUTION
Nitrogen fertilizers
contribute to massive
global nitrogen pollution:
while food production
increases, pollution costs
are measured in hundreds
of billions of dollars.
GOVERNANCE
Bulletin of the Atomic
Scientists moves
Doomsday Clock to
11:55, one minute
closer to midnight,
based primarily on
failures to address
climate change.
2011 2012
D E C E M B E R J A N U A R Y
2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 22 24 26 28 30 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 22 24 26 28 30
An
ge
lo
D
eS
an
tis
Pe
dr
o
Bi
on
di
/A
br
Br
et
t C
ou
lst
oc
k
efl
on
747 exhaust
deforestation in the Mato Grosso
Texas refinery
NATURAL
DISASTERS
Flooding in
the Philippines
kills more than
1,000 people.
CLIMATE
European Union courts
uphold legislation
forcing airlines to pay
carbon dioxide fee
when flying in and
out of EU airports.
FORESTS
With a total of 6,238 square
kilometers, Brazil has the
lowest deforestation rate
since monitoring began
in 1988.
CLIMATE
Last-minute talks
at Durban Global
Climate Change
meeting culminate
in treaty requiring
all countries to cut
carbon emissions
by 2020.
ENERGY
United States
becomes net
exporter of
petroleum
products for the
first time in
over 60 years.
NATURAL
DISASTERS
Worst drought in
history devastates
Mexico’s crops and
the livelihoods
of millions.
State of the World: A Year in Review | xvii
OCEANS
Study finds atmospheric
carbon dioxide levels lead
to the highest rate of ocean
acidification in 300 million years.
NATURAL
DISASTERS
England
experiences its
worst drought in
30 years.
F E B R U A R Y M A R C H
2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 22 24 26 28 302 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 22 24 26 28
2012
St
ev
e
D
ro
le
t
Sa
pe
ra
ud
U
SG
S
U
K
D
ep
ar
tm
en
t
f
or
In
te
rn
at
io
na
l D
ev
el
op
m
en
t
Prague snowstorm
sampling Arctic waters for acidification
NATURAL DISASTERS
Hundreds die and
hundreds of thousands
are trapped in homes
in Europe’s cold snap.
AGRICULTURE
Australia
n team
develops strain of
salt-resistant wheat.
OCEANS
World Bank
announces global
partnership to
manage and
protect the
world’s oceans.
HEALTH
Millennium Development
Goal to halve the
proportion of people with
no access to safe drinking
water is met ahead of time.
GOVERNANCE
First-ever International
Chiefs of Environmental
Compliance and
Enforcement Summit
results in resolution
to make cooperation
and environmental
security a priority.
CLIMATE
Study finds that cloud
level is lowering, which
could increase Earth’s
cooling ability.
HEALTH
A new report
indicates that
300 children die
of malnutrition
every hour.
xviii | State of the World 2013
CLIMATE
Giant fossilized forest
in Illinois offers clues
to climate change.
A P R I L M A Y
2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 22 24 26 28 30 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 22 24 26 28 30
2012
St
ev
e
Ev
an
s
©
20
12
U
ni
ve
rs
ity
o
f I
lli
no
is
Jim
K
ra
vi
tz
South Sudanese fighter
fossilized forest ferns
pika
ENERGY
Sudan declares state of
emergency as fighting over oil
escalates with South Sudan.
POLLUTION
US EPA institutes air
pollution standards
for hydraulic
fracturing used
in search for energy
supplies.
BIODIVERSITY
New study finds that
animals may not be
able to outrun
climate change.
NATURAL
RESOURCES
Two planet Earths
will be needed by
2030 to provide
for human society,
according to the
Living Planet Report.
POLLUTION
Plastics in the
Pacific Ocean have
exponentially increased
in the past decades.
NATURAL
DISASTERS
Study finds rapid
acceleration of water
cycle, which may lead
to increased episodes
of extreme weather.
POLLUTION
Study finds
200 pollutants,
many of which
may contribute
to autism, in
umbilical cords.
CLIMATE
G8 affirms
commitment
to fight climate
change, with focus
on short-lived
pollutants.ECONOMY
World Trade
Organization outlaws
dolphin-safe tuna
labels as unfair to
Mexican fishers.
State of the World: A Year in Review | xix
POPULATION
Report finds population
growth is pushing
world toward ecological
tipping point, with
social and economic
instability to follow.
J U N E J U L Y
2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 22 24 26 28 30 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 22 24 26 28 30
2012
Cr
an
eS
ta
t
io
n
Ca
rl
W
yc
off
ne
ris
sa
’s
rin
g
eG
ui
de
T
ra
ve
l
BPA-free
ECONOMY
Wheat and corn prices
rise as drought and
high temperatures
ruin crops.
HEALTH
Diseases spread
from livestock
infect over 2
billion people
each year, most
commonly in
poorer countries.
ECONOMY
Sustainable ranching
brings environmental
protection and
economic benefits
to the western
United States.
NATURAL
RESOURCES
In attempt to
preserve fish
stocks, EU plans
to ban discards
of healthy and
edible fish at sea.
POLLUTION
Caffeinated seas show
that human contaminants
are invading natural water
systems, with unknown
effects on marine life
and ecosystems.
ENDANGERED
SPECIES
Increased traffic
in whale watching
and commercial
shipping threatens
whale populations.
CLIMATE
Massive heat
wave breaks
thousands of
records across the
United States.
POLLUTION
Bisphenol A (BPA), a
chemical commonly
found in packaging, is
linked to obesity, cancer,
reproductive disorders,
diabetes, and now
brain tumors.
GOVERNANCE
Rio+20 Conference
challenges nations to
address sustainability
but makes little
genuine progress.
xx | State of the World 2013
A U G U S T S E P T E M B E R
2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 22 24 26 28 30 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 22 24 26 28 30
2012
Jo
ji
O
ta
ki
/E
PA
Ta
r S
an
ds
B
lo
ck
ad
e
Ki
tt
y
M
ec
kl
en
bu
rg
/N
O
AA
O
A
zi
pp
er
ENERGY
European Union
wind capacity
reaches 100
gigawatts.
ENERGY
Mutant butterflies
found near Fukushima
nuclear plant in Japan.
HEALTH
Studies find that
the majority of new
ingredients entering the
U.S. food market have
been approved only by
the food manufacturers
themselves, not the
government.
CLIMATE
Study suggests as
much as 4 billion
tons of methane may
be trapped under
Antarctic ice sheet
and could be released
if ice sheet melts.
CHEMICALS
Reports note that
chemical use and
production is shifting
to developing
countries, where
regulations are weaker.
clearcutting the pipeline route
juvenile cod
NATURAL
RESOURCES
Fishery disaster
declared off New
England Coast, as
fish stocks are slow
to rebuild.
CLIMATE
Study finds that
100 million will
die and global
GDP will fall
by 3.2 percent
by 2030 unless
climate change
is addressed.
ENDANGERED
SPECIES
Militarization
of ivory trade is
contributing to
mass elephant
killings in Africa.
OCEANS
A new indicator for
measuring ocean
health has been
developed, taking
into account variables
such as fisheries,
tourism, biodiversity,
and carbon storage.
ENERGY
TransCanada begins
construction on
southern leg of
controversial Keystone
XL Pipeline.
State of the World: A Year in Review | xxi
FOOD
UN report shows that
“ocean-grabbing” by
foreign fishing fleets
threatens food security
in developing nations.
MARINE RESOURCES
International commission
fails to create any
protected marine areas
around Antarctica.
O C T O B E R N O V E M B E R
2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 22 24 26 28 30 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 22 24 26 28 30
2012
Je
ff
G
ib
bs
In
fro
gm
at
io
n
D
on
al
d
Le
Ro
/N
O
AA
Br
ia
n
Fo
un
ta
in
silky sifakas
result of Katrina storm surge
orcas in McMurdo Sound
ENDANGERED
SPECIES
Study shows
25 primates
near extinction,
primarily due to
human activities.
CONSUMPTION
Protests and walkouts by
Walmart workers attract
attention and support, but
the retail giant records its
best Black Friday ever.
MARINE
RESOURCES
Rising ocean
acidity—up 30
percent since
the Industrial
Revolution—is
posing new threats
to marine life.
CLIMATE
Research shows that
Arctic permafrost is
melting, releasing
what could amount
to billions of tons of
greenhouse gases.
CLIMATE
Atmospheric concentrations
of three major greenhouse
gases—carbon dioxide,
methane, and nitrous oxide—
hit record levels in 2011,
the World Meteorological
Organization reports.
POLLUTION
Research finds
that industrial
pollution in
developing
countries is as
harmful as malaria
and tuberculosis.
NATURAL DISASTERS
Report on Superstorm
Sandy finds damages of
$71 billion in New York
and New Jersey—millions
of power outages,
hundreds of thousands
of homes destroyed,
and transportation
systems crippled.
OCEANS
Research shows that warmer
oceans contribute to stronger
hurricane storm surges.
State of the World 2013
Is Sustainability
Still Possible?
We live today in an age of sustainababble, a cacophonous profusion of uses
of the word sustainable to mean anything from environmentally better to
cool. The original adjective—meaning capable of being maintained in ex-
istence without interruption or diminution—goes back to the ancient Ro-
mans. Its use in the environmental field exploded with the 1987 release of
Our Common Future, the report of the World Commission on Environment
and Development. Sustainable development, Norwegian Prime Minister
Gro Harlem Brundtland and the other commissioners declared, “meets the
needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations
to meet their own needs.”1
For many years after the release of the Brundtland Commission’s report,
environmental analysts debated the value of such complex terms as sustain-
able, sustainability, and sustainable development. By the turn of the millen-
nium, however, the terms gained a life of their own—with no assurance
that this was based on the Commission’s definition. Through increasingly
frequent vernacular use, it seemed, the word sustainable became a synonym
for the equally vague and unquantifiable adjective green, suggesting some
environmental value, as in green growth or green jobs.
Today the term sustainable more typically lends itself to the corporate
behavior often called greenwashing. Phrases like sustainable design, sustain-
able cars, even sustainable underwear litter the media. One airline assures
passengers that “the cardboard we use is taken from a sustainable source,”
while another informs them that its new in-flight “sustainability effort”
saved enough aluminum in 2011 “to build three new airplanes.” Neither use
sheds any light on whether the airlines’ overall operations—or commercial
aviation itself—can long be sustained on today’s scale.2
The United Kingdom was said to be aiming for “the first sustainable
Olympics” in 2012, perhaps implying an infinitely long future for the qua-
drennial event no matter what else happens to humanity and the planet.
c h a p t e r 1
Beyond Sustainababble
Robert Engelman
Robert Engelman is president
of the Worldwatch Institute.
www.sustainabilitypossible.org
Worldwatch Institute, State of the World 2013: Is Sustainability Still Possible?,
DOI 10.5822/ 978-1-61091-458-1_1, © 2013 by Worldwatch Institute
3
(If environmental impact is indeed the operable standard, the Olympics
games in classical Greece or even during the twentieth century were far
more sustainable than today’s.) The upward trend line of the use of this in-
creasingly meaningless word led one cartoonist to suggest that in 100 years
sustainable will be the only word uttered by anyone speaking American
English. (See Figure 1–1.)3
By some metrics this might be considered success. To find sustainable in
such common use indicates that a key environmental concept now enjoys
general currency in popular culture. But sustainababble has a high cost.
Through overuse, the words sustainable and sustainability lose meaning
and impact. Worse, frequent and inappropriate use lulls us into dreamy
belief that all of us—and everything we do, everything we buy, everything
we use—are now able to go on forever, world without end, amen. This is
hardly the case.
The question of whether civilization can continue on its current path
without undermining prospects for future well-being is at the core of the
world’s current environmental predicament. In the wake of failed interna-
tional environmental and climate summits, when national governments
take no actions commensurate with the risk of catastrophic environmental
change, are there ways humanity might still alter current behaviors to make
Co
ur
te
sy
o
f w
w
w
.x
kc
d.
co
m
Figure 1–1. the Unsustainability of Sustainable
4 | State of the World 2013
Beyond Sustainababble | 5
them sustainable? Is sustainability still possible? If humanity fails to achieve
sustainability, when—and how—will unsustainable trends end? And how
will we live through and beyond such endings? Whatever words we use, we
need to ask these tough questions. If we fail to do so, we risk self-destruction.
This year’s State of the World aims to expand and deepen discussion of the
overused and misunderstood adjective sustainable, which in recent years has
morphed from its original meaning into something like “a little better for
the environment than the alternative.” Simply doing “better” environmen-
tally will not stop the unraveling of ecological relationships we depend on
for food and health. Improving our act will not stabilize the atmosphere. It
will not slow the falling of aquifers or the rising of oceans. Nor will it return
Arctic ice, among Earth’s most visible natural features from space, to its pre-
industrial extent.
In order to alter these trends, vastly larger changes are needed than we
have seen so far. It is essential that we take stock, soberly and in scientifi-
cally measurable ways, of where we are headed. We desperately need—and
are running out of time—to learn how to shift direction toward safety for
ourselves, our descendants, and the other species that are our only known
companions in the universe. And while we take on these hard tasks, we also
need to prepare the social sphere for a future that may well offer hardships
and challenges unlike any that human beings have previously experienced.
While it is a subset of the biosphere, the social sphere is shaped as well by hu-
man capacities with few known limits. We can take at least some hope in that.
Birth of a Concept
Respect for sustainability may go back far in human cultures. North Ameri-
ca’s Iroquois expressed concern for the consequences of their decisionmak-
ing down to the seventh generation from their own. A proverb often attrib-
uted to Native American indigenous cultures states, “We have not inherited
the earth from our fathers, we are borrowing it from our children.” In mod-
ern times, the idea of sustainability took root in the writings of naturalist
and three-term U.S. Representative George Perkins Marsh in the 1860s and
1870s. Humans were increasingly competing with, and often outcompeting,
natural forces in altering the earth itself, Marsh and later writers document-
ed. This is dangerous in the long run, they argued, even if demographically
and economically stimulating in the short run.4
“What we do will affect not only the present but future generations,” Pres-
ident Theodore Roosevelt declared in 1901 in his first Message to Congress,
which called for conservation of the nation’s natural resources. The value
of conserving natural resources for future use—and the dangers of failing
to do so—even made it into political cartoons in the decades that followed.
(See Figure 1–2.) The U.S. National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 echoed
6 | State of the World 2013
Figure 1–2. 1936 cartoon by Jay N. “Ding” Darling
Co
ur
te
sy
o
f t
he
Ja
y
N
. “
D
in
g”
D
ar
lin
g
W
ild
lif
e
So
ci
et
y,
or
ig
in
al
ly
p
ub
lis
he
d
15
S
ep
te
m
be
r 1
93
6
Beyond Sustainababble | 7
Roosevelt’s words, affirming that “it is the continuing policy of the Federal
Government . . . to create and maintain conditions under which man and
nature can exist in productive harmony, and fulfill the social, economic, and
other requirements of present and future generations of Americans.”5
Two important points emerge from the definition of sustainable develop-
ment found in Our Common Future, which is still the most commonly cited
reference for sustainability and sustainable development. The first is that
any environmental trend line can at least in theory be analyzed quantitative-
ly through the lens of its likely impact on the ability of future generations to
meet their needs. While we cannot predict the precise impacts of trends and
the responses of future humans, this definition offers the basis for metrics
of sustainability that can improve with time as knowledge and experience
accumulate. The two key questions are, What’s going on? And can it keep
going on in this way, on this scale, at this pace, without reducing the likeli-
hood that future generations will live as prosperously and comfortably as
ours has? For sustainability to have any meaning, it must be tied to clear and
rigorous definitions, metrics, and mileage markers.
The second point is the imperative of development itself. Environmen-
tal sustainability and economic development, however, are quite different
objectives that need to be understood separately before they are linked. In
the Chairman’s Foreword to Our Common Future, Gro Harlem Brundtland
defined development as “what we all do in attempting to improve our lot.”
It is no slight to either low- or high-income people to note that as 7.1 bil-
lion people “do what we all do . . . to improve our lot,” we push more dan-
gerously into environmentally unsustainable territory. We might imagine
optimistically that through reforming the global economy we will find ways
to “grow green” enough to meet everyone’s needs without threatening the
future. But we will be better served by thinking rigorously about biophysical
boundaries, how to keep within them, and how—under these unforgiving
realities—we can best ensure that all human beings have fair and equitable
access to nourishing food, energy, and other prerequisites of a decent life. It
will almost certainly take more cooperation and more sharing than we can
imagine in a world currently driven by competition and individual accumu-
lation of wealth.6
What right, we might then ask, do present generations have to improve
their lot at the cost of making it harder or even impossible for all future gen-
erations to do the same? Philosophically, that’s a fair question—especially
from the viewpoint of the future generations—but it is not taken seriously.
Perhaps if “improving our lot” could somehow be capped at modest levels of
resource consumption, a fairer distribution of wealth for all would allow de-
velopment that would take nothing away from future generations. That may
mean doing without a personal car or living in homes that are unimaginably
8 | State of the World 2013
small by today’s standards or being a bit colder inside during the winter and
hotter during the summer. With a large enough human population, how-
ever, even modest per capita consumption may be environmentally unsus-
tainable. (See Box 1–1.)7
Gro Brundtland, however, made the practical observation that societies
are unlikely to enact policies and programs that favor the future (or nonhu-
man life) at the expense of people living in the present, especially the poorer
among us. Ethically, too, it would be problematic for environmentalists, few
of us poor ourselves, to argue that prosperity for those in poverty should
take a back seat to protection of the development prospects of future gen-
erations. Unless, perhaps, we are willing to take vows of poverty.8
While sustainability advocates may work to enfranchise future genera-
tions and other species, we have little choice but to give priority to the
needs of human beings alive today while trying to preserve conditions
that allow future generations to meet their needs. It is worth recognizing,
however, that there is no guarantee that this tension is resolvable and the
goal achievable.
If Development Isn’t Sustainable, Is It Development?
The world is large, yet human beings are many, and our use of the planet’s
atmosphere, crust, forests, fisheries, waters, and resources is now a force like
that of nature. On the other hand, we are a smart and adaptive species, to say
the least. Which perhaps helps explain why so many important economic
and environmental trends seem headed in conflicting and even opposite di-
rections. Are things looking up or down?
On the development side, the world has already met one of the Millen-
nium Development Goals set for 2015 by the world’s governments in 2000:
by 2010 the proportion of people lacking access to safe water was cut in half
from 1990 levels. And the last decade has witnessed so dramatic a reduction
in global poverty, central to a second development goal, that the London-
based Overseas Development Institute urged foreign assistance agencies to
redirect their aid strategies over the next 13 years to a dwindling number
of the lowest-income nations, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa. By some mea-
sures, it can be argued that economic prosperity is on the rise and basic
needs in most parts of the world are increasingly being met.9
On the environment side, indicators of progress are numerous. They in-
clude rising public awareness of problems such as climate change, rainfor-
est loss, and declining biological diversity. Dozens of governments on both
sides of the development divide are taking steps to reduce their countries’
greenhouse gas emissions—or at least the growth of those emissions. The
use of renewable energy is growing more rapidly than that of fossil fuels
(although from a much smaller base). Such trends do not themselves lead
Beyond Sustainababble | 9
To link environmental and social sustainability,
think population. When we consider what
levels of human activity are environmentally
sustainable and then, for the sake of equity,
calculate an equal allocation of such activity for
all, we are forced to ask how many people are
in the system.
Suppose for example, we conclude that 4.9
billion tons of carbon dioxide (CO2) per year
and its global-warming equivalent in other
greenhouse gases—one tenth of the 49 billion
tons emitted in 2010—would be the most that
humanity could emit annually to avoid further
increases in the atmospheric concentrations of
these gases. We then need to divide this number
by the 7.1 billion human beings currently alive
to derive an “atmosphere-sustainable” per capita
emission level. No one responsible for emissions
greater than the resulting 690 kilograms annually
could claim that his or her lifestyle is atmo-
sphere-sustainable. To do so would be to claim a
greater right than others to use the atmosphere
as a dump.
One 1998 study used then-current popu-
lation and emission levels and a somewhat
different calculation of global emissions level
that would lead to safe atmospheric stability. The
conclusion: Botswana’s 1995 per capita emission
of 1.54 tons of CO2 (based in this case on com-
mercial energy and cement consumption only)
was mathematically climate-sustainable at that
time. Although population-based calculations
are not always so informative with every resource
or system (sustaining biodiversity, for example),
similar calculations could work to propose sus-
tainable per capita consumption of water, wood
products, fish, and potentially even food.
Once we master such calculations, we begin
to understand their implications: As population
rises, so does the bar of per capita sustainable
behavior. That is, the more of us there are, the
less of a share of any fixed resource, such as
the atmosphere, is available for each of us to
sustainably and equitably transform or consume
in a closed system. All else being equal, the
smaller the population in any such system, the
more likely sustainability can be achieved and
the more generous the sustainable consump-
tion level can be for each person. With a large
enough population there is no guarantee that
even very low levels of equitable per capita
greenhouse emissions or resource consumption
are environmentally sustainable. If Ecological
Footprint calculations are even roughly accurate,
humanity is currently consuming the ecologi-
cal capacity of 1.5 Earths. That suggests that no
more than 4.7 billion people could live within the
planet’s ecological boundaries without substan-
tially reducing average individual consumption.
Absent catastrophe, sustainable population
anything like this size will take many decades to
reach through declines in human fertility that
reflect parents’ intentions. There is good reason to
believe, however, that a population peak below 9
billion might occur before mid-century if societ-
ies succeed in offering near-universal access to
family planning services for all who want them
along with near-universal secondary educa-
tion for everyone. Also helpful would be greatly
increased autonomy for women and girls and the
elimination of fertility-boosting programs such as
birth dividends and per child tax credits.
In the meantime, while population remains
in the range of 7 billion, individual levels of
greenhouse gas emissions and natural resource
consumption will have to come way, way down
to even begin to approach environmental
sustainability. Consumption levels that would
bring those of us in high-consuming countries
into a sustainable relation with the planet and an
equitable relation with all who live on it would
undoubtedly be small fractions of what we take
for granted today.
Source: See endnote 7.
Box 1–1. toward a Sustainable Number of Us
10 | State of the World 2013
directly in any measurable way to true sustainability (fossil fuel use is climb-
ing fast as China and India industrialize, for example), but they may help
create conditions for it. One important trend, however, is both measurable
and sustainable by strict definition: thanks to a 1987 international treaty, the
global use of ozone-depleting substances has declined to the point where the
atmosphere’s sun-screening ozone layer is considered likely to repair itself,
after sizable human-caused damage, by the end of this century.10
It is not clear, however, that any of these development and environ-
mental trends demonstrate that truly sustainable development is occur-
ring. Safe water may be reaching more people, but potentially at the ex-
pense of maintaining stable supplies of renewable freshwater in rivers or
underground aquifers for future generations. Reducing the proportion of
people in poverty is especially encouraging, but what if the instruments of
development—intense application of fossil fuels to industrial growth, for
example—contribute significantly to increasing proportions of people in
poverty in the future?
Moreover, economic development itself is running into constraints in
many countries, as population and consumption growth inflate demand
for food, energy, and natural resources beyond what supply—or at least the
simple economics of price or the logistics of distribution—can provide.
The price of resources has climbed for most of the last 10 years after sliding
during the previous several decades. Results of rising prices for food, fos-
sil fuels, minerals, and necessities that rely on nonrenewable resources for
their production include food riots like those of 2008 and crippling power
blackouts like the one in India that affected nearly a tenth of the world’s
population in 2012.11
Yet even as economic growth seems to be bumping into its own limit-
ing constraints in much of the world, the most important environmental
trends are discouraging and in many cases alarming. Human-caused climate
change, in particular, shows no signs of slowing or beginning any soft land-
ing toward sustainability, with global emissions of greenhouse gases con-
tinuing to climb in the upper range of past projections. The rise is slowed, on
occasion and in some countries, mostly by recession or happenstance shifts
in fossil-fuel economics (such as the recent ascendance of shale gas produc-
tion in the United States) rather than any strategic intention or policy.
Despite all international efforts to rein in emissions of fossil-fuel-based
carbon dioxide, for example, these emissions are today larger than ever and
may be increasing at an accelerating pace. (See Figure 1–3.) A brief down-
ward blip in 2009 was unrelated to coordinated government action but
stemmed from global economic decline. The global increase in fossil-fuel-
based CO
2
was estimated at 3 percent in 2011 compared with 2010—nearly
three times the pace of population growth—despite a still sluggish global
Beyond Sustainababble | 11
economy and absolute emissions
reductions in the United States that
year. This trend leads some scien-
tists to suggest it may be too late to
stop future warming in a safe tem-
perature range for humanity.12
Demographic and economic
growth drives growth in green-
house gas emissions and natural
resource use. Aspirations over the
past few decades that economic
growth can be “decoupled” from
energy and natural resource use,
thus allowing the growth to con-
tinue indefinitely, have proved
overly optimistic. An earlier trend
toward energy decoupling reversed course during the global economic
downturn that began in late 2007. This was partly because governments
of industrial countries attempted to stimulate their sluggish economies
through energy-intensive public works programs, but it was mostly due to
massive industrialization in the emerging economies of China and India.
Until the combined power of population and economic growth is reversed
or a strong climate pact transforms the global economy, there seems to be
little prospect for either true sustainability or truly sustainable development
through ever-greater efficiency and decoupling.13
This logic is especially worrisome because we have already dug ourselves
so deeply into unsustainability, based on the assessment of many scien-
tists, that we are now passing critical environmental thresholds or “tipping
points.” We are starting to feel the weight of what was once balanced on
Earth’s seesaw now sliding down upon us. In 2009, a group of 30 scientists
identified nine planetary boundaries where sustainability could be roughly
measured and monitored. Human beings had already, by their calculation,
crashed through two such boundaries and part of a third: in greenhouse gas
loading of the atmosphere, in nitrogen pollution, and in the loss of biologi-
cal diversity.14
Three years later, in the run-up to the U.N. Rio+20 Conference on sustain-
able development, another group of scientists, led by Anthony D. Barnofsky
of the University of California, Berkeley, warned that based on land use and
other indicators of human domination of natural systems, the planet may
already be poised to undergo an imminent, human-induced state shift. That
phrase refers to an abrupt and irreversible shift from an existing state to a
new one. In this case, the shift would compare in magnitude (though not in
Bi
lli
on
T
on
s C
ar
bo
n
Source: BP
Figure 1–3. Fossil-Fuel-Based Carbon Dioxide Emissions,
1965–2011
1965 1971 1977 1983 1989 1995 2001 2007 2012
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
12 | State of the World 2013
comfort) to the rapid transition that ended the last Ice Age and ushered in
the more temperate climate in which human civilization evolved.15
What the scientists found in physical and biological systems, U.N. Envi-
ronment Programme analysts found in political ones. Rooting among the 90
most important international environmental commitments made by govern-
ments, the analysts could identify significant progress only in four, including
halting further damage to the ozone layer and improving access to safe water.16
Other signs are positive, however, as noted earlier. The rapid growth of
renewable energy, growing acceptance that human activities are warming
the world, new efforts among many corporations to improve their environ-
mental behavior and reputations (although sometimes this is more sustain-
ababble than real), the seriousness with which Mexico and China are trying
to rein in their greenhouse gas emissions, a recent slowdown in deforesta-
tion in Brazil—all these trends signal the possibility of shifts in unsustain-
able trends in the near future.17
But absent far more progress, the basic trends themselves remain clear-
ly, measurably unsustainable: the shrinking of aquifers around the world
as farmers are called on to produce more food while competing with other
water users, the global declines of fisheries and of all biodiversity, the ac-
celerating emergence of new infectious diseases over the last few decades,
and—of course—the relentless march of warmer temperatures, higher
oceans, and ever-more-intense downpours and droughts. People who sur-
vive in leadership roles at some point develop realistic strategies for likely
eventualities. And it now seems pretty obvious that the time has arrived to
prepare for the consequences of unsustainability, even while we refuse to
give up the effort, however quixotic, to shift to true sustainability on some
reasonable schedule.
Predicament and Possibility
Why has it proved so hard to conform human behavior to the needs of a life-
supporting future? A major reason is simply the unprecedented scale that
humanity has reached in the twenty-first century: We are 7.1 billion sizable
individual organisms, each requiring thousands of kilocalories of food en-
ergy and several liters of water per day. The vast majority of us are unwilling
to share our private living space with wild plants and animals. We like to live
in a temperature range far narrower than that of the outdoors, and we like
to be mobile. As we carve out land to grow our food, we fully convert it from
wild nature to humanized territory.
In all these needs and wants, we are helped by the fact that much of the
stored energy that living things gained from the sun over hundreds of mil-
lions of years has been unleashed for our enjoyment—to fuel our globe-
spanning travel, to control the climates of our homes and workplaces, to al-
Beyond Sustainababble | 13
low many of us to enjoy pleasures and comforts unknown even to monarchs
in the past. Our political and economic institutions evolved before anyone
imagined the need to restrain human behavior out of concern for the future.
An estimated 2.8 trillion tons of carbon dioxide emissions sleep in fossil fuel
reserves—more than enough to guarantee climate catastrophe from a CO
2
–
saturated atmosphere—that companies and governments would gladly sell
tomorrow for immediate combustion if they could bring the buried carbon
to the surface and get the right price for it.18
With exceptions in a few countries, growing human populations are
eating more meat, using more carbon-based energy, shouldering aside
more natural landscapes, and tapping into more renewable and nonre-
newable commodities than ever before in history. The momentum of a
still-young global population all but guarantees demographic growth for
decades to come. The momentum of the world’s transportation networks,
infrastructure, and built environment all but guarantees that shifts toward
low-carbon energy will take decades. Individual aspirations for wealth and
comfort all but guarantee increasing per capita global consumption, at
least to the extent the world economy will support it. But ever-greater en-
ergy investments are needed to tap fossil fuels and other critical nonrenew-
able resources, raising the likelihood that these will become increasingly
expensive with time.
Our predicament at least presents us with opportunity. In the words of
poet W. H. Auden, “We must love one another or die.” In order to survive,
we may find ourselves dragged kicking and screaming into ways of relating
to each other and the world around us that humanity has been aspiring
to achieve since the emergence of the great ethical and spiritual traditions
many centuries ago.19
Asking the Difficult Questions
In asking “Is Sustainability Still Possible?” we realized several other ques-
tions would also need to be grappled with in this report. The first section,
, explores what a rigorous definition of sustain-
ability would entail, helping to make this critical concept measurable and
hence meaningful. Though such measurement is often challenging to design
and agree on, much less carry out, the objective would be to continually
improve on it, for scientific measurement has always improved over time.
The first step toward survival is to define environmentally sustainable and
to use this definition to measure and monitor whether current trends are
heading toward or away from trajectories that could continue indefinitely
without threatening future life. The second is to use these sustainability
metrics to develop practical measures, whether politically feasible at the mo-
ment or not, that can bend the curve of current trends toward sustainability.
14 | State of the World 2013
To help with measurement, we should look without blinking at what is
unsustainable—at practices and patterns that, if we don’t stop them, will
stop us. The rarely voiced reality of environmental unsustainability is that
we may have not just less prosperous and comfortable lives in the future but
shorter and fewer lives altogether. If it proves too challenging to feed the
projected 2050 world population of more than 9 billion people, for example,
it is quite possible we will not have to—for the worst of reasons. The same
can be said of “business-as-usual” greenhouse gas emission scenarios: by the
time global thermometers register a hike of 4 degrees Celsius, business-as-
usual will have ended a long time ago.20
Raising the specter of rising death rates and civilizational collapse un-
derlines the need for rigor in assessing what true sustainability is and how
to measure if we are heading there. In doing so we must accept that true
sustainability may not arrive for decades or even centuries, yet we’ll need
to be vigilant about making progress toward it now and at each point along
the way. The objective will then be to build popular support, make such
measures feasible, and eventually transform them into effective policies and
programs worldwide.
The second section of the book,
, explores
the implications of the gaps that remain between present realities and a truly
sustainable future. What would it take—what actions, policies, institutional
and behavioral changes, and reductions in
the scale of human activity—to arrive at
a truly sustainable society? In a world far
more preoccupied with present economic
and security conditions than with its own
future capacity to support life, how can
those who care about these issues help move
societies in the right direction? How can we
spur a sufficiently rapid transition toward
a world in which humanity and the nature
that supports it can thrive indefinitely?
Equipped with clearer definitions of
true sustainability and clearer indicators
of where we stand in relation to it, we can
begin to “get real”—that is, more practical
and ambitious—about making our actions
and behaviors truly sustainable. Straight-
forward objectives of where we need to be can help us separate marginal
action, political showmanship, and feel-good aspirations from measurable
progress. The danger of rigorous definition and measurement is, of course,
the psychological impact of the awareness of how distant the goal of true
An
dr
ea
O
Co
nn
el
l
Beyond Sustainababble | 15
sustainability is. The momentum and weight of that distance can be over-
whelming and debilitating. But the fool’s gold that sustainababble offers is
poor medicine; far better to know where we stand—and to stop standing in
a space in which we will not survive.
Are there really policy options for forging toward true sustainability?
There are at least some good candidates, and attention to the sustainabil-
ity metric will help us identify which ones are worth making a priority—
whether relating to climate change, population growth, nitrogen runoff, or
biodiversity loss. Detailed and productive policy proposals can emerge when
we focus more on sustainability metrics and how to manage them to pro-
duce equitable outcomes. It will take time; as current environmental politics
makes clear, not much is achievable with today’s governments. Those who
care about these issues need to think like eighteenth- and nineteenth-century
abolitionists, who worked tirelessly on their cause for generations before legal
slavery disappeared from the world. While time is in most ways the scarcest
resource of all, achieving true sustainability will need a political movement
that grows and gains power over time to make its influence decisive.
Centuries of human experience amid hardship do nonetheless suggest
the possibility that we will muddle through whatever lies before us on the
home planet. We have no way of knowing what inventions will arise to revo-
lutionize our lives and maybe minimize our impacts. Perhaps ocean currents
or cold fusion will offer supplies of energy that are safe, climate-neutral, and
effectively inexhaustible. There is no basis for smug certainty that we face
catastrophe. Yet based on what we have done and are doing ever-more inten-
sively to the atmosphere, oceans, soils, forests, fisheries, and life itself, it takes
an almost religious conviction to be confident that such sunny outcomes
will unfold all over the environmental stage.
History also shows that even human resilience can have its downside. By
adapting so well to past environmental losses (the extinction of large mam-
mals in the Pleistocene, for example), we humans have been able to keep ex-
panding our population, leading to ever-wider ripples and denser layers of
long-term unsustainability. Unless scientists are way off track in their under-
standing of the biophysical world, we would be wise today to look to dramatic
and rapid “demand contraction”—call it degrowth or simply an adaptive re-
sponse to an overused planet—to shift toward a truly environmentally sus-
tainable world that meets human needs. We need to understand the bound-
aries we face—and then craft ways to fairly share the burden of living within
them so that the poor bear the least and the wealthy the most. That’s only fair.
The stakes by their nature are higher the younger someone is—and
highest still for those who are not yet but will be born. We are talking about
the survival of human civilization as we know it, and possibly of the spe-
cies itself. “There is . . . no certainty that adaptation to a 4°C world is pos-
16 | State of the World 2013
sible,” a recent World Bank report conceded, referring to a global average
temperature increase of 7.2 degrees Fahrenheit from pre-industrial times
that is considered likely by 2100 without policy change. And so the book’s
third section—
—takes on a topic that most
discussions of sustainability leave unsaid: whether and how to prepare for
the possibility of a catastrophic global environmental disruption. We could
define this as a sharp break with the past that reverses the long advance
of human creature comforts, health, and life expectancy—and from which
recovery might take centuries.21
In many parts of the world, the emergency has already arrived. There are
places where violence is routine—and routinely unpunished—and where
creature comforts are as distant as personal safety. Sustainability is a mean-
ingless concept in such places, but scholars of sustainability could profitably
study how people survive there. How do they adapt and stay resilient in the
face of their struggles? How did cultures and societies survive during and af-
ter one of the worst civilizational reversals in history, the fourteenth-century
Black Death, which may have cut European population by half?
It is through just such an exploration that the environmental movement
enters fully into the social sphere, after a long history in which the objective
was to protect nature from human influence. We are living in the Anthro-
pocene now, the era in which humans are the main force shaping the future
of life. And it is too late to wall off nature from human influence. Even if
we could somehow cork all the world’s tailpipes and smokestacks, quench
all fires, and cap all other greenhouse gas emission sources, Earth will keep
warming for decades and the oceans will rise for centuries to come. We need
to focus on adapting to a dramatically changing climate and environment
while simultaneously pressing ever harder to head off further change. If we
fail to constrain the ways we are changing the planet, the planet will eventu-
ally overwhelm all our efforts to adapt.22
Such speculation may sound pessimistic, but neither fear of pessimism
nor a dogged determination to remain optimistic are reasons for understat-
ing our predicament. Optimism and pessimism are equal distractions from
what we need in our current circumstance: realism, a commitment to nature
and to each other, and a determination not to waste more time. There seems
little point in determining your gut feeling about the future when you can
put your shoulder to the wheel to make sure the world will keep sustaining
life. “Feeling that you have to maintain hope can wear you out,” eco-philoso-
pher Joanna Macy said in a recent interview with the wisdom of her 81 years.
“Just be present. . . . When you’re worrying about whether you’re hopeful or
hopeless or pessimistic or optimistic, who cares? The main thing is that you
are showing up, that you’re here, and that you’re finding ever more capacity
to love this world, because it will not be healed without that.”23
The Sustainability Metric
“You cannot manage what you do not measure.” So runs the business adage.
Immeasurables, too, often need managing, but the point remains that metrics
matter. Marketers and many of the rest of us blithely dub products, cities, ac-
tivities, and almost anything else under the sun “sustainable” with no quantifi-
cation that might allow independent verification. If we are to manage our way
to a sound environment and a durable civilization, we’ll need to weigh rigor-
ously our progress in ways scientists can support and the rest of us agree on.
Some sustainability metrics are straightforward. The atmosphere will
stabilize when the mass of greenhouse gases that humanity emits is no
greater than the mass the earth reabsorbs. Global progress toward emissions
sustainability can be tracked, leaving only the harder task of devising ways
to mark individual and national sustainability. Since we emit more almost
every year, we know we are less “emissions-sustainable” with each passing
hour. How, though, do we track progress in sustaining biological diversity?
With so much uncertainty about causes and rates of extinction, it is much
harder to find the set point for “biodiversity-sustainable.”
Developing sustainability metrics will be an evolutionary process, an ob-
jective to work toward and use for accountability in the long conversation
ahead. The authors in this section ponder the task and its implications in a
variety of environmental systems and natural resources. Carl Folke opens
with an assessment of perhaps the broadest and most critical range of sus-
tainability metrics: those defining literal boundary points on the planet
The Sustainability Metric | 17
G
ia
co
m
o
Ca
rd
el
li/
Ca
rt
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n
M
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18 | State of the World 2013
that we pass only at peril to our future. Among these are the two systems
just mentioned—climate and biodiversity—but also key mineral cycles and
changes in land, oceans, and air. Marking these boundaries and our position
relative to them sometimes requires subjective judgment, yet the process
nonetheless contributes to better metrics. The concepts of planetary bound-
aries and of the Ecological Footprint, discussed here by Jennie Moore and
William E. Rees, offer among the most influential sustainability metrics yet
devised, and their implications are daunting.
Renewable freshwater especially lends itself to sustainability quantifica-
tion. Hydrologists have carefully measured much of Earth’s water cycle. We
will never run out of water, but some societies drive themselves into scarcity
by using so much water that precipitation fails to maintain levels in rivers,
lakes, and aquifers. Sandra Postel explores these metrics—and finds hope for
future sustainability in the fact that so much freshwater is wasted through
inefficient use. Covering 71 percent of Earth’s surface, salt water offers wide
scope for sustainability metrics. As Antonia Sohns and Larry Crowder note,
unsustainable human behaviors of many kinds ultimately leave their mark on
the seas—in acidification, rising temperatures, declining oxygen content, the
onset of red tides, and the ongoing decline of fisheries. More challenging is
the task of connecting each of these trends and others with the metrics of the
human activities that lead to them, but that too is part of our task.
On renewable energy, Shakuntala Makhijani and Alexander Ochs ap-
proach quantification from a different perspective, measuring the potential
to expand access to “sustainable energy” to the point that this all-important
sector no longer adds to the atmospheric burden of greenhouse gases. Eric
Zencey develops metrics for energy-related principles such as Energy Return
on Energy Invested (EROI), which like unforgiving physical laws may limit
how much energy humanity can mobilize and for how long. Gary Gard-
ner takes up EROI as well, in addressing quantification of natural resources
that perhaps can only be used sustainably with perfect recycling—which of
course excludes fossil fuels and other resources consumed entirely by use.
Kate Raworth tackles another kind of sustainability, that of the social
sphere. She takes inspiration from the planetary boundaries work to explore
metrics that might help us understand when our treatment of our fellow
human beings exceeds the bounds of what is needed for long-term societal
survival. Social sustainability may be the hardest type to submit to mea-
surement, but without enduring societies, a supportive natural environment
will matter to few human beings. The question of how we live together on
a crowded planet that unravels even as we work to hold its strands in place
may call forth the most important sustainability metric of all.
—Robert Engelman
c h a p t e r 2
Respecting Planetary Boundaries
and Reconnecting to the Biosphere
Carl Folke
Carl Folke is a professor at and
director of the Beijer Institute
of Ecological Economics, Royal
Swedish Academy of Sciences,
and the founder and science
director of the Stockholm
Resilience Centre, Stockholm
University.
www.sustainabilitypossible.org
The biosphere—the sphere of life—is the living part of the outermost shell
of our rocky planet, the part of the Earth’s crust, waters, and atmosphere
where life dwells. It is the global ecological system integrating all living be-
ings and their relationships. People and societies depend on its functioning
and life support while also shaping it globally. Life on Earth interacts with
the chemistry of the atmosphere, the circulation of the oceans, the water
cycle (including the solid water in polar and permafrost regions), and geo-
logical processes to form favorable conditions on Earth.
The issue at stake for humanity with respect to the biosphere is broader
than the climate change that is beginning to gain needed attention. It is
about a whole spectrum of global environmental changes that interact with
interdependent and rapidly globalizing human societies. A key challenge for
humanity in this situation is to understand its new role as a dominant force
in the operation of the biosphere, start accounting for and governing natu-
ral capital (the resources and services derived from and produced by ecosys-
tems), and actively shape societal development in tune with the planet that
we are part of. It is time to reconnect to the biosphere.1
During the last couple of generations there has been an amazing expan-
sion of human activities into a converging globalized society, enhancing the
material standard of living for most people and narrowing many gaps be-
tween rich and poor. The expansion, which predominantly benefited the
industrialized world, has pushed humanity into a new geological era, the
Anthropocene—the age in which human actions are a powerful planetary
force shaping the biosphere—and has generated the bulk of the global en-
vironmental challenges confronting the future well-being of the human
population on Earth.2
The Anthropocene is a manifestation of what could be called the Great Ac-
celeration of human activity, in particular since the 1950s. It took humanity
close to 200,000 years to reach a population of 1 billion in the early 1800s, and
Worldwatch Institute, State of the World 2013: Is Sustainability Still Possible?, 19
DOI 10.5822/ 978-1-61091-458-1_2, © 2013 by Worldwatch Institute
20 | State of the World 2013
now that population is beyond 7 billion. A central factor behind the shift from
a human-empty to a human-full world (see Chapter 11) was the discovery of
fossil fuels, a major source of additional energy, which allowed humanity to
take off into a truly globalized world. It is a remarkable achievement for a
single species to become this dominant and, although there are conflicts, still
exist in relative peace—with a stunning capacity for ingenuity, innovation,
collaboration, and collective action. To a large extent this has been enabled by
the human ability to draw on the functioning of the biosphere.3
Societies are now interconnected globally not only through political,
economic, and technical systems but also through Earth’s biophysical life-
support systems. The increasingly urbanized global society—cities already
accommodate more than 50 percent of the world’s population—depends on
the capacity of ecosystems of all kinds worldwide to support urban life with
such essential ecosystem services as fertile soils, storm protection, and sinks
for greenhouse gases and other wastes, even though people may not perceive
this support or believe it valuable. For example, shrimp farmed in ponds in
Thailand for export to cities in industrial countries are fed with fish meal
derived from the harvests of fish in marine ecosystems worldwide. Or con-
sider evolving changes in the variability of rainfall patterns that will likely
trigger changes in the frequency, magnitude, and duration of droughts, fires,
storms, floods, and other shocks and surprises, affecting food production,
trade, migration, and possibly sociopolitical stability. And it has been sug-
gested that the wildfires in Russia in 2010—fueled by record temperatures
and a summer drought—burned away much of Russia’s wheat harvest and
halted exports, contributing to the rising food prices that are seen as one of
the triggers of the Arab Spring.4
Such novel interactions play out in all corners of the world. Surprises,
both positive and negative, are inevitable. And now, new forces are ap-
pearing on stage to accelerate the pace. Most of the world’s population has
started to move decisively out of poverty, leading to the rise of an affluent
middle class aiming for material growth, new diets, and increased income.
Simultaneously, information technology, nano-technology, and molecular
science are accelerating with unknown potentials, while the speed of con-
nectivity and the interactions of globalization create complex new dynamics
across sectors, areas, and societies in yet unknown ways.5
Increases in connectivity, speed, and scale are by no means only bad
news; they may enhance the capacity of societies to adapt and transform
with changing circumstances. If globalization operates as if disconnected
from the biosphere, however, it may undermine the capacity of the life-
supporting ecosystems to sustain such adaptations and provide the essential
ecosystem services that human well-being ultimately depends on. Shifting
from managing natural resources one by one and treating the environment
Respecting Planetary Boundaries and Reconnecting to the Biosphere | 21
as an externality to stewardship of interdependent social-ecological systems
is a prerequisite for long-term human well-being.6
The Human Expansion in a Planetary Context
At the global level there are so-called Earth System services operating on large
temporal and spatial scales without the major direct influence of living or-
ganisms (unlike ecosystem services). These include the provision of fertile
soils through glacial action, the upwelling of ocean circulation that brings
nutrients from the deep ocean to support many of the marine ecosystems
that provide protein-rich food, and glaciers that act as giant water storage
facilities. Storage of carbon through the dissolving of atmospheric carbon
dioxide into the ocean is also part of a larger Earth System regulatory service.
Others include the chemical reactions in the atmosphere that continually
form ozone (essential for filtering out ultraviolet radiation from the sun) and
the role of large polar ice sheets in regulating temperature on Earth.7
During the last 10,000 years, these and other forces have allowed Earth to
provide humanity with favorable environmental conditions and have—un-
til recently—been resilient to human actions. This epoch, the Holocene (see
Figure 2–1), has proved to be most accommodating for the development of
human civilizations. It has allowed agriculture, villages, and cities to develop
and thrive. Before the Holocene period, conditions on Earth were likely too
unpredictable, with fluctuating temperatures, for humans to settle down
and develop in one place. The much more stable environment of the Holo-
Ch
an
ge
in
T
em
pe
ra
tu
re
(°
C
)*
Source: Young and Ste�en
Figure 2–1. Temperature Variability over the Last 100,000 Years
100 90 80 70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0
HOLOCENE
Greek and
Roman
civilizations
Beginning of
agriculture
0
-10
-20
Age before Present (thousand years)
*Figure shows deviation from Holocene average (arbitrarily set at zero), not actual temperature.
22 | State of the World 2013
cene made it possible for people to invest in the capital of the biosphere and
start to domesticate nature. Modern globalized society has developed within
these unusually stable conditions, which are generally taken for granted in
investment decisions, political actions, and international agreements.8
But it seems that humanity is prospering from an exception in the history
of Earth and has become critically dependent on the support of the Holo-
cene biosphere’s natural capital. For the sake of future human development,
it would be helpful if the planet remained in a Holocene-like state. As the
Anthropocene unfolds, it is important to understand the envelope of vari-
ability that characterizes the Holocene as a baseline to interpret the global
changes that are now under way.
The Envelope for Sustainability
The planetary boundaries framework is an approach that sheds light on
the significance of the biosphere and how it operates in support of social
and economic development. It is an attempt to make visible the biophysical
preconditions of a Holocene-like state, the only state that we can be sure
provides an accommodating environment for the further development of
human societies.9
Nine planetary boundaries for critical biophysical processes in the Earth’s
system have been identified. (See Table 2–1.) Together, they describe an en-
velope for a safe operating space for humanity that, if respected, would likely
ensure that Earth remains in a Holocene-like state. The safe operating space
means avoiding moving into a zone of uncertainty where there may be large-
scale and critical thresholds. The boundaries are set at the lower level of these
zones and illuminate Earth’s “rules of the game” for prosperous human de-
velopment. (See also Chapter 3.) The proposed boundaries are rough first
estimates only, marked by large uncertainties and knowledge gaps.10
Preliminary analyses have estimated quantitative planetary boundaries
for seven of the nine processes or elements: climate change, stratospheric
ozone, ocean acidification, the nitrogen and phosphorus cycles, biodiver-
sity loss, land use change, and freshwater use. For some of these, this was
the first attempt at quantifying boundaries of any kind. There was insuffi-
cient knowledge to propose quantitative boundaries for aerosol loading and
chemical pollution. Three of the boundaries may already have been trans-
gressed: those for climate change, changes of the global nitrogen cycle, and
the rate of biodiversity loss.
The boundary estimates are based on an effort to synthesize current sci-
entific understanding. They and the scientific analyses behind them were
presented and discussed in two papers by Johan Rockström and colleagues
in 2009. The following brief summary of the boundaries is derived from
that work.11
Respecting Planetary Boundaries and Reconnecting to the Biosphere | 23
Climate Change. The suggested climate change boundary of 350 parts
per million of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere aims at minimizing the
risk of getting into zones of uncertainty and crossing thresholds that could
lead to major changes in regional climates, alter climate-dynamics patterns
table 2–1. the Nine planetary Boundaries*
Earth System Process
Parameters
Proposed
Boundary
Current
Status
Pre-industrial
Value
Climate change (i) Atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration
(parts per million by volume)
(ii) Change in radiative forcing (watts per meter
squared)
350
1
387
1.5
280
0
Rate of biodiversity
loss
Extinction rate (number of species per million
species per year)
10 >100 0.1–1
Nitrogen cycle (part
of a boundary with
the phosphorus cycle)
Amount of N2 removed from the atmosphere
for human use (millions of tons per year)
35 121 0
Phosphorus cycle (part
of a boundary with
the nitrogen cycle)
Quantity of P flowing into the oceans (millions
of tons per year)
11 8.5–9.5 –1
Stratospheric ozone
depletion
Concentration of ozone (Dobson unit) 276 283 290
Ocean acidification Global mean saturation state of aragonite in
surface seawater
2.75 2.90 3.44
Global freshwater use Consumption of freshwater by humans (km3
per year)
4,000 2,600 415
Change in land use Percentage of global land cover converted to
cropland
15 11.7 low
Atmospheric aerosol
loading
Overall particulate concentration in the
atmosphere, on a regional basis
To be determined
Chemical pollution For example, amount emitted to, or concentra-
tion in, the global environment of persistent
organic pollutants, plastics, endocrine disrup-
tors, heavy metals, and nuclear waste, or their
effects on the functioning of ecosystems and
the Earth System
To be determined
*Boundaries of processes in gray have been crossed.
Source: See endnote 10.
24 | State of the World 2013
such as the oceanic thermohaline circulation, or cause rapid sea level rise.
Current observations of a possible climate transition include the retreat of
summer sea ice in the Arctic Ocean, retreat of mountain glaciers around the
world, loss of mass from the Greenland and West Antarctic ice sheets, and
weakening of the oceanic carbon sink.
Biological Diversity. Biological diversity plays a significant role in eco-
system dynamics and functioning and in sustaining a flow of critical ecosys-
tem services. The planetary boundaries work used species extinction rates
as a first proxy of diversity loss. Accelerated species loss is likely to compro-
mise the biotic capacity of ecosystems to sustain their current functioning
under novel environmental and biotic circumstances. Since the advent of
the Anthropocene, humans have increased the rate of species extinction by
100–1,000 times the background rates that were typical over Earth’s history.
The biodiversity boundary, still under considerable debate, was suggested
at 10 extinctions per million species per year. This boundary of biodiversity
loss is currently exceeded by two orders of magnitude or more.
Nitrogen and Phosphorus. Nitrogen and phosphorus are critical nutri-
ents for life and are instrumental in enhancing food production through
fertilization, but their use also has
impacts on forests and landscapes
and leads to pollution of water-
ways and coastal zones. Human
activities now convert more ni-
trogen from the atmosphere into
reactive forms than all of Earth’s
terrestrial processes combined.
The nitrogen boundary is tenta-
tively set at 35 million tons of in-
dustrially and agriculturally fixed
reactive nitrogen per year flowing
into the biosphere, which is 25
percent of the total amount now
fixed naturally by terrestrial eco-
systems. This is a first guess only, and new estimates are needed to enable a
more informed boundary.
Phosphorus is mined for human use and also added through weathering
processes. Inflow of phosphorus to the oceans has been suggested as a key
driver behind global-scale ocean anoxic events (depletion of oxygen below
the surface). The phosphorus boundary was proposed not to exceed approxi-
mately 10 times the natural background rate for human-derived phosphorus
inflow to the ocean. New estimates of the phosphorus boundary that incor-
porate estimates for both freshwater eutrophication and phosphorus flows to
Eutrophication under way with algal growth in a pond in Lille, France.
F.
La
m
io
t
Respecting Planetary Boundaries and Reconnecting to the Biosphere | 25
the sea conclude that current conditions exceed a proposed planetary bound-
ary for phosphorus in relation to global freshwater eutrophication.12
Stratospheric Ozone. Stratospheric ozone filters ultraviolet radiation
from the sun and thereby protects humans and other organisms. The sug-
gested ozone boundary is set at a decrease of less than 5 percent in column
ozone levels for any particular latitude compared with 1964–80 values. For-
tunately, because of the actions taken as a result of the Montreal Protocol
and its subsequent amendments, humanity appears to be on a path that
avoids exceeding this boundary.
Ocean Acidification. Addition of carbon dioxide to the oceans increases
the acidity (lowers the pH) of the surface seawater. The current rate of ocean
acidification is much higher than at any other time in the last 20 million
years. Many marine organisms are acidity-sensitive, especially those that
use calcium carbonate dissolved in the seawater to form shells or skeletal
structures (such as corals and marine plankton). Globally, the surface ocean
saturation of the aragonite form of carbonate is declining with rising ocean
acidity. To avoid possible thresholds, the suggested oceanic acidification
boundary is to maintain aragonite saturation in surface waters at a mini-
mum of 80 percent of the average global pre-industrial level.
Global Freshwater Use. Humans alter river flows and the spatial patterns
and seasonal timing of other freshwater flows all over the globe. A planetary
boundary for freshwater resources needs to secure water flows to regenerate
precipitation, support terrestrial ecosystem functioning and services (such
as carbon sequestration, biomass growth, food production, and biological
diversity), and also ensure the availability of water for aquatic ecosystems.
Transgressing a freshwater boundary of roughly 4,000 cubic kilometers
per year of consumptive use of runoff may push humanity toward water-
induced thresholds at regional to continental scales. Currently, consumptive
use is about 2,600 cubic kilometers per year.
Land Use Changes. Land use change, driven primarily by agricultural
expansion and intensification, contributes to global environmental change.
It is proposed that the boundary for change be set at no more than 15 per-
cent of the global ice-free land surface converted to cropland. Currently that
share is about 12 percent. The suggested allowance for expanding agricul-
tural land by three percentage points will likely be used up over the com-
ing decades and includes suitable land that is not currently cultivated or is
under forest cover, such as abandoned cropland in Europe, North America,
and the former Soviet Union as well as some areas of Africa’s savannas and
South America’s cerrado.
Atmospheric Aerosol Loading. Aerosol loading adds particulates such
as dust, soot, and liquid droplets to the atmosphere, and on a regional
basis it disrupts monsoon systems and has human health effects. Global
26 | State of the World 2013
threshold behavior is still poorly understood, and no aerosol boundary is
yet suggested.
Chemical Pollution. Chemical pollution includes radioactive com-
pounds, heavy metals, and a wide range of organic compounds of human
origin that adversely affect human and ecosystem health and are now pres-
ent in the environment all over the planet. Potential thresholds are largely
unknown, and although there is ample scientific evidence on individual
chemicals, there is lack of aggregate, global-level analysis, so it is too early to
suggest a chemical pollution boundary.
Interdependent Boundaries. Transgressing one or more planetary
boundaries may have serious consequences for human well-being due to
the risk of crossing thresholds that can trigger non-linear, abrupt environ-
mental change within continental- to planetary-scale systems. Planetary
boundaries are interdependent, because crossing one of them may shift the
position of other boundaries or cause them to be transgressed. Such interac-
tions between the boundaries are not accounted for in the current estimates.
Moreover, the existence of these thresholds in key Earth System processes is
independent of peoples’ preferences and values or of compromises based on
political and socioeconomic feasibility. How far we are willing to move into
the uncertainty zones and risk crossing critical thresholds is a reflection of
worldviews, choices, and actions—hence the urgent need to reconnect hu-
man actions to the biosphere.13
Innovation and Transformation for Global Resilience
Humans have changed the way the world works, and now we must change
the way we think about it too. Society must seriously consider new ways
to support Earth System resilience and explore options for the deliberate
transformation of unsustainable trends and practices that undermine it.
The future is uncertain, with surprises and shocks in store—and also oppor-
tunities. Incremental tweaking is not likely to be sufficient for the new An-
thropocene era to remain in a state as favorable for humans as the Holocene.
Preventing dangerous transitions at the regional and global levels will re-
quire innovation and novelty. It is increasingly clear that development goals
and efforts need to relate to the safe operating spaces and create opportuni-
ties for prosperous societal development within those dynamic limits.14
Large-scale developments in information technology, nano- and bio-
technology, and new energy systems have the potential to significantly im-
prove our lives. But if, in framing them, society fails to consider the adaptive
capacity of the biosphere and the safe operating spaces for humanity, there
is a risk that unsustainable development may be reinforced by technological
innovations and policies that are successful in the short term.
Can we innovate sufficiently rapidly and with sufficient intelligence to
Respecting Planetary Boundaries and Reconnecting to the Biosphere | 27
steer our system out of a destructive pathway and onto one that leads to
long-term social and ecological resilience? Whatever forms a transition to
sustainability might take, it implies finding the institutional frameworks to
stimulate the kinds of innovation that solve rather than aggravate our envi-
ronmental challenges.15
The environment has for too long been looked on as an externality for
economic progress—a handy and limitless stock of resources for human
economic exploitation. Many even continue to view it as a sector of society
rather than the other way around and are truly ignorant about its dynamics
and significance.
But it has become crystal clear that people and societies are integral com-
ponents of the biosphere, depending on the functioning and services of life-
supporting ecosystems. It is urgent to start accounting for and governing
natural capital and ecosystem services, not just for saving the environment
but for the sake of our own development. The question is about responsibil-
ity—whether humanity has the understanding, wisdom, and maturity as a
species to become wise stewards of the living planet, instead of treating it as
an inexhaustible collection of raw materials.
At the core of the global sustainability challenge is extending the period
of relative stability of the last 10,000 years that has allowed our species to
flourish and create civilizations. It represents a globally desirable social-eco-
logical state. A significant part of this challenge is to make the work of the
biosphere visible in the minds of people, in financial and economic transac-
tions and in society as a whole.
In a globalized society, there are no ecosystems without people and no
people who do not depend on ecosystem functioning. They are inextricably
intertwined. Ecosystem services therefore are not really generated by na-
ture but by social-ecological systems. Social-ecological systems are dynamic
and connected, from the local to the global, in complex webs of interac-
tions subject to both gradual and abrupt changes. Dynamic and complex
social-ecological systems require strategies that build resilience rather than
attempt to control for optimal production and short-term gain in environ-
ments assumed to be relatively stable.
The planetary boundaries approach sheds light on the crucial signifi-
cance of a functioning Earth and its biosphere for human well-being. It
inspires stewardship of our critical natural capital at all levels. The shift
from perceiving people and nature as separate actors to seeing them as
interdependent social-ecological systems creates exciting opportunities for
societal development in tune with the biosphere: a global sustainability
agenda for humanity.
Kate Raworth is a senior re-
searcher at Oxfam and teaches
at Oxford University’s Envi-
ronmental Change Institute.
This chapter is written in her
personal capacity. Lisa Dittmar
provided research assistance.
www.sustainabilitypossible.org
c h a p t e r 3
Defining a Safe and Just Space
for Humanity
Kate Raworth
Every pilot knows the importance of flying with a compass: without one,
they would be in danger of straying far from course. No wonder that mod-
ern airplane cockpits are equipped with an array of dials and indicators—
from compass and fuel gauge to altimeter and speedometer. Pity, then, that
economic policymakers have used nothing close to that for charting the
course of the whole economy.
The excessive attention given to gross domestic product (GDP) in recent
decades as an indicator of a nation’s economic performance is like trying
to fly a plane by its altimeter alone: it tells you if you are going up or down,
but nothing of where you are headed or how much fuel you have left in the
tank. Such a focus on monetized economic output has failed to reflect the
growing degradation of natural resources, the invaluable but unpaid work
of carers and volunteers, and the inequalities of income that leave people in
every society facing poverty and social exclusion. GDP’s dominance has long
passed its legitimacy: it is clearly time to create a better dashboard for navi-
gating the twenty-first century’s journey toward equity and sustainability.
The good news is that better metrics are on the way.
In 2009, Nobel prize–winning economists Joseph Stiglitz and Amartya
Sen led a commission of economic thinkers to reassess how best to measure
economic performance and social progress. They concluded, “We are almost
blind when the metrics on which action is based are ill-designed or when they
are not well understood. For many purposes, we need better metrics. Fortu-
nately, research in recent years has enabled us to improve our metrics, and it
is time to incorporate in our measurement system some of these advances.”1
Metrics for assessing environmental sustainability are under develop-
ment—from calculating ecological footprints (see Chapter 4) to quantify-
ing natural capital. But a new measurement framework that focused only on
bringing environmental sustainability into the picture would fail to reflect
social outcomes and would overlook the equity implications of pursuing
Worldwatch Institute, State of the World 2013: Is Sustainability Still Possible?,
DOI 10.5822/ 978-1-61091-458-1_3, © 2013 by Worldwatch Institute
28
Defining a Safe and Just Space for Humanity | 29
sustainability. For where there is a limit on resource availability, there is al-
ways a question of how those limited resources are to be distributed and
used. If that question is left unspoken, it can lead to political stalemate, in-
justice, and suffering. So in any discussion of what it will take to achieve
global environmental sustainability, it is crucial to bring the issue of inter-
national social justice in resource distribution explicitly into the framework,
including into the metrics to be used. The concept of planetary boundaries
offers a powerful starting point for doing just that.
Between Social Boundaries and Planetary Boundaries
In 2009, a group of leading Earth-system scientists brought together by Jo-
han Rockström of the Stockholm Resilience Centre put forward the concept
of planetary boundaries. (See Chapter 2.) They proposed a set of nine in-
terrelated Earth System processes—such as climate regulation, the freshwa-
ter cycle, and the nitrogen cycle—that are critical for keeping the planet in
the relatively stable state known as the Holocene, a state that has been so
beneficial to humanity over the past 10,000 years. Under too much pres-
sure from human activity, these processes could be pushed over biophysical
thresholds—some on global scales, others on regional scales—into abrupt
and even irreversible change, dangerously undermining the natural resource
base on which humanity depends for well-being. To avoid this, the scientists
made a first proposition of a set of boundaries below these danger zones,
such as a boundary of 350 parts per million of carbon dioxide (CO
2
) in the
atmosphere to prevent dangerous climate change.2
Together the nine boundaries can be depicted as forming a circle, and
Rockström’s group called the area within it “a safe operating space for hu-
manity.” Their first estimates indicated that at least three of the nine bound-
aries have already been crossed—for climate change, the nitrogen cycle, and
biodiversity loss—and that resource pressures are moving rapidly toward
the estimated global boundary for several others too.3
The concept of nine planetary boundaries powerfully communicates
complex scientific issues to a broad audience, and it challenges traditional
understandings of economy and environment. While mainstream econom-
ics treats environmental degradation as an “externality” that largely falls
outside of the monetized economy, natural scientists have effectively turned
that approach on its head and proposed a quantified set of resource-use
boundaries within which the global economy should operate if we are to
avoid critical Earth System tipping points. These boundaries are described
not in monetary metrics but in natural metrics fundamental to ensuring the
planet’s resilience for remaining in a Holocene-like state.
Further work is needed—and is under way—to refine the planetary
boundaries approach, both in terms of clarifying the different scales (from
30 | State of the World 2013
local to global) of the critical biophysical thresholds and in terms of under-
standing their dynamic interactions. Yet even while the nuances of defining
the nature and scale of boundaries are being debated, a critical part of the
picture is still missing.4
Yes, human well-being depends on keeping total resource use below criti-
cal natural thresholds, but it equally depends upon every person having a
claim on the resources they need to lead a life of dignity and opportunity.
International human rights norms have long asserted the fundamental mor-
al claim each person has to life’s essentials—such as food, water, basic health
care, education, freedom of expression, political participation, and personal
security—no matter how much or how little money or power they have. Just
as there is an outer boundary of resource use, an “environmental ceiling”
beyond which lies unacceptable environmental degradation, so too there is
an inner boundary of resource use, a “social foundation” below which lies
unacceptable human deprivation.
Of course, a social foundation of this kind provides only for the mini-
mum of every human’s needs. But given the current extent of poverty and
extreme inequality in the world, ensuring that this social foundation of hu-
man rights is achieved for all must be a first focus.
Since 2000, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) have provided
an important international focus for social priorities in development and
have addressed many deprivations—of income, nutrition, gender equality,
health, education, and water and sanitation—whose urgency has not reced-
ed. The emerging international debate about what should follow the MDGs
after 2015, and simultaneously what should underpin a set of Sustainable
Development Goals, is bringing attention to additional social concerns such
as resilience, access to energy, and social equity.
These major initiatives to generate a new set of global development goals
could result in an international consensus about priority social issues to
be tackled in coming decades, effectively setting an internationally agreed-
upon social foundation. In advance of such agreement, one indication of
shared international concerns comes from the social priorities most raised
by governments in the run-up to the Rio+20 Conference, as set out in their
national and regional submissions before the meeting. Analysis of these sub-
missions reveals that 11 social priorities were raised in over half of them: de-
privations in food, water, health care, income, education, energy, jobs, voice,
gender equality, social equity, and resilience to shocks. These 11 are taken
here as an illustrative social foundation.5
Between the social foundation of human rights and the environmental
ceiling of planetary boundaries lies a space—shaped like a doughnut—that
is both an environmentally safe and a socially just space for humanity. (See
Figure 3–1.)6
Defining a Safe and Just Space for Humanity | 31
Combining planetary and social boundaries in this way creates a new
perspective on sustainable development. Human-rights advocates have
long highlighted the imperative of ensuring every person’s claim to life’s
essentials, while ecological economists have emphasized the need to situ-
ate the global economy within environmental limits. This framework
brings the two together, creating a space that is bounded by both human
rights and environmental sustainability, while acknowledging that there
are many complex and dynamic interactions across and between the mul-
tiple boundaries.7
Just as Rockström and the other scientists in 2009 estimated that hu-
manity has already transgressed at least three planetary boundaries, so too
it is possible to quantify human outcomes against the social foundation.
A first assessment, based on international data, indicates that humanity
is falling far below the social foundation on eight dimensions for which
comparable indicators are available. Around 13 percent of the world’s
Source: Raworth; Rockström et al.
Figure 3–1. a Safe and Just Space for humanity
32 | State of the World 2013
population is undernourished, for example, 19 percent of people have no
access to electricity, and 21 percent live in extreme income poverty. (See
Table 3–1.)8
Quantifying social boundaries alongside planetary boundaries in this
way makes plain humanity’s extraordinary situation. (See Figure 3–2.)
Many millions of people still live in appalling deprivation, far below the
social foundation. Yet collectively humanity has already transgressed sev-
eral of the planetary boundaries. This is a powerful indication of just how
deeply unequal and unsustainable the path of global development has been
to date.9
table 3–1. how Far Below the Social Foundation Is humanity?
Social
Foundation
Illustrative Indicators of Global Deprivation
Share of
Population
Year
(percent)
Food security Population undernourished 13 2010–12
Income Population living below $1.25 (purchasing power parity) per day 21 2005
Water and
sanitation
Population without access to an improved drinking water source
Population without access to improved sanitation
13
39
2008
2008
Health care Population without regular access to essential medicines 30 2004
Education Children not enrolled in primary school
Illiteracy among 15–24 year olds
10
11
2009
2009
Energy Population lacking access to electricity
Population lacking access to clean cooking facilities
19
39
2009
2009
Gender equality Employment gap between women and men in waged work (exclud-
ing agriculture)
Representation gap between women and men in national parliaments
34
77
2009
2011
Social equity Population living in countries with significant income inequality 33 1995–
2009
Voice Population living in countries perceived (in surveys) not to permit
political participation or freedom of expression
To be determined
Jobs Labor force not employed in decent work To be determined
Resilience Population facing multiple dimensions of poverty To be determined
Source: See endnote 8.
Defining a Safe and Just Space for Humanity | 33
Source: Raworth; Rockström et al.
Figure 3–2. Falling Far Below the Social Foundation While
exceeding planetary Boundaries
34 | State of the World 2013
Dynamics and Distribution between the Boundaries
One striking implication from this initial attempt to quantify both social
and planetary boundaries is that ending poverty for all 7 billion people alive
today need not be a source of significant stress on planetary boundaries.
According to data from the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, pro-
viding the additional calories needed by the 13 percent of the world who are
facing hunger would require just 3 percent of the current global food supply.
Consider that against the fact that around 30 percent of the world’s food
supply is lost in post-harvest processing, wasted in retail supply chains, or
thrown away by consumers. Likewise, according to the International Energy
Agency, bringing electricity to the 19 percent of the world who currently
lack it could be achieved, using a mix of technologies, for as little as a 1 per-
cent increase in global CO
2
emissions—making it clear that tackling climate
change and ending energy poverty are essentially distinct challenges. And
according to researchers at the Brookings Institute, ending extreme income
poverty for the 21 percent of people who live on less than $1.25 a day would
require just 0.2 percent of current global income.10
What, then, is the biggest source of stress on planetary boundaries today?
It is the excessive consumption levels of roughly the wealthiest 10 percent
of people in the world and the resource-intensive production patterns of
companies producing the goods and services that they buy. The richest 10
percent of people in the world hold 57 percent of global income. Just 11 per-
cent of the global population generates about half of global CO
2
emissions.
And one third of the world’s “sustainable budget” for reactive nitrogen use
is used to produce meat for people in the European Union, just 7 percent of
the world’s population.11
Cutting the resource intensity of the most affluent lifestyles is essential
for both equity of and sustainability in global resource use. The global mid-
dle class is projected to grow from 2 billion today to nearly 5 billion by 2030,
with global demand for water expected to rise by 30 percent, and demand
for food and energy each by 50 percent. Families moving into the lower
end of the global middle class (spending around $10 per person a day) will
be able to afford meat in their diets, electric power at home, and the use of
public or private motor transport. As a result, lifelong prospects for many
of these families will be transformed. Production patterns that are far more
resource-efficient—including resource-saving technologies, investments,
and infrastructure in key sectors—are essential to make this possible.12
As other families move up to the higher-income end of the global middle
class, however, spending $50–100 per person a day, their expectations, aspi-
rations, and hence resource use will be strongly influenced by the consump-
tion and production patterns underpinning the lifestyles of today’s most
Defining a Safe and Just Space for Humanity | 35
affluent consumers. Achieving more-equitable and more-efficient resource
use within and between countries and transforming today’s resource-inten-
sive lifestyles will clearly be crucial if humanity is to move onto development
pathways that operate in the space between social and planetary boundaries.
Creating Metrics for a New Economic Dashboard
There is wide agreement that it is time to get beyond GDP and toward a far
richer conception of what constitutes economic development. The global
crises of environmental degradation and extreme human deprivation, cou-
pled with the projected growth of the global middle class, urgently demand
a better tool kit for economic policymaking.
What are the implications, then, of this framework of social and plan-
etary boundaries for rethinking the metrics needed to govern economies?
The overriding aim of global economic development must surely be to en-
able humanity to thrive in the safe and just space, ending human depriva-
tion while keeping within safe boundaries of natural resource use locally,
regionally, and globally. Traditional economic growth policies have largely
failed to deliver on both accounts: far too few benefits of economic growth
have gone to people living in poverty, and far too much of GDP’s rise has
been at the cost of degrading natural resources. And the focus on monetized
exchange in the economy overlooks the enormous value for human well-
being of unpaid work in terms of both caring for and nurturing others and
stewarding natural resources.
Imagine if the doughnut-shaped diagram of social and planetary bound-
aries found its way onto the opening page of every macroeconomics text-
book. So you want to be an economist? Then first, there are a few facts you
should know about this planet, how it sustains us, how it responds to exces-
sive pressure from human activity, and how that undermines our own well-
being. You should also know about the human rights of its people and about
the human, social, and natural resources that it will take to fulfill those. With
these fundamental concepts of planetary and social boundaries in place,
your task as an economist is clear and crucial: to design economic policies
and regulations that help bring humanity into the safe and just space be-
tween the boundaries and that enable us all to thrive there.
Of course, redefining the economist’s mandate cannot get us there alone.
We also need deeper knowledge of Earth System processes at multiple scales
and far wider use of resource-efficient technologies and techniques. We
need breakthroughs in understanding consumer psychology, in promoting
empathy and long-term decisionmaking, and in governing for collective in-
terests. But given that economics is the dominant language and currency of
policymaking, we stand little chance of getting there without having that
discipline on our side.
36 | State of the World 2013
Under this framing of what successful economic policymaking looks like,
the metrics for assessing the journey toward sustainable and equitable de-
velopment must widen significantly. In line with the recommendations of
the Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social
Progress, at least four broad shifts are needed—and are under way (see Box
3–1)—for creating a better dashboard of economic and social progress.13
The first shift is from measuring just what is sold to what is provided
for free too. Many of the goods and services that are essential for well-be-
ing are provided for free—by parents, by volunteers, and by nature—and
have significant value. One 2003 study of the unpaid care economy in Basel,
Switzerland, found that the imputed value of housework, unpaid care, and
volunteer services was 50 percent greater than the city’s public spending on
hospitals and schools. Likewise, a recent U.S. study found that accounting
for unpaid household production, such as housework, child care, and cook-
ing, effectively increased the country’s GDP by 26 percent in 2010.14
Assessments of the contribution made by unpriced ecosystem functions
are also under way. The United Kingdom’s National Ecosystem Assessment
in 2011 found that 30 percent of the country’s ecosystems were in decline
but that ecosystem functioning—such as inland wetlands and pollination by
bees—was of high economic value to the economy. Measures such as these
that better reflect the value of the unpaid care economy and unpriced eco-
system functions are essential for broadening concepts of what contributes
to economic and social development.15
Second, we need to shift from a focus on the flow of goods and services
to monitoring changes in underlying stocks as well. The flow of goods and
services is only half the economic story, as any company knows. Indeed,
companies that only published their profit and loss accounts would be
laughed off the stock exchange. It is also critical to know what is happen-
ing to a company’s assets and liabilities. And nations should be held to the
same standard.
The physical and financial assets of countries have been measured for
some time, but attention is now turning to better accounting of every na-
tion’s fundamental wealth: its natural, human, and social assets. Creating
metrics that help to assess, value, restore, and expand these assets is at the
heart of creating long-term prosperity. The Inclusive Wealth Index (IWI)
prepared by the United Nations sets out to do just that, assessing changes
in countries’ manufactured, human, and natural capital stocks—with the
initial finding that 6 out of 20 countries assessed have seen their IWI per
capita fall since 1990.16
The third shift needed is from a focus on aggregates and averages to
monitoring distribution too. Many economic indicators are either aggre-
gates (national GDP, for example) or averages (GDP per capita). But it is the
Defining a Safe and Just Space for Humanity | 37
actual distribution of incomes, wealth, and outcomes across a society that
determines how inclusive its path of development is. In 17 out of 22 coun-
tries in the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development
(OECD), income inequality has risen since 1985. In OECD countries today,
the richest 10 percent of people have, on average, nine times the income of
the poorest 10 percent.17
Just as there are striking inequalities of income, there are striking in-
equalities of resource use as well. In the United Kingdom, the richest 10
percent of people produce twice the carbon emissions of the poorest 10 per-
cent; in
Sweden
, it’s four times as much; in China, 18 times as much. Data on
income distribution and resource use also need to be disaggregated by sex
Beginning in the early 1970s, and initially focusing on
the problem of pollution costs and other environmental
externalities, economists have been working to develop
alternatives to GDP that better capture the full scope of
our economy. These include the Measure of Economic
Welfare developed by William Nordhaus and James
Tobin and a later, better- known derivation, the Genuine
Progress Indicator.
More recently, and particularly in the wake of the
recession, interest among policymakers has surged and
we are now in the early phases of major implementa-
tion efforts in multilateral institutions and government.
The Beyond GDP movement has entered a new phase,
toward the goal of widespread implementation of alter-
native measurement frameworks in national account-
ing systems, other levels of governance, and concrete
policy settings. Identifiable, large-scale impacts on
policy and social outcomes, however, remain a good
way off in the face of many technical, institutional, and
political challenges.
One major stepping-stone was France’s high-
profile Commission on the Measurement of Economic
Performance and Social Progress. With the widely
noted release of its groundbreaking report in 2009, the
Commission set a high bar for national implementation
of comprehensive accounting reforms, incorporating
principles of equity, quality of life, and sustainability.
Other important institutional developments include a
2011 U.N. resolution calling for member states to reform
national accounting systems based on the principles of
well-being and sustainability. Led by Bhutan, the resolu-
tion was affirmed by more than 60 countries, including
most of Europe as well as India and Brazil.
Government efforts to implement alternative indica-
tors are multiplying. The World Bank’s WAVES partner-
ship—Wealth Accounting and the Valuation of Ecosys-
tem Services—is currently developing implementation
plans for environmental accounting in Botswana,
Colombia, Costa Rica, Madagascar, and the Philippines.
Twenty-four countries, mostly in the developing world,
are engaged in some form of environmental account-
ing, particularly around resource management, accord-
ing to a recent World Bank study.
Industrial countries are also moving forward in
certain areas. The United Kingdom has adopted “hap-
piness accounting,” incorporating measures of subjec-
tive well-being into its national accounts, and Australia
and Canada are developing alternative dashboards of
well-being indicators. There is also progress in the United
States, including high-level federal research programs
on nonmarket accounting and happiness measures, a
programmatic blueprint for GDP and Beyond mea-
sures issued by the Bureau of Economic Analysis in the
Department of Commerce, and adoption of the Genuine
Progress Indicator in the states of Maryland and Vermont.
—Lew Daly
Director, Sustainable Progress Initiative, Demos
Source: See endnote 13.
Box 3–1. Moving Beyond GDp
38 | State of the World 2013
and by ethnicity in order to ensure that economic policies and their social
outcomes are equitable.18
The final shift to create a better dashboard of economic and social prog-
ress is from monetary metrics to natural and social metrics too. Not every-
thing that matters can be monetized, nor should it be. “Social metrics,” such
as the number of hours of unpaid caring work provided by women and
by men, and “natural metrics,” such as per capita footprint calculations for
carbon, water, nitrogen, and land, must be given more visibility and weight
in policy assessments.
Natural metrics such as these are relatively new but fast improving. More
and better data of this kind are essential, most urgently in high-income and
resource-intensive countries, for assessing whether a nation’s GDP growth is
being decoupled from natural resource use—and not just in relative terms
(with GDP rising faster than resource use) but in absolute terms (with GDP
rising while total resource use falls), since this reveals whether or not “green
growth” is taking place and, ultimately, whether it is possible.
What difference are these four shifts making? Gone are the days of GDP
as the lone altimeter guiding the economic journey. The interest and prog-
ress in creating new metrics is starting to generate a dashboard of indica-
tors that places the monetized economy in a much broader context of what
constitutes, and contributes to, equitable and sustainable development. For
sure, the direction of GDP still matters—indeed, its growth is absolutely
crucial in low-income countries—but it matters alongside other important
dimensions of development.
This creation of metrics beyond GDP is crucial, but of course it brings
new complexities and controversies. There is an ongoing dance (or a battle)
back and forth between the metrics of economics and ecology to determine
whose language, concepts, and measurements will define the emerging par-
adigm of development. Will economics subsume ecology, assigning a mon-
etary value to all natural resources, complete with assumptions of shadow
prices, substitutability, and market exchange? Will ecology predominate,
proscribing a space for economic activity within safe boundaries designed
to avoid critical natural thresholds, expressed and governed only through
the evolving natural metrics of the planet? Or will it be possible to create a
dashboard of indicators that incorporates the realities and insights brought
by both approaches?
If such holistic metrics can be created, they must be compiled and re-
ported in ways that empower people around the world to hold policymakers
to account. This change alone would provide governments, civil society,
citizens, and companies alike with a far better dashboard for navigating hu-
manity into a safe and just space in which we all can thrive.
c h a p t e r 4
Getting to One-Planet Living
Jennie Moore and William E. Rees
Jennie Moore is the director of
sustainable development and
environmental stewardship in
the School of Construction and
the Environment at the British
Columbia Institute of Technol-
ogy. William E. Rees is Professor
Emeritus in the School of
Community and Regional Plan-
ning at the University of British
Columbia.
www.sustainabilitypossible.org
In Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, Jared Diamond asks the
obvious question of a forest-dependent society: “What was the Easter Is-
lander who cut down the last tree thinking?” For those familiar with the
human tendency to habituate to virtually any conditions, the answer might
very well be “nothing much.” The individual who cut down Easter Island’s
last significant tree probably did not noticeably alter a familiar landscape.
True, that person was likely standing in a scrubby woodland with vastly di-
minished biodiversity compared with the dense forest of earlier generations.
Nevertheless, the incremental encroachments that eventually precipitated
the collapse of Easter Island society were likely insufficient in the course of
any one islander’s life to raise general alarm. Some of the tribal elders might
have worried about the shrinking forest, but there is no evidence that they
did—or could have done—much to reverse the inexorable decline of the
island’s ecosystem.1
Too bad. With the felling of the last “old-growth” trees on the island,
the forest passed a no-return threshold beyond which collapse of the en-
tire socio-ecosystem was inevitable. No doubt several factors contributed
to this tragic implosion—perhaps a combination of natural stresses cou-
pled with rat predation of palm nuts, human “predation” of adult trees,
overpopulation of both rats and humans, the misallocation of resources
to an intertribal competition to construct ever bigger moai (the famous
sacred monolithic stone heads), or perhaps even some tribal invincibility
myth. But there is little doubt that human overexploitation of the limited
resources of a finite island was a major driver. The wiser members of the
community probably saw what was coming. In slightly different circum-
stances the islanders could conceivably have responded to reverse the de-
cline, but in the end Easter Island society was unable to organize effectively
to save itself.
Fast forward. We might well ask ourselves what the Canadian govern-
Worldwatch Institute, State of the World 2013: Is Sustainability Still Possible?,
DOI 10.5822/ 978-1-61091-458-1_4, © 2013 by Worldwatch Institute
39
40 | State of the World 2013
ment was thinking in the early 1990s when it ignored scientists’ warnings
and a well-documented 30-year decline in spawning stock biomass and al-
lowed commercial fishers to drive the Atlantic Cod stock to collapse. What
are North Americans thinking today as they strip the boreal forest to get at
tar-sands crude or jeopardize already shrinking water supplies by “frack-
ing” oil-shales for natural gas and petroleum, even as burning the stuff
threatens to push the global climate system over the brink? And what are
Brazilians, Congolese, Malaysians, and Indonesians thinking as they har-
vest the world’s great rainforests for short-term economic gain (through
rare tropical hardwoods, cattle farms, soy production, or oil-palm planta-
tions, for instance)?
Certainly the governments and corporate leaders of these nations know
that their actions are destroying the world’s greatest deposits of biodiversity,
increasing the atmosphere’s carbon burden, and accelerating long-term cli-
mate change. Nevertheless, as the U.N. Department of Economic and Social
Affairs notes, because “so many of the components of existing economic
systems are ‘locked into’ the use of non-green and non-sustainable tech-
nologies, much is at stake in terms of the high cost of moving out of those
technologies.” Result? A world in policy paralysis. 2
System collapse is a complicated process. Ecosystem thresholds are not
marked with signs warning of impending danger. We may actually pass
through a tipping point unaware because nothing much happens at first.
However, positive feedback ensures that accelerating changes in key vari-
ables eventually trigger a chain reaction: critical functions fail and the sys-
tem can implode like a house of cards. Complexity theory and ecosystems
dynamics warn of the dangers of overexploitation and explain observed
cycles of climax and collapse. Yet the world community is in effect running a
massive unplanned experiment on the only planet we have to see how far we
can push the ecosphere before it “flips” into an alternative stability domain
that may not be amenable to human civilization. Examples of inexorable
trends include the loss of topsoil, atmospheric greenhouse gas accumula-
tion, acidification of oceans with negative impacts on fisheries, coastal ero-
sion, and the flooding of cities.3
We can illustrate the human pressure on nature using Ecological Foot-
print accounting. (See Box 4–1.) Ecological Footprints estimate the produc-
tive ecosystem area required, on a continuous basis, by any specified popu-
lation to produce the renewable resources it consumes and to assimilate its
(mostly carbon) wastes. There are only 11.9 billion hectares of productive
ecosystem area on the planet. If this area were distributed equally among
the 7 billion people on Earth today, each person would be allocated just 1.7
global hectares (gha) per capita. (A global hectare represents a hectare of
global average biological productivity.)4
Getting to One-Planet Living | 41
The Ecological Footprint compares a population’s
demand on productive ecosystems—its footprint—
with biocapacity, the ability of those ecosystems
to keep up with this demand. The Global Footprint
Network’s National Footprint Accounts tracks the foot-
prints of countries by measuring the area of cropland,
grazing land, forest, and fisheries required to produce
the food, fiber, and timber resources being consumed
and to absorb the carbon dioxide (CO2) waste emitted
when burning fossil fuels. When humanity’s Ecological
Footprint exceeds the planet’s biocapacity, harvests are
exceeding yields, causing a depletion of existing stocks
or the accumulation of carbon dioxide in the atmo-
sphere and oceans. Such overuse potentially damages
ecosystems’ regenerative capacity. Locally, demand can
exceed biocapacity without depletion if resources can
be imported.
In 1961, humanity’s Ecological Footprint was at
about two thirds of global biocapacity; today humanity
is in ecological overshoot—requiring the equivalent of
1.5 planets to provide the renewable resources we use
and to absorb our carbon waste. Local overshoot has
occurred all through history, but global overshoot only
began in the mid-1970s. Overshoot cannot continue
indefinitely; ultimately, productive ecosystems will
become depleted. Global productivity is further at risk
because of potential climate change, ocean acidifica-
tion, and other consequences of the buildup of CO2 in
the biosphere.
Most nations demand more biocapacity than they
have available within their own borders. This means
they are liquidating their national ecological wealth,
relying through trade on the biocapacity of others,
or using the global commons as a carbon sink. This
increases the risk of volatile costs or supply disrup-
tions. For example, the Mediterranean region has a
rapidly widening ecological deficit: in less than 50
years, demand for ecological resources and services has
nearly tripled, expanding its ecological deficit by 230
percent. But it is not just high-income countries where
Ecological Footprints exceed biocapacity. The Philip-
pines has been in ecological deficit since the 1960s. In
2008, people there demanded from nature twice the
country’s capacity to provide biological resources and
sequester carbon emissions.
The United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Kuwait, Denmark,
and the United States have the largest per capita
footprints among countries with populations over 1
million. If everybody consumed like residents of these
countries, we would need more than four Earths. Other
nations, such as China, have lower
per capita footprints but are rapidly
pursuing consumption habits that
are trending in the direction of high-
income, high-footprint nations. And
although China’s footprint per person
is low, we would still need slightly
more than one Earth if everyone in
the world consumed at that level.
Despite relatively small per capita
Ecological Footprints, countries with
large populations, like India and China,
have significant biocapacity deficits
and large total Ecological Footprints,
similar to that of the United States.
—Global Footprint Network
Source: See endnote 4.
Box 4–1. What Is the ecological Footprint?
N
um
be
r o
f E
ar
th
s D
em
an
de
d
Global Ecological Footprint by Component, 1961–2008
1960 1970 1980 1990 20102000
0
0.5
1.0
1.5
World Biocapacity
Carbon
Fishing Grounds
Built-Up LandCropland
Forestland
Grazing Land
42 | State of the World 2013
Comparing Fair Earth-Share and High-Consumption
Societies
Ecological Footprint studies reveal that the world is in ecological overshoot
by as much as 50 percent. The growth of the human enterprise today is
fueled in large part by the liquidation of natural capital, including essential
ecosystems, and the overfilling of waste sinks. In short, the human enter-
prise is exploiting natural systems faster than they can regenerate. Would a
truly intelligent species risk permanently disabling the very ecosystems that
sustain it for the increasingly questionable benefits of unequal growth?5
Ironically, the main perpetrators of this global experiment are the rela-
tively well educated 20 percent of the human population who live in high-
income consumer societies, including most of North America, Europe, Japan,
and Australia, along with consumer elites of low-income countries. Densely
populated, high-income countries typically exceed their domestic carrying
capacities by a factor of three to six or more and thus impose a growing bur-
den on other countries and the global commons. This wealthy minority of
the human family appropriates almost 80 percent of the world’s resources and
generates most of its carbon emissions from fossil fuels.6
To achieve sustainability—that is, to live within the ecological carrying
capacity of Earth—on average, people would have to live on the biologically
productive and assimilative capacity of just 1.7 gha per capita. (If, as good
stewards, we reserved more biocapacity solely for wild species, our Earth-
shares per person would be even smaller.) In this chapter we use this amount
of globally available per capita biocapacity as a starting point to consider the
implications of living with a more equitable distribution of Earth’s resourc-
es. In short, for policy and planning purposes, we consider 1.7 gha/per cap-
ita to be each person’s equitable or “fair Earth-share” of global biocapacity.
More than half the world’s population lives at or below a fair Earth-share.
These people are mostly in Latin America, Asia, and Africa. As Table 4–1
shows, such fair Earth-share societies enjoy comparable longevity but have
somewhat larger households and lower per capita calorie intake, meat con-
sumption, household energy use, vehicle ownership, and carbon dioxide
emissions than average world citizens. The differences between people living
at a fair Earth-share and those in high-income countries (which typically
need three planets) are much greater.7
The data for fair Earth-share societies used in this analysis are based on
Cuba, Ecuador, Ethiopia, Guatemala, Haiti, India, Mali, the Philippines,
Uzbekistan, and Vietnam. While some of these countries stay within the
one-planet parameter due to low socioeconomic development (which also
explains lower life expectancy than in the high-consumption societies), oth-
ers—like Cuba and Ecuador—have high levels of development even with
Getting to One-Planet Living | 43
their modest incomes and ecological footprints. In fact, an average Cuban’s
life expectancy is equivalent to that of an average American (at 78 years).
(See Chapter 30.)8
The high-consumption societies used in this analysis are Australia,
Canada, Germany, Israel, Italy, Japan, Kuwait, New Zealand, Norway, Rus-
sia, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States. While these
countries enjoy comparable levels of longevity, education, and quality of
life, people in North America, Australia, and the oil-producing states in the
Middle East tend to consume twice as much as their three-planet counter-
parts in other parts of the world. These comparisons show that beyond a
certain point, income and consumption have little effect on quality-of-life
outcomes compared with other sociocultural factors.
Learning to Live within the (Natural) Law
What might life look like for a high-income consumer society that decided
to get serious about sustainability and implement strategies to live on its
equitable share of Earth’s resources? While this answer will depend on spe-
cific geographic, climatic, and cultural realities, a sense of the magnitude of
change is available by looking at how one city could make this transition—
Vancouver, Canada, which has aspirations to be the “world’s greenest city.”
The City of Vancouver proper (not the broader metropolitan area), in
table 4–1. comparing Fair earth-Share, World average, and high-consumption countries
Consumption Measures
Fair Earth-Share:
1 Planet
World Average:
1.5 Planets
High-Consumption:
3 Planets
(per person)
Daily calorie supply 2,424 2,809 3,383
Meat consumption (kilograms per year) 20 40 100
Living space (square meters) 8 10 34
People per household 5 4 3
Home energy use in gigajoules (per year) 8.4 12.6 33.5
Home energy use in kilowatt-hours (per year) 2,300 3,
500
9,
300
Motor vehicle ownership 0.004 0.1 0.5
Motor vehicle travel (kilometers per year) 582 2,600 6,
600
Air travel (kilometers per year) 125 564 2,943
Carbon dioxide emissions (tons per year) 2 4 14
Life expectancy (years) 66 67 79
Source: See endnote 7.
44 | State of the World 2013
British Columbia, is home to approximately 600,000 people and covers
11,467 hectares. Using data compiled by the city, by the Metro-Vancouver
region, and by provincial, national, and international statistical agencies, the
city’s Ecological Footprint is conservatively estimated at 2,352,627 global
hectares, or 4.2 gha per person.9
The average Vancouver Ecological Footprint can be attributed to various
sectors as follows (see Figure 4–1): food (2.13 gha per person) accounts for
51 percent of the footprint, buildings (0.67 gha per person) account for 16
percent, transportation (0.81 gha per person) is 19 percent, consumables
(0.58 gha per person) are 14 percent of the footprint, and water use is less
than 1 percent.10
These data do not include con-
tributions from provincial and na-
tional government public services
(such as the treasury and military)
that take place outside the city
for the benefit of all Canadians.
Vancouver city staff estimate that
these services add an additional
18 percent to the per person eco-
footprint. This would be equiva-
lent to approximately 0.76 gha per
person, bringing Vancouver’s total
Ecological Footprint per person
to 4.96 global hectares. To achieve
one-planet living, the average Van-
couverite would need to reduce
his or her Ecological Footprint by
66 percent. Note, however, that this is still a minimum number. Ecological
Footprint estimates err on the side of caution because they cannot account
for elements of consumption and waste assimilation for which data are un-
available or for such things as the fact that much “appropriated” ecosystem
area is being degraded.11
Food represents half the footprint and includes cropland as well as car-
bon-sink land associated with processing, distribution, retailing, and con-
sumption. Although many people are concerned about the carbon emis-
sions associated with “food miles” (transporting food from farm to plate),
this accounts for less than 3 percent of the food-footprint component and is
mostly associated with imported fruits and vegetables. Animal protein pro-
duction, however, constitutes most of the food footprint (see Figure 4–2),
due mostly to cropland used to produce livestock feed.12
Transportation is the next largest contributor to the average Vancouver-
Figure 4–1. Summary of Vancouver’s Ecological Footprint
Figure 4–2. Food Component of Vancouver’s Ecological
Footprint
Water, <1%
Consumables, 14%
Buildings, 16%
Source: Moore
Transportation
19%
Food
51%
Source: Moore
Fish, Meat,
and Eggs
48%
Oils, Nuts,
and Legumes
15%
Dairy
Products
14%
Grains, 10%
Fruits and Vegetables, 10%
Stimulants, 2%
(co�ee, tea, sugar, cocoa)
Beverages, 1%
Getting to One-Planet Living | 45
ite’s Ecolocial Footprint at 19 percent; personal automobile use accounts for
55 percent of this, followed by air travel at 17 percent. Buildings contrib-
ute 16 percent to the total Ecological Footprint. Operating energy (mostly
natural gas used for water heating and space conditioning) accounts for 80
percent of the buildings footprint and is split equally between the residential
and commercial-institutional sectors. The buildings component is smaller
than might be expected because 80 percent of Vancouver’s electricity is hy-
droelectric. Moreover, British Columbia was the first jurisdiction in North
America to introduce a carbon tax and require all public institutions to be
greenhouse-gas neutral in their operations.13
Fourteen percent of the Vancouver Ecological Footprint is attributable
to consumer products, with paper
accounting for 53 percent of this.
Fortunately, Vancouverites recycle
most of the paper they use (78
percent), reducing its potential
Ecological Footprint by almost
half. The material content of con-
sumer goods accounts for only 7
percent of the total quantity of en-
ergy and material used to produce
them; 91 percent of the Ecological
Footprint of consumer goods is
associated with the manufacturing
process and another 2 percent with
managing the products as wastes
at the end of their life cycle.14
Clearly, lifestyle choices have a
significant impact on our Ecologi-
cal Footprint. However, even if average Vancouverites followed a vegan diet;
avoided driving or flying and only walked, cycled, or used public transit;
lived in a passive solar house that used almost no fossil-based energy; and
cut their personal consumption by half, they could only reduce their per
capita Ecological Footprint by 44 percent (from 4.96 to 2.8 gha per capita).
That seems like an impossible challenge already—and yet it is still a full
global hectare beyond the one-planet threshold.15
That said, the City of Vancouver is willing to wrestle with this chal-
lenge, and in 2011 it launched its Greenest City 2020 Action Plan, including
a goal to reduce the city’s Ecological Footprint 33 percent by 2020 and 66
percent by 2050. Actions in the plan span 10 areas: food, transportation,
buildings, economy, waste, climate change, water, access to nature, clean
air, and the Ecological Footprint. Indeed, almost all the planned actions
Figure 4–2. Food Component of Vancouver’s Ecological
Footprint
Water, <1%
Consumables, 14%
Buildings, 16%
Source: Moore
Transportation
19%
Food
51%
Source: Moore
Fish, Meat,
and Eggs
48%
Oils, Nuts,
and Legumes
15%
Dairy
Products
14%
Grains, 10%
Fruits and Vegetables, 10%
Stimulants, 2%
(co�ee, tea, sugar, cocoa)
Beverages, 1%
46 | State of the World 2013
contribute to the lighter footprint objective. Nevertheless, the plan falls
short of what would be required to achieve stated Ecological Footprint
reduction targets.16
Through the planning process, city staff explored various approaches,
including reducing consumption of high-impact foods (such as meat and
dairy products) by up to 20 percent, lowering consumption of new products
by up to 30 percent, and cutting the amount of waste sent to landfills and
incinerators in half. Note that Vancouver already recycles more than 50 per-
cent of its wastes, so Greenest City 2020 would achieve a total waste diversion
rate of up to 75 percent. Vehicle kilometers travelled would be reduced by
up to 20 percent and air travel by
up to 30 percent. Building energy
efficiency would be improved by
up to 30 percent, and all new con-
struction would be zero emissions
starting in 2020.17
Implementation of these ac-
tions is estimated to reduce Van-
couverites’ Ecological Footprints
by 20 percent. Even though the
changes in consumption and
waste production are substantial
(ranging from 20 to 50 percent),
this does not directly translate into
equivalent reductions in Ecologi-
cal Footprint. Take the following
comparison, for example. Meat
and dairy consumption accounts
for nearly 23 percent of Vancouver’s Ecological Footprint (and 21 percent
of food consumed by weight). Reducing that by 20 percent translates into
an approximate 4.5 percent reduction in the total Ecological Footprint. In-
deed, this is one of the most effective actions that could be taken to achieve
one-planet living. Municipal solid waste, on the other hand, only accounts
for 1 percent of Vancouver’s total Ecological Footprint. So cutting the total
tonnage of municipal waste in half has an almost insignificant impact on
the Ecological Footprint (assuming there are no upstream impacts on the
supply chain of energy and materials used to produce consumer products).18
Getting to one-planet living therefore requires strategic consideration
of which lifestyle changes can have the most significant impacts. Unfortu-
nately, in the final Action Plan some of the actions that would have the great-
est impact—such as reducing meat and dairy consumption—were omitted,
largely because their implementation relied on people’s voluntary actions
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Bicycling infrastructure on Clark Street in Vancouver.
Getting to One-Planet Living | 47
that could not, and perhaps should not, be regulated by government.19
The question remains: even if citizens were willing to do all they could,
how would Vancouver shave another global hectare off the average Ecologi-
cal Footprint? Recall that senior government services from which all Cana-
dians benefit account for an estimated 0.76 gha per capita of Vancouver’s
Ecological Footprint. Changes in senior government policy and practice
are therefore also needed and could include efforts toward demilitariza-
tion, an emphasis on population health through disease prevention, and a
careful public examination of existing rules, regulations, tax incentives, and
assumptions about whether the current administration of public funds is
aligned with the goals of a sustainable society.
These are bold measures that move past the current emphasis on effi-
ciency gains across society. The latter would, of course, still be needed—in-
deed, there is considerable room for additional energy/material efficiency
gains across the entire building stock and in manufacturing; farmers and
food processors could also greatly reduce their reliance on fossil fuels and
inputs (fertilizers and pesticides, for instance). One way to induce effi-
ciency gains is to eliminate “perverse subsidies” (including tax breaks to
highly profitable oil and gas producers and subsidies to farmers to produce
certain food products, such as corn) that facilitate unsustainable industrial
practices and generate false price signals in consumer markets. If neces-
sary, this should be accompanied by pollution charges or taxes to address
market failures (that is, to internalize negative externalities) and to ensure
that market prices reflect the true social costs of production. Policy align-
ment at the national and provincial government levels to support all such
initiatives is essential.20
A second challenge involves engaging civil society with political leaders
to advance a paradigm of sufficiency, meaning a shared social commitment
to consuming enough for a good life but not so much that total throughput
exceeds critical biophysical limits. Such a new consumer paradigm is also
necessary to avoid the “rebound effect,” in which people spend savings from
efficiency on other things—canceling the gains. A survey of 65 studies in
North America found that this rebound is responsible for 10–30 percent
of expenditures in sectors that account for most energy and material con-
sumption: food, transportation, and buildings. Indeed, total resource and
energy demand in most of the world’s industrial countries has increased in
absolute terms over the past 40 years despite efficiency gains of 50 percent in
materials and 30 percent in energy use.21
Different people will make different lifestyle choices and changes as re-
quired. If one-planet living is the goal, these choices will obviously have to
entail more than recycling programs and stay-at-home vacations. For suc-
cess, the world’s nations will have to commit to whole new development
48 | State of the World 2013
strategies with elements ranging from public re-education to ecological fis-
cal reform, all within a negotiated global sustainability treaty.22
While it is beyond the scope of this chapter to detail elements of such
an economic transformation, others have tried. In Factor Five, for example,
Ernst von Weizsäcker and colleagues attempt numerous sector studies to
demonstrate how an 80 percent re-
duction in resource intensity could
be achieved in agriculture, trans-
portation, buildings, and selected
manufacturing industries. They
show that many of the technolo-
gies needed for one-planet living
already exist, but in the absence of
global agreements and enforceable
regulations, there is insufficient
incentive for corporate, govern-
ment, and consumer uptake. In a
global economy, states will not act
alone for fear of losing competitive
ground. And even international
cooperation or agreements do not
ensure success: although some
global initiatives (such as the Montreal Protocol on ozone depletion) have
succeeded, others (such as the Kyoto Protocol on climate change) have suc-
cumbed to shorter-term economic considerations.23
What Lies Ahead
Despite the pressing need for cultural transformation, prospects for real
progress toward socially just ecological sustainability are not encourag-
ing. Global society remains committed to the progress myth and to un-
constrained economic growth. Indeed, the international community views
sheer material growth rather than income redistribution as the only feasible
solution to chronic poverty.
In Our Common Future, the World Commission on Environment and
Development recognized peoples’ reticence to contemplate serious mea-
sures for wealth redistribution. Such an approach might follow a strategy
of contraction and convergence, during which industrial countries reduced
their energy and material throughput to allow room for developing coun-
tries to grow. Instead, the Commission advocated for “more rapid econom-
ic growth in both industrial and developing countries,” albeit predicated
on global cooperation to develop more equitable trade relationships and
noting that “rapid growth combined with deteriorating income distribu-
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A parking lot adapted for use as an urban farm, Vancouver.
Getting to One-Planet Living | 49
tion may be worse than slower growth combined with redistribution in
favour of the poor.”24
Since that report came out in 1987, economic growth has far outpaced
population growth, so there are more dollars per person circulating in the
world today than ever before. But while some developing states have pros-
pered in the increasingly global economy—such as Singapore, South Korea,
China, and India—others have not. Moreover, income disparity is increas-
ing both among and within countries; even in the richest nations, lower-
income groups have seen real wages stagnate or decline. It is now apparent
that growth alone is failing as a solution to poverty. Most of the human
family is still materially deprived, consuming less than its just share of eco-
nomic output. This has led to renewed recognition—at least in progres-
sive circles—that policy measures explicitly designed to spread the benefits
of economic prosperity are more effective than increasing gross domestic
product for alleviating material poverty.25
Overall, the combined evidence of widening income gaps and accelerat-
ing ecological change suggests that the mainstream global community still
pays little more than lip service to the sustainability ideal. The growth econ-
omy, now dressed in green, remains the dominant social construct. Rio+20,
the latest U.N. conference on economy and development, essentially equated
sustainable development with sustained economic growth and produced no
binding commitments for anyone to do anything. So it is that 40 years after
the first global conference on humanity and the environment (Stockholm
in 1972) and 20 years after the first world summit on the environment and
development (Rio in 1992), the policy focus remains on economic growth—
while ecological decline accelerates and social disparity worsens.
Discouraging, yes, but let us recognize that the notion of perpetual
growth is just a social construct, initiated as a transition strategy to reboot
the economy after World War II. It has now run its course. What society has
constructed it can theoretically deconstruct and replace. The time has come
for a new social contract that recognizes humanity’s collective interest in
designing a better form of prosperity for a world in which ecological limits
are all too apparent and the growing gap between rich and poor is morally
unconscionable. Our individual interests have converged with our collective
interests. What more motivation should civil society need to get on with the
task at hand?26
The major challenges to sustainability are in the social and cultural do-
mains. The global task requires nothing less than a rewrite of our prevailing
growth-oriented cultural narrative. As Jared Diamond emphasized in Col-
lapse, societies can consciously “choose to fail or succeed,” and global society
today is in the unique position of knowing the dismal fates of earlier cultures
that made unfortunate choices. We can also consider the prospects of those
50 | State of the World 2013
who acted differently. Indeed, in contrast to the fate of Easter Islanders, the
people of Tikopia—living on a small South Pacific island—made successful
choices to reduce their livestock populations when confronted with signs of
ecological deterioration. Today the Tikopian culture serves as an example
of conscious self-management in the face of limited resources. Of course,
Tikopia has the advantage of being a small population with a homogenous
culture on a tiny island where the crises were evident to all and affected
everyone. Contrast that with today’s heterogeneous global culture charac-
terized by various disparities (tribal, national, linguistic, religious, political,
and so on) and the anticipation of uneven impacts.27
Meanwhile, our best science is telling us that we are doing no better than
previous failures: staying our present course means potential catastrophe.
The (un)sustainability conundrum therefore creates a clear choice for peo-
ple to exercise their remaining democratic freedoms in the name of societal
survival. Difficult though it may be, ordinary citizens owe it to themselves
and the future to engage with their leaders and insist that they begin the
national planning processes and draft the international accords needed to
implement options and choices for an economically secure, ecologically
stable, socially just future.
Sandra Postel is director of
the Global Water Policy Project
and Freshwater Fellow of the
National Geographic Society.
www.sustainabilitypossible.org
c h a p t e r 5
Sustaining Freshwater
and Its Dependents
Sandra Postel
Access to water is essential for human survival, much less human advance-
ment. The great early human civilizations—from the ancient Egyptians to
the Mesopotamians to the early Chinese—sprung up and flourished along-
side rivers. Without sufficient water to drink and to grow food, no society—
however advanced—can last.
So here’s the conundrum. Water is finite. The volume of freshwater on
Earth today is the same as when Caesar ruled ancient Rome. Yet in those
intervening 2,000 years, the human population has risen from 250 million
to more than 7 billion. The annual production of global goods and services,
now valued at $70 trillion, has expanded even faster.1
Water is needed to produce nearly everything—from electricity and
paper to burgers and blue jeans. As consumer demands have risen, the
limits of accessible water supplies have become increasingly apparent. An
unsettling number of large rivers are now so overtapped that they dis-
charge little or no water to the sea for months, or years, at a time. Lakes
and wetlands are shrinking, and crucial aquifers are being depleted. Some
10 percent of the global food supply today depends on the unsustainable
use of groundwater.2
At the same time, basic human needs for water continue to go unmet.
Nearly 800 million people—about 11 percent of humanity—lack access to
safe drinking water. An even larger number of people are hungry and mal-
nourished. Many live on farms but lack access to water to irrigate their crops
during droughts and yearly dry seasons, which keeps them mired in poverty
and chronically malnourished.3
Is there hope of achieving a sustainable balance with freshwater? The
answer is yes. But to envision how it can be achieved we must dig a little
deeper into what sustainable water use means, assess where we stand to-
day, and then develop a vision and a set of practical actions for moving
toward it.
Worldwatch Institute, State of the World 2013: Is Sustainability Still Possible?,
DOI 10.5822/ 978-1-61091-458-1_5, © 2013 by Worldwatch Institute
51
52 | State of the World 2013
Freshwater by the Numbers
Images from space show Earth to be a strikingly blue planet harboring great
stores of water. Some 97.5 percent of that water is ocean, which provides a
vast array of benefits but is too salty to drink or irrigate crops. Nor is there
great scope to tap this salty water for human use through desalination. (See
Box 5–1.) Most of the remaining 2.5 percent is locked up in glaciers and
ice caps or resides deep under the surface. Only a tiny fraction of all the
water on Earth—less than one one-hundredth of
1 percent—is fresh and renewed each year by the
sun-powered hydrological cycle.4
At first glance, even this small share of the
planet’s water—the renewable freshwater sup-
ply—would seem to be more than ample to satisfy
human needs now and for generations to come.
Each year, the global water cycle delivers 110,000
cubic kilometers of water over land in the form of
rain, sleet, and snow. (These values are approxi-
mate; various models have produced different
estimates.) About 64 percent of that precipitation
returns to the atmosphere through evaporation or
transpiration (the use of water by plants, crops,
grasses, and trees). The remaining 36 percent flows
toward the sea in rivers, streams, or underground
aquifers. This “runoff” is the water supply we tap
for irrigation, drinking water, electricity produc-
tion, and manufacturing.5
But when we account for the share of runoff that
is too remote to get to (about 19 percent) or that
runs off in floods (about 42 percent), the picture
darkens a bit. Even taking into account the flood-
waters captured by dams, only about 15,600 cubic
kilometers of global runoff—39 percent of the total—is accessible. Today,
worldwide water demands use about 30 percent of that accessible supply.
(Agriculture accounts for 70 percent of the global demand, industries for 20
percent, cities and towns for about 10 percent.)6
Humanity’s impact on Earth’s water, however, is greater than these fig-
ures would suggest. First, we not only use water, we often pollute it. For
example, many rivers, streams, aquifers, and coastal zones receive harmful
levels of nitrogen fertilizers and chemical pesticides carried by runoff from
farms and suburban lawns.
Second, we not only tap into rivers, lakes, and aquifers, we also rely on
With so much water in the oceans, desalting seawater
would seem to provide the ultimate solution to the
world’s water problems. Desalination is indeed a viable
water-supply option, and the process has steadily
improved. With new membrane technologies and
other developments, the energy required to desalinate
seawater has fallen by 60–80 percent over the last
two decades.
Nevertheless, the process remains energy-intensive,
expensive, and potentially harmful to coastal marine
environments. Currently, the roughly 15,000 desalina-
tion plants worldwide have the capacity to produce
15.3 cubic kilometers of water per year—less than half
of 1 percent of global water demand. Moreover, most
de-salting plants run on fossil fuels, which means they
contribute to climate change while attempting to
“solve” water shortage problems—a Faustian bargain at
best. While it provides a lifeline for some island nations
and desert regions, desalination is no silver bullet for
solving the world’s water problems.
Source: See endnote 4.
Box 5–1. Desalination
Sustaining Freshwater and Its Dependents | 53
natural rainfall, especially to grow crops. Some 82 percent of cropland
worldwide is watered solely by natural precipitation; it gets no supplemental
irrigation. This direct use of precipitation is typically excluded from esti-
mates of water demand.7
One other distinction is important. About half of the water we use is
“consumed” (or depleted) through evaporation or transpiration, which
means it returns to the atmosphere and resides there as vapor until it falls
to the earth again. Since it may not return as rain during the same season
or in the same location, water is effectively “depleted” from any particular
watershed. On the other hand, water used but not consumed is available to
use again. The water we use to shower or flush toilets, for example, typically
returns to a local river or aquifer, where it can be reused. This distinction
between use and consumption is crucial for assessing how much water is
actually available to meet the demands in a given watershed.
Researchers Arjen Hoekstra and Mesfin Mekonnen of the University of
Twente in the Netherlands have made the most detailed estimates to date
of the scale and patterns of humanity’s water consumption. They tabulated
all the water from both rainfall and irrigation that is consumed in making
goods and services for everyone in the world. To complete the picture, they
added in the volume of water needed to assimilate the pollution generated
along the way. They then calculated the annual average global water “foot-
print” for 1996–2005, the most recent 10-year period with the data they
needed. The upshot: humanity’s water footprint totals an estimated 9,087
cubic kilometers per year—a volume of water equivalent to the annual flow
of 500 Colorado Rivers.8
Whether looking at use, consumption, or “footprints,” these global num-
bers tell only a small part of the story. A large share of the world’s people
and irrigated farms are located where renewable water is not very abundant.
(See Figure 5–1.) China, for instance, has nearly 20 percent of the world’s
population and 21 percent of total irrigated area but only 6.5 percent of the
world’s renewable freshwater—and most of that supply is in the southern
part of the country. The United States, by contrast, has 4.5 percent of the
world’s people and 7 percent of the renewable water supply. But most of that
nation’s irrigated land and recent population growth are found in the drier
West: hence the depletion of rivers and aquifers in that region.9
In addition to this geographic mismatch there is a timing mismatch: na-
ture does not deliver water evenly or predictably throughout the year. Much
of India, for instance, gets most of its water during the summer monsoons,
often in just a few intense storms. In much of sub-Saharan Africa, rainfall is
highly variable and unreliable. Fourteen countries in that region each expe-
rienced at least 10 droughts between 1970 and 2004.10
With human-induced climate change likely to make many dry areas drier
54 | State of the World 2013
and wet areas wetter, hydrologic variability will become more extreme. In
2008, seven top water scientists argued persuasively in Science that “station-
arity”—the concept that natural variability remains within a known set of
boundaries—is no longer valid. We have moved outside that known en-
velope of variability into new territory. When it comes to water, in other
words, the past is no longer a reliable guide to the future.11
How Sustainable Is Our Water Use Today?
Three critical attributes distinguish freshwater from other “resources”: it is
essential to life, there are no substitutes for it, and because we cannot ship it
around the world in large quantities, how it is used and managed locally or
regionally is what matters. A working definition of freshwater sustainability
that is true to these attributes might be this: in any watershed, ensure that
basic water needs are met for all people; preserve ecological infrastructure
so as to provide the quantity, quality, and timing of water flows needed to
sustain ecosystem services; and where groundwater is tapped, ensure that
extraction does not deplete the water in storage or degrade connected eco-
systems. Judged according to these criteria, our use and management of wa-
ter fails the sustainability test on multiple fronts.12
Drinking Water for All. The failure to provide universal access to safe
drinking water ranks among the greatest shortcomings of human develop-
ment. As of 2010, some 780 million people—more than 1 in 10—lacked ac-
cess to a safe supply of water to meet their basic needs for drinking, cooking,
and washing. Most live in poor parts of Asia and sub-Saharan Africa, where
Source: FAO
Figure 5–1. Share of World Irrigated Land, Renewable Water, and
Population, Selected Countries, 2010
0 5 10 15 20 25
Share of world irrigated land
Share of world renewable water
Share of world population
Percent
United States
Turkey
Russia
Pakistan
Nigeria
Iran
India
Egypt
China
Canada
Brazil
Australia
Sustaining Freshwater and Its Dependents | 55
women and girls often spend hours each day trekking to a water source,
lifting what water they can carry home to their families, and then hoping it
does not sicken or kill themselves or a family member. The issue is not a lack
of water: providing 20 liters per person per day for 780 million people would
require only 0.1 percent of current global water withdrawals. There is suf-
ficient water but thus far insufficient political will and financing to provide
universal access to safe water.13
The good news is that substantial progress has been made over the last
two decades in this area: more than 2 billion people acquired access to safe
drinking water during this time. The Millennium Development Goal of
halving the proportion of the population without access to safe drinking
water by 2015 (compared with the 1990 level) was actually met in 2010, five
years early. Still, a backlog of need remains. Many dedicated groups—in-
cluding U.N. agencies, country ministries, grassroots groups, and nongov-
ernmental organizations—are working diligently to complete the job. 14
Ecosystem Needs for Water. Unfortunately, the progress in meeting basic
human needs for water is not paralleled by progress in meeting ecosystem
needs. Indeed, when it comes to preserving ecosystem health and services,
most of the trends are going in the wrong direction.
Over the decades, water management has largely aimed at getting water
to people and farms where and when they need it. Since 1950, the number
of large dams has climbed from 5,000 to more than 45,000. Dams and res-
ervoirs are now able to hold 26 percent of annual global runoff all at once,
causing immense changes to the flow of rivers.15
At the same time, large diversions by canal or pipeline move water hun-
dreds of kilometers. Around the world, 364 transfer schemes move ap-
proximately 400 cubic kilometers of water annually from one river basin
to another—equivalent to transferring the yearly flow of 22 Colorado Riv-
ers. China is proceeding with a massive $60-billion project to transfer 41.3
cubic kilometers a year from the Yangtze River basin in the south to the
water-scarce north. If completed, it will be the largest construction project
on Earth.16
Many more projects divert water from one location to another within the
same river basin. Phoenix, Arizona, for example, gets 40 percent of its sup-
ply through the Central Arizona Project (CAP), which transfers water from
the Colorado River 300 kilometers to the east. The CAP is just one of many
diversion schemes in the Colorado Basin that contribute to that river’s dry-
ing up before it reaches its final destination, the Sea of Cortez in Mexico.17
Dams to store water and diversion schemes to move it around have al-
lowed burgeoning oasis cities in the desert, from Phoenix and Los Ange-
les to Cairo and Karachi. They have enabled the desert to bloom and food
production to keep pace with population growth. Dams have also added to
56 | State of the World 2013
the world’s energy supply: hydropower facilities now generate 16 percent
of the world’s gross electricity, and many large new hydroelectric schemes
are planned or under construction in Brazil, Canada, China, India, Turkey,
Southeast Asian nations, and elsewhere.18
In short, control over water has allowed the human enterprise to grow
and prosper as conventionally measured by the number of hectares irri-
gated, kilowatt-hours generated, and people served. Yet those benefits have
come at great expense to some 470 million river-dependent people down-
stream of large dams, as well as to the health and productivity of freshwa-
ter ecosystems that deliver services of great value. (See Box 5–2.) Healthy
rivers, for example, supply fish to eat, recreational opportunities, and ri-
parian habitats for birds and wildlife; wetlands mitigate floods, recharge
groundwater, and filter out pollutants; and forest-
ed watersheds increase the reliability and quality
of drinking water supplies. Maintaining these ser-
vices for this and future generations is part of the
sustainability challenge—yet we have paid little
attention to them.19
Although dams and reservoirs do the important
work of storing freshwater for human use, they often
result in rivers being turned on and off like plumb-
ing works. Instead of rivers flowing to their own
natural rhythms, which create the cues and habitats
that fish and wildlife need, they now often flow to
suit human demands for electricity, irrigation, wa-
ter supply, and flood control. This flow alteration
is a dominant factor in the loss of freshwater life:
extinction rates for freshwater species are estimated
to be four to six times higher than for terrestrial or
marine species. In North America, 700 freshwater
fish species (39 percent of the total) are imperiled,
nearly double the number in 1989; of this total, 61
are presumed locally or globally extinct.20
Dams and reservoirs worldwide also trap more
than 100 billion tons of sediment that would oth-
erwise replenish deltas and nourish coastal habitats crucial to commercial
fisheries. From the Colorado to the Indus to the Nile, the depletion of river
flows and trapping of nutrient-rich sediments are causing deltas—among
the most productive ecosystems on Earth—to shrink and degrade. The Col-
orado Delta—a crucial stopover for migratory birds on the western Pacific
flyway—has lost more than 90 percent of its wetlands; the Nile Delta, which
provides about one third of Egypt’s crops, is losing ground to the Mediter-
• Water supplies for irrigation, industries, cities, and
homes
• Fish, waterfowl, mussels, and other foods for people
and wildlife
• Water purification and filtration of pollutants
• Flood mitigation
• Drought mitigation
• Groundwater recharge
• Water storage
• Wildlife habitat and nursery grounds
• Soil fertility maintenance
• Nutrient delivery to deltas and estuaries
• Delivery of freshwater flows to maintain estuarine
salinity balances
• Aesthetic, cultural, and spiritual values
• Recreational opportunities
• Conservation of biodiversity, which preserves resilience
and options for the future
Source: See endnote 19.
Box 5–2. Services provided by rivers,
Wetlands, Floodplains, and Other
Freshwater ecosystems
Sustaining Freshwater and Its Dependents | 57
ranean Sea as 100 million tons of sediment per year get trapped behind the
Aswan Dam.21
The services provided by ecological infrastructure run on free energy
from the sun, while all the technological replacements for these services—
from river levees to treatment plants—require increasingly expensive hu-
man-created energy to build, operate, and maintain. As a result, the eco-
nomic costs of these lost ecological services, though untallied, are high and
rising. Scientists participating in the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment es-
timated in 2005 that wetlands alone provide water purification, flood miti-
gation, and other services worth $200–940 billion per year. Worldwide, we
have filled or drained up to half of the planet’s original wetland area.22
Ecological infrastructure will be increasingly important as climate change
further alters the global water cycle and as droughts, floods, and other ex-
treme events become more common and severe. In the spring of 2011, as
floodwaters raged through the Mississippi River, forcing the federal Army
Corps of Engineers to breach a levee to save Cairo, Illinois, an important
piece of ecological infrastructure was missing: 14 million hectares of wet-
lands in the upper Mississippi Basin that over time had been drained and
filled to make way for farms and homes. Those wetlands—an area the size
of Illinois—had worked like a giant sponge, absorbing rainwater and then
releasing it slowly to nearby streams or underground aquifers. With those
natural protections gone, and with more people and farms in harm’s way,
flood risks grew. According to ecologists Donald Hey and Nancy Philippi,
despite the massive construction of levees throughout the upper Mississippi
Basin during the twentieth century, annual average flood damage over the
century more than doubled.23
Groundwater Trends. Some of the most troubling signs of unsustain-
able water use come from underground, where we are building up a sizable
water debt in the form of aquifer depletion. Just as bank accounts shrink
when withdrawals exceed deposits, so do groundwater accounts. Most of the
depletion is occurring in some of the world’s most crucial farming regions.
Using data from a U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration
satellite mission called GRACE (for Gravity Recovery and Climate Experi-
ment), scientists have estimated that northern India, which includes that
nation’s breadbasket, is depleting groundwater at a rate of 54 cubic kilome-
ters per year, a volume that could support a subsistence-level diet for some
180 million people. In another study, led by Jay Famiglietti at the University
of California in Irvine and also using data from GRACE, researchers found
that between October 2003 and March 2010, California’s Central Valley—
the fruit and vegetable bowl of the United States—lost a volume of ground-
water equivalent to two thirds of the capacity of Lake Mead, the nation’s
largest human-made reservoir.24
58 | State of the World 2013
Indeed, all four of the world’s top irrigators—China, India, Pakistan, and
the United States—are pumping groundwater faster than it is being replen-
ished in crucial crop-producing areas. The problem is most serious in India,
where 60 percent of irrigated farming depends on groundwater. Water tables
are falling extensively in Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Rajasthan,
and Tamil Nadu in addition to the breadbasket states of Punjab and Hary-
ana in the northwest. At least 15 percent of India’s food is being produced
by mining groundwater.25
In addition to the problem in California’s Central Valley, U.S. groundwa-
ters are being heavily depleted in the western Great Plains, where parts of
eight states are above the Ogallala Aquifer. The Ogallala supplies water to 27
percent of U.S. irrigated land, sustaining wheat, corn, and cotton production.
According to the U.S. Geological Survey, depletion of the Ogallala—or more
precisely, the High Plains Aquifer, most of which is made up of the Ogal-
lala—over the last six decades totals some 328 cubic kilometers, a volume of
water sufficient to sustain the U.S. wheat harvest for about six years.26
Using state-of-the-art hydrological models and estimates of groundwater
withdrawals, Yoshihide Wada of Utrecht University in the Netherlands and
his colleagues estimated in a 2010 study that some 283 cubic kilometers of
groundwater were depleted from aquifers around the world in 2000. While
some of the depletion occurs for urban or industrial purposes, the vast ma-
jority is for crop irrigation. Since it takes about 1,500 cubic meters of water
to grow one ton of grain (an approximate average for rice, wheat, and corn),
that volume of depleted groundwater could have produced 189 million tons
of grain, equal to 10 percent of global grain output in 2000.27
While many countries are depleting aquifers locally or regionally, five are
mining groundwater faster than replenishment rates at the national scale:
Saudi Arabia, Libya, Egypt, Pakistan, and Iran. Saudi Arabia’s story offers
particularly important warnings. This desert nation gets only 59 millime-
ters (2.3 inches) of rainfall a year, and its renewable groundwater supply is
a meager 2.4 cubic kilometers per year. To meet their water demands, the
Saudis draw heavily upon nonrenewable or “fossil” aquifers that formed
some 20,000 years ago. These aquifers were heavily pumped during several
decades of massive desert farming aimed at making the nation self-sufficient
in wheat. The Saudis were so successful that for a time Saudi Arabia even
exported wheat.28
Between 1980 and 2006, the volume of water used for Saudi irrigation
more than tripled, and nearly all of it was groundwater. As of 2006, Saudi
farmers were pumping nearly 10 times more groundwater than was being
replenished by nature. In January 2008, aquifer depletion and the rising
costs of pumping from ever greater depths led the Saudis to announce a
gradual phaseout of irrigated wheat production. In addition to importing
Sustaining Freshwater and Its Dependents | 59
grain, they are now buying or leasing farmland in Ethiopia and elsewhere to
try to ensure some degree of food self-sufficiency.29
Looking ahead, the prospect of longer and deeper droughts due to hu-
man-induced climate change will hasten the depletion of groundwater. The
High Plains Water District based in Lubbock, Texas, found that during the
severe 2011 drought farmers in their district, who rely on the Ogallala Aqui-
fer, stepped up their groundwater pumping to compensate for the lack of
rain. Groundwater levels across the 16-county service area fell an average of
0.78 meters—the largest annual decline recorded in the last quarter-century
and more than triple the annual average for the last decade.30
Moving Toward Sustainability
Given this snapshot of water use around the world, achieving sustainability
might seem like an impossible dream. But here and there, farms, villages,
businesses, cities, states, provinces, and nations are taking actions that move
communities toward a more secure and sustainable water future. What these
examples have in common is an effort to use and manage water in ways that
preserve or restore rivers, lakes, aquifers, and watersheds. They place ecosys-
tem health and sustainability principles at the core of water management
instead of at the periphery. When this is done, water productivity and the
range of benefits derived from water climb upward.
A handful of places around the world are beginning to address ground-
water depletion. In the Indian state of Andhra Pradesh, for example, village-
level farmer groups are measuring and monitoring rainfall and aquifer lev-
els and then collectively developing water budgets for their crop production
in an effort to arrest depletion of the aquifers they depend on. Participation
is voluntary and driven by data, education, capacity building, and coop-
eration. Farmers engaged in the effort have shifted to less-thirsty crops and
adopted water-saving irrigation methods, all with an aim of aligning their
water use with the sustainable groundwater supply. Farm profitability has
increased: surveys indicate that the net value of farm outputs has nearly
doubled. The project, which has reached some 1 million farmers, appears
to be the first success worldwide in community groundwater management
aimed at sustainability. Similar projects are now under way in Maharashtra
and are being considered in several other Indian states.31
Similarly, the High Plains Water District in Lubbock, Texas, has taken steps
to slow depletion of the Ogallala Aquifer. In January 2012, the district de-
clared it illegal to pump groundwater in excess of a pumping limit it estab-
lished, called an “allowable production rate.” Since the Texas portion of the
Ogallala gets very little recharge (its water was put in place thousands of years
ago), any significant pumping drains the aquifer. The district’s goal is to slow
the depletion so that at least 50 percent of its Ogallala water is still there in 50
60 | State of the World 2013
years. As the pumping limits get more stringent, farmers will need to choose
crops and irrigation methods that allow them to get more value per drop.
And engineers, agronomists, and entrepreneurs will have an incentive to de-
velop new technologies and agricultural practices that help them do this.32
Although farmer outcry and the threat of legal action have led the High
Plains Water District to delay enforcing the new rule until 2014, both Texas
law and a February 2012 state Supreme Court opinion affirm that although
farmers do indeed own the groundwater beneath their property, conserva-
tion districts can regulate pumping rates.33
With crop production accounting for the lion’s share of world water con-
sumption, measures to raise irrigation efficiency and get more nutritional
value per drop are crucial. Drip irrigation, which delivers water directly to
the roots of plants in just the right
amounts, can double or triple wa-
ter productivity, and it appears
to be on a rapidly rising growth
curve.
Over the last two decades, the
area under drip and other “mi-
cro” irrigation methods has risen
more than sixfold, from 1.6 mil-
lion hectares to more than 10.3
million. The most dramatic gains
have occurred in China and In-
dia, the top two irrigators, where
over the last two decades the area
under micro-irrigation expanded
88-fold and 111-fold, respectively.
Anil Jain, managing director of
Jain Irrigation—the second largest global micro-irrigation company—ex-
pects the drip irrigation market in India to expand by 1 million hectares
annually during the coming years and to soon become a $1 billion market
in India alone.34
Despite recent growth, less than 4 percent of global irrigated area is
equipped with micro-irrigation, so its potential has barely been tapped.
Markets are widening, however, with the development of low-cost drip sys-
tems tailored to the needs of poor farmers. The nongovernmental group
iDE (formerly International Development Enterprises), which successfully
introduced the human-powered treadle pump to Bangladeshi farmers, has
developed a suite of drip systems ranging from $5 bucket kits for home gar-
dens to $25 drum kits for 100-square-meter plots (about 400 plants) and
$100 shiftable drip systems that can irrigate 0.2 hectares, including plots on
A farmer in Nepal uses a low-cost drip system.
Co
ur
te
sy
iD
E
Sustaining Freshwater and Its Dependents | 61
terraced hillsides. More than 600,000 of iDE’s low-cost drip systems have
been sold in India, Nepal, Zambia, and Zimbabwe, helping farmers raise
their land productivity and move out of poverty.35
After a decade of drought, Australia’s Murray-Darling Basin has engaged
in one of the boldest efforts anywhere to return flows to depleted rivers and
wetlands while at the same time sustaining its vibrant agricultural economy.
The basin spans 14 percent of Australia’s territory and supports 39 percent
of its agricultural production. It is also home to 30,000 unique wetlands,
many internationally recognized, as well as a rich diversity of freshwater spe-
cies, including the prized Murray cod.36
The proposed plan, released in November 2011, would set “sustainable
diversion limits” that reduce basin-wide consumption so as to restore 2.75
cubic kilometers of water to the river system. To achieve the savings, the Aus-
tralian government would spend billions of dollars over 10 years to improve
irrigation efficiency and purchase water entitlements from willing sellers.
While irrigators assert that the proposed water cuts are too severe (though
they have been eased from earlier proposed levels) and threaten their liveli-
hoods, scientists maintain that the cuts are insufficient to meet critical tar-
gets for ecosystem health. Though far from resolved, the societal debate in
Australia about rebalancing water use between people and nature is crucial
and will need to occur in many more river basins around the world. The ex-
periment there will no doubt yield important lessons, particularly for other
drought-prone, agriculturally vital regions. 37
Although cities and towns account for only about 10 percent of global
water demand, their concentrated water use can severely strain local and
regional water sources. As a result, conservation and efficiency improve-
ments have a crucial role to play in urban areas, too. In the mid-1980s, as
Boston, Massachusetts, approached the safe yield of its water supply, the
city began considering a large new diversion from the Connecticut River,
the largest river in New England. Citizen concern about the effects on At-
lantic salmon restoration and the overall health of the river forced Boston
water officials to consider aggressive conservation measures instead—in-
cluding finding and fixing leaks in the distribution system, retrofitting
homes with efficient fixtures, conducting industrial water audits, and pro-
viding pricing incentives and consumer education. From its 1980 peak,
greater Boston’s water use has fallen 43 percent, dropping back to levels
not seen in 50 years.38
Cities are also investing in watershed protection to safeguard the reliabil-
ity and quality of their drinking water supplies. A healthy watershed can fil-
ter out pollutants, often at lower cost than a water treatment plant can, while
also saving on energy and chemicals. New York City, which has pioneered
good watershed protection for decades, is now investing $1.9 billion to re-
62 | State of the World 2013
store and further protect the Catskills-Delaware watershed (which supplies
90 percent of the city’s drinking water) in lieu of constructing a $10-billion
filtration plant that would cost $100 million a year to operate.39
Likewise, Quito in Ecuador partnered with The Nature Conservancy
(TNC) to start a watershed protection fund that receives nearly $1 million a
year from municipal water utilities and hydroelectric companies that benefit
from the clean, reliable water supplies. Launched in 2000, Quito’s water fund
has become a model for many other Latin American cities, including Bogotá
in Colombia and Lima in Peru. By 2015, TNC aims to have helped initiate 32
watershed funds in South America, protecting 3.6 million hectares of land
that filter and supply drinking water for some 50 million people.40
Increasingly, corporations recognize that water shortages present risks to
their bottom lines and reputations, and they are beginning to set their own
sustainability goals. The brewing company MillerCoors, for instance, aims
by 2014 to reduce the water required to make a pint of beer by 15 percent
from 2008 levels (not counting the water used to produce the grain that goes
into the beer). The London-based conglomerate Unilever, recognizing that
agriculture accounts for half of its water impact (to grow the raw materials
for its products), works with farmers to install drip irrigation and improve
irrigation practices. On tomato farms in Brazil, these efforts led to a 30 per-
cent reduction in farm water use and higher yields; as more farm suppliers
switch to drip, the water footprint of the company’s tomato sauce shrinks.41
Individuals can make a difference as well, by shrinking their personal
water footprints and by consuming less overall. A single cotton shirt takes
2,500 liters of water to make; a pair of blue jeans, 8,000 liters. Most of this
water is consumed in growing the cotton, so more-efficient irrigation can
shrink the footprint as well. But if 1 billion consumers each bought two few-
er new cotton shirts a year, the water savings would be sufficient to meet the
annual dietary needs of 4.6 million people. And every day we “eat” about a
thousand times more water than we drink, so making more water-conscious
choices about our diets could save a great deal of water. Likewise, filling up
automobiles takes about 13 liters of water per liter of fuel, so carpooling,
biking, taking public transportation, and choosing fuel-efficient vehicles
saves not only energy but also water.42
If the world is to have any hope of sustainably meeting everyone’s water-
related needs, these kinds of policy, technology, and consumer shifts must
become mainstream. The good news is that we have barely begun to apply
our human ingenuity and inventiveness to meeting this challenge. It is time
to let the solutions flow.
c h a p t e r 6
Sustainable Fisheries and Seas:
Preventing Ecological Collapse
Antonia Sohns and Larry Crowder
Antonia Sohns was the Sustain-
able Prosperity Project Fellow
at the Worldwatch Institute.
Larry Crowder is the science
director at the Center for Ocean
Solutions and a professor of
biology and a senior fellow at
the Stanford Woods Institute for
the Environment, both part of
Stanford University.
www.sustainabilitypossible.org
Over 50 years ago, Rachel Carson noted that “it is a curious situation that
the sea, from which life first arose, should now be threatened by the activities
of one form of that life. But the sea, though changed in a sinister way, will
continue to exist: the threat is rather to life itself.”1
Carson depicts the relationship between humans and the sea as one of
both dependence and conflict. Despite our profound dependence on the sea
for survival, improper management of the atmosphere, the seas, and fisher-
ies has brought the ocean to the verge of unprecedented ecological change.
This crisis differs from earlier changes, as it was brought on by the actions
of a single species. While ocean ecosystems are resilient and have some ca-
pacity to adapt, the rate and magnitude of change rivals previous periods
of marine mass extinctions. In order to mitigate additional damage to the
seas, all stakeholders must be engaged and implement collaborative policies
that drastically reduce carbon dioxide (CO
2
) emissions and curb population
growth.
The ocean has always been vast and mysterious, first captured in the epic
poems of the Ancient Greeks through voyages and celestial navigation. It is
Homer’s wine-dark sea that soaks Earth in those early days. Aristotle is said
to be the first to record marine life; hundreds of years later, expeditions sailed
across the sea transforming society forever. In 1728, Captain James Cook voy-
aged into the unknown, collecting specimens and stories as he circumnavi-
gated the globe. Cook encountered island empires where the sea was a mighty
god. The expedition of Charles Darwin and the HMS Beagle from 1831 to
1836, as well as that of Sir Charles Wyville Thomson and the HMS Chal-
lenger from 1873 to 1876, enriched the study of marine biology and ocean-
ography—seeding theories on coral reef formation and natural selection and
detailing the first systemic plots of ocean currents and temperature.2
From scientific studies to great exploration, much has been learned
about the intricacy of the seas and the life that has evolved there. The ocean
Worldwatch Institute, State of the World 2013: Is Sustainability Still Possible?,
DOI 10.5822/ 978-1-61091-458-1_6, © 2013 by Worldwatch Institute
63
64 | State of the World 2013
controls climate, absorbs carbon dioxide, generates oxygen, and determines
weather patterns through heat exchange. The stability of life on Earth de-
pends on healthy seas.
Despite the ocean’s critical role and immense value, policymakers have
done little to ensure the future health of the seas. Perhaps the lack of ac-
tion stems from the perceived distant nature of these problems in place and
time—whether it is ice disappearing from the Arctic, invisible changes in sea
surface temperatures, ocean acidification and hypoxia (oxygen deficiency),
or the consequences of climate change decades from now. While these issues
may be challenging to understand and address, they are among the greatest
concerns of our time.
Value of the Sea
The ocean’s expanse covers 71 percent of Earth’s surface and supports 50
percent of its species. Worldwide, 1 billion people depend on fish for their
primary source of protein. Approximately 500 million people depend on
coral reefs for food resources or supplementary income from fishing or
tourism, and 30 million people are wholly dependent on coral reefs for their
livelihood and the land they live on, such as atolls. Societies have developed
whole economies around the ocean’s resources.3
In the United States, the coastal
and ocean economies are critical
sources of employment and rev-
enue. The U.S. ocean economy
generated 2.6 million jobs through
tourism and recreation, transpor-
tation, and construction and add-
ed $223 billion to the U.S. econo-
my in 2009. One of every six U.S.
jobs is marine-related.4
However, these statistics say
nothing of the intrinsic value of
the ocean and the importance of
ecosystem services to everyday life.
The nonmarket value of the sea
includes the ecosystem and biodi-
versity benefits, the value of water
quality for nearby communities, and carbon storage. Coral reefs and man-
groves are two of the most valuable ecosystems to humankind; for example,
reefs are valued at $100,000–600,000 per square kilometer (km2) and man-
groves at $200,000–900,000. In Hawaii, the direct economic benefits of coral
reefs, based on the values such as recreation, fishing, and biodiversity, are an
N
O
AA
’s
N
at
io
na
l O
ce
an
S
er
vi
ce
Filming on Rapture Reef in the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands Marine
National Monument.
Sustainable Fisheries and Seas: Preventing Ecological Collapse | 65
estimated $360 million per year. Valuing ecosystem services can embolden
efforts to protect the environment, as governments use economic tools to
influence policymaking, though it is critical that governments not encour-
age the commodification of nature.5
Troubled Seas, Oceanic Threats
Although society derives great economic and intrinsic value from the ocean,
ever-increasing demand and the effects of climate change will alter the
ocean’s biological and chemical properties, making the ocean less resilient at
the very time it is subject to heightened threats. Marine life and community
structure is determined by salinity and temperature profiles throughout the
ocean, blooming in places rich with nutrients, such as nitrate and phos-
phate, and with adequate dissolved oxygen.6
Peru, for example, is home to the world’s most productive fishing
grounds due to coastal upwelling. Peru’s coast plunges dramatically into
the sea, and southeasterly trade winds result in wind-driven coastal upwell-
ing. As the surface waters are pulled westward, cold, nutrient-rich water is
transported to the surface from the deep ocean. This influx of nutrients,
such as nitrogen, phosphorus, and silicic acid, stimulates phytoplankton
blooms, which may extend hundreds of kilometers offshore. The phyto-
plankton feed marine life, making Peru the second largest fishing nation
after China.7
Peru’s fisheries reveal how variables such as water temperature, salinity,
and nutrient concentration dictate the productivity of fisheries and how a
country’s stability depends on relatively consistent ocean conditions. As ris-
ing carbon emissions fuel climate change, however, the ocean’s biochemical
environment is significantly altered, threatening marine ecosystems.
Ocean Acidification. In 2010, global carbon dioxide emissions accumu-
lated to 30.6 gigatons (Gt), with industrial countries logging CO
2
emissions
per person 10 times higher than those of developing countries. Globally, CO
2
emissions increased by approximately 45 percent between 1992 and 2010.8
These record years of carbon emissions endure in the environment. Over
the past 200 years, the ocean has absorbed 525 Gt of carbon dioxide from
the atmosphere, approximately half of what was emitted through fossil fuel
use over this period. The ocean stores carbon in surface waters, in interme-
diate and deep ocean, and in marine sediments. The residence time of car-
bon in each reservoir varies, with surface waters capable of storing 600 Gt of
carbon, which can still be there six years later, and marine sediments, which
can store 30 million Gt for 100 million years. Though some carbon may
remain in the reservoir for the residence time, carbon is exchanged readily
between reservoirs every year.9
As chemistry dictates, rising CO
2
concentrations in the atmosphere in-
66 | State of the World 2013
crease the rate at which carbon dioxide is assimilated into the ocean. This
absorption of carbon buffers global climate change, yet it also changes
ocean chemistry by lowering the pH and reducing the number of carbon-
ate ions available.
Between 1992 and 2007, the ocean’s pH declined from 8.11 to 8.01. This
rate of acidification may be faster than at any time within the last 300 million
years. One consequence of a lower pH is an uncertain future for reef struc-
tures because acidic seawater stresses reef-building corals and the photosyn-
thetic algae (zooxanthellae), which have a mutual dependence relationship
with the coral. Zooxanthellae supply coral with critical nutrients, such as
glucose, glycerol, and amino acids, that are products of the photosynthesis.
The coral incorporates 90 percent of the organic material generated by the
zooxanthellae into its tissue, producing proteins, fats, calcium carbonate,
and carbohydrates. When corals are stressed in acidic waters they expel the
zooxanthellae from the reef-structure, crippling their ability to grow. This is
the phenomenon known as coral bleaching.10
Today coral reefs are experiencing the lowest pH and warmest ocean tem-
peratures of the last 400,000 years, endangering 75 percent of these reefs
worldwide. If carbon emissions continue to go unabated, by mid-century
nearly all coral reefs will be threatened by such stresses as acidification, over-
fishing, shipping, and agricultural runoff.11
In addition, more acidic waters will adversely affect phytoplankton, which
are responsible for nearly half of primary production on Earth. As seawa-
ter pH decreases, there is reduced availability of essential minerals such as
calcium carbonate. Lower concentrations of these essential compounds will
slow calcification, thus weakening skeletons of many phytoplankton species.
Reduced rates of calcification will further disrupt carbon cycling because
phytoplankton absorb carbon dioxide from surface waters and transform
the carbon into sugar during photosynthesis. When phytoplankton die they
sink, removing CO
2
from the surface waters and storing it in the deep ocean.
This allows further absorption of atmospheric carbon dioxide by phyto-
plankton in surface waters.12
Ocean Warming and Hypoxia. Increased atmospheric concentrations of
CO
2
will not only lower seawater’s pH, it will also warm the ocean as a result
of warmer air. When comparing the last 20 years to the average ocean tem-
perature of the past century, it is apparent there has been a steady increase in
seawater temperature—from 0.22 degrees Celsius above the long-term aver-
age in 1992 to 0.5 degrees Celsius above it in 2010. Ocean warming not only
stresses marine organisms, it also stimulates bacterial activity, consequently
expanding larger low-oxygen regions, known as dead zones.13
As climate change is predicted to enlarge dead zones, marine life and fish
such as the blue marlin will lose critical habitat. Dissolved oxygen concen-
Sustainable Fisheries and Seas: Preventing Ecological Collapse | 67
trations determine the habitat of the blue marlin because it is an energetic
fish that requires large amounts of dissolved oxygen. When levels are high,
marlin swim deeper, but when hypoxic zones encroach on their habitat
from depth, the deep oxygen minimum layer becomes less deep, restricting
the blue marlin to a habitat within a narrow surface layer. This further ex-
poses the overfished marlin and other pelagic open-sea predators to surface
fishing gear.14
Climate change is expected to alter ocean circulation in the Pacific and
thus locations of critical marine habitats and migratory pathways, which
will have uncertain impacts on large pelagic predators.15
Loss of Sea Ice. The habitat of ice-dependent species will be threatened
by increased atmospheric CO
2
concentrations as well. Arctic sea ice extent
shows a pronounced yearly cycle, with approximately 15 million km2 in
March and 5 million km2 in September. Yet in 2012, Arctic sea ice reached a
new low point at 3.41 million km2. This was the lowest summer minimum
extent in the 33-year satellite record. In fact, scientists estimate the sea ice
extent might have been at its lowest in 8,000 years.16
At the current rate of ice loss, the Arctic may be completely ice-free dur-
ing summer months 30 years from now. The last time that happened was at
the height of the last major interglacial period, 125,000 years ago. The dis-
appearance of ice threatens critical habitats for organisms at the base of the
food web, such as algae or krill, which in turn feed larger animals. As shrimp
populations are reduced, ice-dependent ecosystems will be threatened by
disappearing habitats and a loss of species fundamental to their food web.17
In the Arctic, the ice layer restricts winds and wave action near the
coastlines, buffering the force of storms and reducing erosion. As ice dis-
appears and sea level rises, the impact of storms will be compounded in
Arctic communities. Worldwide, melting ice and water expansion due to
warming temperatures also mean rising sea levels, which threatens coastal
communities, island nations, and critical habitats, such as coral reefs, man-
groves, and wetlands.
Unexpected Sea Changes. The effects of climate change have already
manifested themselves globally and are happening more rapidly than at any
time in history, outpacing many species’ ability to adapt to the new envi-
ronment. The broad consequences of climate change have not been fully
anticipated, with certain environments changing at a rate greater than the
global average. The Arctic is experiencing rapid transformation, with a rate
of temperature increase much higher than the global rate and with extensive
ice loss. One unexpected consequence of melting sea ice is likely to be more-
productive phytoplankton blooms earlier in the season. This may alter ma-
rine food webs, such that benthic, deep-sea communities are favored over
pelagic, open-ocean communities.18
68 | State of the World 2013
In addition, depending on the severity of climate change, ocean circula-
tion may be transformed entirely. It has been hypothesized that ocean cir-
culation may be altered due to melting of the Greenland ice sheet and Arc-
tic sea ice. As the Gulf Stream current flows northeastward toward Europe,
the warm, salty water releases heat to the atmosphere. As the water cools,
it becomes very dense compared with the surrounding waters, sinking to
the bottom of the ocean. Thus the North Atlantic is an area of “deep-water
formation,” driving thermohaline circulation in the ocean.
As large volumes of ice are lost from the Arctic, the ocean’s salinity is
lowered, decreasing its density. The influx of freshwater would inhibit the
formation of deep water in the North Atlantic. This would dramatically alter
the climate and reduce the oceanic sequestration of carbon dioxide in these
regions, thereby leading to a positive feedback mechanism that would in-
crease atmospheric CO
2
concentrations and do more to melt polar ice. The
increase in temperature and change in salinity regime due to climate change
will drastically affect fisheries and the marine ecosystems upon which geo-
political stability depends.
Devastated Fisheries. More than 500 million people rely on fisheries
and aquaculture for their livelihood, and 3 billion people consume fish for
15 percent of their protein intake. The increasing human population will
place additional pressure on already stressed fish populations and marine
ecosystems as a result of biogeochemical regime shifts and warming sea
surface temperatures.19
The total fish catch has stabilized at around 80 million tons over the last
several years—up from approximately 60 million tons in 1970. Pressure on
marine ecosystems due to exploitation of commercial fish species has led
to the depletion and overexploitation of 70 percent of the world’s fisher-
ies. This trend is cause for significant concern. Between 1992 and 2008, the
proportion of fish stocks considered overexploited, depleted, or recovering
increased by 33 percent, reaching 52 percent of all fish stocks, while the
share of fully exploited stocks rose by 13 percent, reaching 33 percent of
all fish stocks.20
Valuable fish species such as tuna have been especially targeted by com-
mercial fishing operations. Bluefin tuna species are susceptible to collapse
under continued fishing pressure. Tuna catches, for example, reached 4.2
million tons in 2008, up from 600,000 tons in the 1950s. With the mas-
sive reduction of top predators like sharks and tuna, marine food webs may
be functionally changed, adversely affecting the remaining marine ecosys-
tem by altering how productivity is expressed. Trophic cascades that reflect
changes down the food web from predator removals have been increasingly
documented in marine ecosystems. Overfishing may therefore not only re-
flect on target species, it may also cascade throughout the food web. Ad-
Sustainable Fisheries and Seas: Preventing Ecological Collapse | 69
ditional pressure on fisheries and
habitat will come not only from
increased demand on ocean re-
sources but also from coastal de-
velopment and pollution.21
Impacts of Human Activities.
In October 2011 world popula-
tion reached 7 billion people, with
60 percent of people living within
100 kilometers of a coastline. Of
the world’s 39 cities with popula-
tions over 5 million, 60 percent
are within 100 kilometers of a
coast—including 12 of the 16 cit-
ies that have more than 10 million
people in them. Development of
the world’s coasts alters watershed hydrology due to changes in upstream
vegetation and the installation of roads and other impervious surfaces,
which increase runoff into the sea. Coastal development additionally re-
sults in nutrient and sedimentation loading due to human activity, such as
agriculture and use of road salts. Such alterations to the hydrological and
chemical environment imperil fisheries and critical habitats such as wet-
lands, mangroves, and estuaries.22
Furthermore, pollution has lasting consequences on marine life. Plastic
debris particularly affects marine ecosystems through entanglement and
ingestion. In the North Pacific gyre (a giant circular ocean surface cur-
rent), approximately 35 percent of the plankton-eating fish studied had
ingested plastic, and they averaged 2.1 plastic items per fish. Plastic debris
degrades very slowly and therefore has an enduring legacy on marine life.
The ocean’s role as a repository for plastic debris must end as its costs rise
ecologically and economically. In the Asia-Pacific region alone, the esti-
mated cost of marine debris on activities such as boat repairs is more than
$1 billion per year.23
Solutions for Sustaining the Seas
In order to protect oceans and fisheries, governments and all stakeholders
must implement a variety of strategies domestically and internationally. To
mitigate the effects of climate change and ensure global stability, it is critical
that action plans that engage an inclusive and broad-based governance ap-
proach are used effectively as soon as possible.
The critical first step toward sustainable fishery operations and a healthy
ocean is international collaboration. Globally, governments must commit
St
ew
ar
t B
ut
te
rfi
el
d
Bluefin Tuna for sale at the Tsujiki Fish Market in Tokyo.
70 | State of the World 2013
to a far-reaching climate change agreement to reduce atmospheric CO
2
,
protect marine life, and mitigate acidification, ocean warming, and the dis-
appearance of the world’s ice sheets. The impact of population growth on
ocean resources must also be considered in global climate discussions in
order to prepare for sustainable management of the seas.
In order to reduce demand on fisheries and the oceans, governments can
enact policies that implement coastal and marine spatial planning (CMSP)
frameworks and can establish catch shares. Coastal and marine spatial plan-
ning can greatly help marine ecosystems as it emphasizes comprehensive,
adaptive, ecosystem-based management systems. CMSP identifies areas of
the coasts and seas that are most suitable for various classes of activity in
order to reduce environmental impacts, preserve critical ecosystem services,
and meet economic objectives. CMSP facilitates compatible uses, maximiz-
ing benefits for all.24
In recent years, CMSP has gained popularity because it provides a mul-
tifaceted perspective on demands from different sectors, which provides a
more complete evaluation of cumulative effects. Thus, coasts and marine
areas are planned to simultaneously preserve resilient ecosystems and biodi-
versity and support a range of human uses.
In the United States, CMSP enabled the National Oceanic and Atmo-
spheric Administration, the U.S. Coast Guard, and several other stakehold-
ers to examine a range of demands in the Boston coastal area in order to
decrease whale mortality from ship traffic in the Stellwagen Bank National
Marine Sanctuary. The stakeholders reconfigured the Boston Traffic Sepa-
ration Scheme (TSS) and succeeded in reducing whale mortality from risk
of collision with a ship by 81 percent for baleen whales and 58 percent for
engendered right whales. The new TSS increased shipping time by only 9–22
minutes and eliminated conflict with deepwater liquefied natural gas port
locations. Furthermore, the TSS increased marine safety by separating ship-
ping traffic from areas traveled by commercial and recreational vessels.25
Catch shares provide communities with a strategy to combat overfishing.
Catch shares allocate shares of fish to individual fishers, communities, or
fishery associations. These dedicated access privileges allocate shares of the
fish stock to each group or individual, encouraging sustainable practices.
Well-designed catch shares not only reward fishers for innovation, lower-
ing their costs and delivering quality products to the market, they may also
prevent fishery collapse across a range of ecosystems. Catch share programs
must be carefully designed to avoid aggregation of the shares by a few indi-
viduals or entities; they also require strong institutions to create and enforce
appropriate arrangements.26
While implementation of fishery management programs such as catch
shares can reduce destructive fishing practices and fishery collapse, pressure
Sustainable Fisheries and Seas: Preventing Ecological Collapse | 71
on fish stocks remains high. In order to minimize bycatch and destructive
fishing practices, governments must elevate the role of small-scale and arti-
sanal fisheries, which have largely been overlooked thus far.
Although small-scale fishing and large-scale fishing operations catch
about the same amount of fish for human consumption each year, large-scale
operations receive government subsidies. This leads to overcapacity and over-
fishing and so should end, as large fishing operations consume approximately
seven times more fuel and cost 10 times as much as small-scale fishing. They
also employ 11.5 million fewer people and hire fewer people for each $1 mil-
lion invested in fishing vessels, and they discard 8–20 million tons of fish and
marine life at sea, whereas small-scale fishing wastes very little sealife.27
In order to reduce the volume of discarded fish and sealife, governments
and communities could develop markets for bycatch, such as tradable by-
catch credits. These aim to create a market for marine life so that it is not
wasted, while protecting conservation goals by preventing exploitation of
the system and sales of valuable species.
Governments and scientists are working to establish sustainable aquacul-
ture to further diminish pressure on wild fisheries. Although aquaculture is a
relatively new contributor to global food production, it has become increas-
ingly important over the last several decades. Global production of food fish
from aquaculture increased from 1 million tons in 1950 to 52.5 million tons
in 2008. Between 1992 and 2009, aquaculture increased by 260 percent—
growing primarily in Asia, including by 315 percent in China alone.28
Sustainable aquaculture holistically farms marine life. In the 1980s,
John Ryther of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute developed an oys-
ter farming approach that raised oysters in the sewage water generated by
50,000 people. The oysters fed on algae that grew in the nutrient-rich envi-
ronment. To manage the waste produced by the oysters, Ryther introduced
polychaete worms that would feed and then be harvested and sold as fish
bait. Thus, properly managed aquaculture can decrease pressure on wild
fisheries and supply commercial species for the world’s market.29
Yet if aquaculture is poorly governed, it can have devastating effects on
the surrounding environment. Shrimp and salmon aquaculture operations
can be particularly damaging. Salmon and shrimp require large quantities
of fishmeal and fish oil in their diet. The fish caught to supply this would
otherwise support wild fish species. Globally, shrimp and prawn aquacul-
ture has increased approximately 400 percent between 1992 and 2009. In
many regions, such as Southeast Asia, highly productive coastal regions are
developed and valuable mangroves are cleared for aquaculture. Between
1990 and 2010, some 3 percent of mangrove extent (approximately 500,000
hectares of mangrove forest) was lost to coastal development and conver-
sions to agriculture and aquaculture.30
72 | State of the World 2013
Furthermore, aquaculture operations can hurt the surrounding environ-
ment through poor management of high volumes of fish waste, an influx
of antibiotics or pesticides, and competition between wild fish species and
escaped farm fish. It is estimated that for every ton of fish raised in aquacul-
ture operations, 42–66 kilograms of nitrogen waste and 7.2–10.5 kilograms
of phosphorus waste are produced annually. Such organic loading of the
seabed and nutrient enrichment of the water column can cause eutrophica-
tion, the creation of dead zones that are inhospitable to marine life. Shifting
targets of aquaculture from top predators toward lower trophic levels, par-
ticularly filter-feeders such as oysters and other bivalves, may make aquacul-
ture more sustainable. 31
Consumers could decrease their demand on ocean resources by eating
less seafood and eating lower on the food chain, preferring anchovies to
tuna, for example. Seafood guides from the Monterey Bay Aquarium and
Blue Ocean Institute, among others, help consumers purchase more-sus-
tainable seafood options.
To address another problem, fishers can modify their fishing gear in or-
der to decrease bycatch. For example, changing the type of hook used on
long-lines from J-hooks to circle hooks can reduce leatherback turtle catch
by up to 90 percent.32
As the impacts of climate change intensify and as national and global
policies are delayed by a dearth of political leadership, the ocean is becoming
irreparably damaged. In order to prevent a convergence of changes in the
ocean through acidification, ocean warming, sea level rise, pollution, hy-
poxia, and exploitation of marine resources, solutions must be implemented
immediately. If action is not taken, stressors will combine to create an out-
come more extreme than any individual change currently projected.
Individuals can press their political leaders to collaborate internation-
ally in order to address these global threats. Catch shares, tradable bycatch
credits, and well-managed aquaculture are a few solutions available to gov-
ernments. Through a broad-based governance approach, resources can be
managed at multiple levels, and all stakeholders can cooperate to advance
initiatives that protect a common future.
The ocean is Earth’s greatest resource. Future planetary and geopolitical
stability will depend on managing the seas sustainably and protecting the
global environment. If governments fail to do so, the ocean and its fisheries
will be further degraded, leading to an ecological collapse and unraveling
the ecosystems that humans depend on for so much.
c h a p t e r 7
Energy as Master Resource
Eric Zencey
Eric Zencey is a fellow of the
Gund Institute for Ecological
Economics at the University of
Vermont and a visiting lecturer
in the Sam Fox School of Visual
Design and Arts at Washington
University in St. Louis.
www.sustainabilitypossible.org
On a spring morning in 1890, the German chemist Wilhelm Ostwald arose
early in a Berlin hotel room, preoccupied by a conversation of the previous
evening. He had come to Berlin to meet with physicists to discuss his work
developing a new theoretical foundation for chemistry, one consistent with
the first and second laws of thermodynamics. The first law holds that mat-
ter and energy can be neither created nor destroyed, only transformed. The
second law states that in any such transformation, the capacity of the en-
ergy to do useful work is diminished. The energy does not disappear—the
first law—but some of it has become “bound” energy, energy incapable of
being useful. In 1865, Rudolf Clausius coined the term entropy as a label
for this degraded energy, and it allowed him to state the law succinctly:
within any thermodynamically closed system, energy is conserved but en-
tropy must increase.1
Ostwald was finding these laws enormously useful in developing a rigor-
ous understanding of chemical transformations—work that would eventu-
ally win him a Nobel Prize. He had come to the conclusion that the science
of energy was not merely a subfield within physics but its very foundation.
While in Berlin, he told the physicists that their discipline, too, needed to
undergo a “radical reorientation” to accommodate these fundamental
truths. Because matter is indestructible and energy degrades, energy must
be the key: “From now on . . . the whole of physics had to be represented as
a theory of energies.”2
The group did not give him a warm reception. Ostwald wrote later that
they found his idea “so absurd that they refused to take it seriously at all” and
instead offered just “ridicule and abuse.” He spent a fitful, nearly sleepless
night and arose early to walk the still-dark streets, mulling over how best to
proceed. Sunrise found him in the Tiergarten, surrounded by the budding life
of a spring morning in the park. And there he had an insight that he later de-
scribed in religious terms, calling it a “personal Pentecost” that came to him
Worldwatch Institute, State of the World 2013: Is Sustainability Still Possible?,
DOI 10.5822/ 978-1-61091-458-1_7, © 2013 by Worldwatch Institute
73
74 | State of the World 2013
with a force and clarity he had never experienced: “All,” he saw, “is energy.”
And if energy cannot be created and cannot be recycled, then the energy bud-
get of the planet, and of the human economy on the planet, must be finite.3
Energy and the Transformation of Science
Ostwald developed this epiphany into his doctrine of energetics, which he
thought should revolutionize all human understanding: natural and earth
sciences, of course, but also history, economics, sociology, politics, even eth-
ics and moral philosophy. (This, because to Ostwald the laws of thermody-
namics implied a new categorical imperative: “Waste no energy!”)4
Thermodynamics did indeed begin to reshape many disciplines. Solu-
tions to three of the outstanding thermodynamic problems in the Newto-
nian physics of the day—the photoelectric effect, Brownian motion, and
black-box radiation—led a young Swiss patent clerk, Albert Einstein, to his
overthrow of the discipline’s mechanistic foundations with his general and
special theories of relativity. Biology was reconstructed on thermodynamic
grounds in the 1920s through the work of A. G. Tansley, Edgar Transeau,
Max Kleiber, and others who began conceiving of organisms as energy fixers
or consumers and of natural systems as complex webs of energy flows and
transformations, thereby developing the modern science of ecology. Alfred
Lotka and Howard Odum extended the approach, pointing to the role that
energy appropriation plays in evolution: individuals and species that have
the largest net energy surplus can dedicate more of their life energy to repro-
duction, outcompeting their rivals.5
At the turn of the nineteenth century, the American historian Henry Ad-
ams, having read Ostwald and others on the subject of energy, toyed with
a thermodynamic interpretation of history, perhaps merely as metaphor,
perhaps as a parodic dissent from the scientific progressivism of the day,
perhaps as a literal modeling based on the figures for coal consumption
in which he briefly immersed himself. In the mid-1950s William Freder-
ick Cottrell, an American sociologist, linked social and economic change to
changes in energy sources and the technologies they power. And in his 1970
Pentagon of Power, historian Lewis Mumford took up the theme.6
Increased interest in ecological and environmental history late in the
twentieth century led to sustained inquiries that focused on the energy his-
tory of the human economy, such as Alfred Crosby’s Children of the Sun:
A History of Humanity’s Unappeasable Appetite for Energy in 2006. Seen
through the thermodynamic lens, what has been called the Industrial Revo-
lution is, more properly, the Hydrocarbon Revolution, a once-in-planetary-
history drawdown of stored sunlight to do work and make wealth in the
present. The petroleum era will most likely depart as suddenly as it came;
in the grand sweep of geologic time, our use of petroleum is just an in-
Energy as Master Resource | 75
stant, a brief burst of frantic activity that has produced exponential growth
in wealth and human population—and in humanity’s impact on planetary
ecosystems. (See Figure 15–1 in Chapter 15.)7
Economics: The Failed Revolution
Alone among disciplines that aspire to the status of rigorous science, econom-
ics remains relatively unaffected by the reconstructive impulse of thermody-
namics. Most of the discipline retains its roots in the Newtonian mechanism,
in which every action has an equal and opposite reaction and there are no ir-
reversible flows. Nowhere is this clearer than in the circular flow model of pro-
duction and consumption that lies at the heart of standard economics mod-
eling, in which the economy is seen as a closed system of exchange between
households (which supply factors of production and buy goods and services)
and firms (which use factors of production to make goods and services for sale
to households). As Lester Thurow
and Robert Heilbroner describe it in
The Economic Problem, “the flow of
output is circular, self-renewing and
self-feeding,” because “outputs of
the system are returned as fresh in-
puts.” This is patent nonsense. Any-
thing that can take as input what
it excretes as output is a perpetual
motion machine, a violation of the
second law of thermodynamics.8
In reality, an economy—like any
living thing or any machine—sucks
low entropy from its environment
and excretes a high-entropy wake of
degraded matter and energy. Matter
can be recycled; once extracted from the planet, much of it could be kept with-
in the circular flow of the monetary economy instead of being discarded back
into the environment. But recycling matter takes energy, which cannot be recy-
cled. Thus energy is ultimately the limiting factor on the generative side of the
human economy. (There are also limits on the waste side, in the finite capacity
of the planet to absorb our effluents.) This is why Romanian-born American
economist Nicholas Georgescu-Roegen described the entropy process as “the
taproot of economic scarcity”—and why energy is the master resource.9
Over the years, conventional economics has been critiqued several times
in light of thermodynamics. One critique came from another Nobel-lau-
reate chemist, the Englishman Frederick Soddy. In the 1920s and 1930s he
produced a series of books developing the idea that an economy is, at bot-
U
SA
FH
RA
The flow of output: a B-29 assembly line in 1944.
76 | State of the World 2013
tom, a system of energy use. The chief mechanism by which the economy
denies this physical truth, Soddy believed, was its monetary system.10
Soddy drew distinctions between wealth, virtual wealth, and debt. Wealth
is the stock of physically useful objects the economy has produced; it has an
origin in low entropy and is subject to entropic decline. Money is virtual
wealth; it symbolizes the bearer’s claim on real wealth and resists entropic
decay. Debt, held as an asset by those who lend money, is a claim on the
future production of real wealth.
Soddy’s fundamental insight was that when money is lent at compound
interest, claims on the future production of real wealth increase exponential-
ly—but real wealth can only grow incrementally, through an expansion of
the economy’s matter-and-energy throughput or through achieving greater
efficiency. As the monetary system encourages public and private debt to
grow faster than the economy can grow the means of paying it back, the
system develops an irresistible need for some form of debt repudiation. This
comes as inflation, bankruptcy, foreclosure, bond defaults, stock market
crashes, bank failure, pension fund wipeouts, collapse of pyramid schemes,
and loss of paper assets and expected investment income of any form.
Aggressive expansion of the economy’s matter-and-energy throughput
raises hopes and expectations along with output of real wealth. Those hopes
and expectations make growth-through-debt seem normal, which can stave
off the inevitable financial reconciliation for a time. Eventually, however, ex-
pansion of throughput hits a local or absolute limit, confidence falters, and
the system rapidly “de-leverages” into collapse. Staving off debt repudiation
simply ensures that when it comes it will come hard and fast, as a crisis—as
it did in the Great Depression, as it has in every other downturn the global
economy has experienced since then.11
A few economists gave Soddy’s ideas serious attention and found merit in
them. The discipline as a whole, however, closed ranks against him, ignor-
ing his ideas and dismissing him as a crank, a scientist who had overstepped
his expertise—much as the physicists in Berlin had responded to Ostwald.12
Another thermodynamics-based critique of economics was offered in the
1970s by Georgescu-Roegen and his student, Herman Daly. Georgescu-Roe-
gen’s masterwork, The Entropy Law and the Economic Process, serves as the
foundation of ecological economics—an emergent school that combines an
appreciation of the laws of thermodynamics with a recognition that humans
receive economically valuable but generally nonmarket, unpriced ecosystem
services from nature.13
In purely physical terms, Georgescu-Roegen noted, an economy consists
of nothing more than a set of institutions and processes by which we turn
valuable low-entropy inputs into valueless, high-entropy waste. Production
of waste is, of course, hardly the point. What we seek is psychological: the
Energy as Master Resource | 77
“augmentation of an immaterial flux, the enjoyment of life.” If that is the
ultimate purpose, then it is foolish and ultimately dysfunctional to judge the
economy by any other measure. Appreciation of energy as a master resource
thus leads directly to use of alternative economic indicators, metrics that as-
sess the economy’s capacity to provide sustainable well-being, happiness, or
life satisfaction to its participants. (See Chapter 11.)14
The thermodynamic revolution in economics also suggests a different con-
ceptual slicing of human productive activity, an alternative to the triumvirate
of land, labor, and capital that is offered by neoclassical theory. All economic
value is produced by intelligence operating on matter using energy. Capital—
the tools and equipment we use to increase labor productivity—is matter em-
bodying both energy (the energy used to extract, refine, shape, and assemble
the materials from which it is made) and intelligence (the accumulated in-
ventions and innovations that have gone into its design). Labor is discretion-
ary intelligent energy that participates in production. Land—nature—is the
source of all matter and energy, and its systems also embody billions of years
of trial-and-error design intelligence encoded into genes, evolution’s infor-
mation storage system. Energy as master resource thus offers a continuity of
explanation and understanding between economics and ecology, a necessary
step in establishing our economies on an ecologically sound foundation.15
In this model, it is easier to see that under conditions of maximum sus-
tainable uptake of matter and energy from the environment, any further
increase in the sum total of human well-being has to come from the devel-
opment of intelligence—from innovation, from intelligent distribution of
the products of the economy to achieve maximum well-being, from the ap-
plication of what we know and can learn about wringing greater efficiency
from matter and energy throughput. However inventive humans turn out
to be, they will never invent their way around the laws of thermodynamics.
That fundamental truth is denied by standard infinite-growth theory, which
blithely projects productivity gains from technological innovation indefi-
nitely into the future.
We can continue to seek and enjoy greater life satisfaction while main-
taining a constant, steady-state, sustainable throughput of matter and en-
ergy in the economy. Our ability to raise our standard of living in a steady-
state economy is limited only by our intelligence and our imagination—and
the laws of thermodynamics.16
Net Energy Analysis and Energy Return on Energy
Inves
ted
An appreciation of energy as master resource leads directly to an apprecia-
tion of a key economic indicator that is more fundamental than the mon-
etary price of energy or even an economy’s gross energy throughput: its net
78 | State of the World 2013
energy uptake, the energy available to an economy after the energy costs of
obtaining that energy are paid. Crucial to this figure is the energy return
on energy invested, or EROI, of energy sources, a calculation pioneered by
researchers Cutler Cleveland, Charles Hall, Robert Herendeen, and Randall
Plant. It takes energy to acquire energy: to make economic use of a barrel of
oil requires not only drilling the well but also transporting the oil to a refin-
ery, converting it to a variety of petroleum products, and shipping them to
end users—as well as expending energy to make the drilling rig, the steel in
the refinery equipment, the tank trucks that take gasoline to service stations,
the automobiles that burn the fuel, and so on. Only the net that is left after
all this energy expense has been paid is available to augment that “immate-
rial flux, the enjoyment of life,” as Georgescu-Roegen put it.17
The EROI of fuels can rise with technical efficiencies but tends to decline
over time. For instance, according to a 1981 paper exploring this idea, the
petroleum energy obtained per foot of drilling effort declined from about
50 barrels of oil equivalent in 1946 to
about 15 in 1978. While the authors did
not calculate EROI specifically, a figure
can easily be inferred: the energy return
on energy invested in drilling declined
from about 50:1 to 8:1 in that period.
Direct calculations of EROI for the U.S.
oil industry show that it dropped from
roughly 24:1 in 1954 to 11:1 in 2007.18
The reason is simple: other things
being equal, rational beings will seek
the largest increment of benefit for
the smallest outlay—the biggest bang
for the buck (or calorie). Naturally,
high EROI sources were exploited first.
Worldwide, and despite aggressive de-
velopment of more-efficient extraction techniques, the average EROI of pe-
troleum is falling, from a high of 100:1 in the 1920s to about 20:1 today.19
In calculating EROI, the boundaries of the analysis are crucial to the re-
sult and are the subject of much debate and discussion. If the exploitation
of an energy source requires infrastructure (like roads, vehicles, a steel in-
dustry) that has other uses, how much of the energy embodied in that in-
frastructure should be assigned on a per unit basis to the energy source that
flows through it? How far should the boundaries of analysis be extended?
The answers are by no means clear-cut, and this accounts for some of the
confusion, cross talk, and variety of result in this field of study.20
An agreed-upon standard for the boundaries of EROI analysis would al-
Jo
in
t P
ip
el
in
e
O
ffi
ce
An oil and gas drilling installation on an artificial island built for the
purpose in the Beaufort Sea north of Alaska.
Energy as Master Resource | 79
low for economically rational decisionmaking between different energy sys-
tems. Even without that standard, EROI analysis reveals the irrationality of
making those choices according to current market price, which is a human
construct, dependent on current demand, subsidies, taxes, and the rates at
which a flow of energy is extracted from its global stock. At the macroeco-
nomic level, rational policymakers should be trying to maximize total sus-
tainable delivered well-being, which (other things being equal—which they
often are not) would mean maximizing the EROI of a sustainable energy
system for the economy. The effort to use price signals to find and promote
that outcome requires that the relative monetary prices of different kinds
of energy reflect their relative social costs and benefits—a project that must
begin with their relative EROIs. (See Table 7–1.)21
If we continue to disregard the climate consequences of burning carbon-
based fuels, the EROI of oil will decline further, as we drill deeper, trans-
port farther, and bring energetically expensive oil from tar sands and shales
(which have EROIs as low as 5:1) online. Is there some minimum EROI
table 7–1. energy return on energy Invested, average and high
and Low estimates, Different energy Sources
Energy Type Average High Estimate Low Estimate
Oil 19:1 5:1
Coal 85:1 50:1
Natural gas 10:1
Hydroelectric 267:1 11:1
Nuclear 15:1 1.1:1
Wind 18:1
Solar photovoltaic 10:1 3.7:1
Geothermal electricity 13:1 2:1
Geothermal heat pump 5:1 3:1
U.S. corn ethanol 1.8:1 < 1:1
Brazilian sugar cane ethanol 10:1 8:1
Soy biodiesel 3.5:1 1.9:1
Palm oil biodiesel 9:1
Tar sands oil 5:1
Oil shale 4:1 1.5:1
Wave 15:1
Tidal 6:1
Source: See endnote 21.
80 | State of the World 2013
that an economy or civilization needs in order to be successful? One study
postulates that an EROI of 3:1 is “a bare minimum for civilization. It would
allow only for energy to run transportation or related systems, but would
leave little discretionary surplus for all the things we value about civilization:
art, medicine, education and so on.” The authors estimate that “we would
need something like a 5:1 EROI from our main fuels to maintain anything
like what we call civilization.”22
But a civilization with a 5:1 average EROI cannot support the kind of
military investment that can be made by a civilization with a 6:1 or 7:1
EROI—and if military force is useful in securing access to resources, then
the minimum EROI a civilization needs to survive is probably some close
correlate of the average EROI of its potential enemies and competitors.
If we bracket off such concerns, then the minimum EROI for any partic-
ular civilization will depend on a variety of internal factors, some of which
are not easily quantified. Appropriation of energy has social, political, and
ecological costs and benefits that will depend on factors like the resilience
of the host ecosystems, the resilience of the civilization’s social systems and
social capital, and the expectations its members have for the future, includ-
ing their expectation of material comfort for themselves and their progeny.
It is likely that any definitive answer to the question of a minimum EROI for
our civilization can only be derived experimentally—history will reveal it to
us when our civilization falls below it.
Can renewables be built out and exploited rapidly enough to avoid mak-
ing that experimental determination? Perhaps. (See Chapter 8.) If educated
guesswork puts the EROI floor at 5:1, a figure that is approached by current
petroleum technologies, apparently we can breathe easier knowing that re-
newables generally do significantly better: photovoltaics (PV) are conserva-
tively estimated at 10:1 and wind at 20:1 or perhaps 50:1.23
But some EROI analysts worry that as society is forced to make do with
less oil, it will fall into an EROI or Energy Trap. This, according to physicist
Tom Murphy, comes about because the energy it takes to build the infra-
structure necessary for a sustainable, renewable energy economy must come
from current energy consumption. Unlike monetary investments, which
can be made on credit and then amortized out of the income stream they
produce, the energy investment in energy infrastructure must be made up-
front out of a portion of the energy used today: “Nature does not provide an
energy financing scheme. You can’t build a windmill on promised energy.”24
The arithmetic is daunting. To avoid, for example, a 2-percent annual
decline in net energy use, replacing that loss with solar photovoltaic (with
an EROI pegged at 10:1) will require giving up 8 percent of the net energy
available for the economy. (This is because the EROI of solar PV is calcu-
lated over the life of the equipment: a 10:1 return over 40 years means that
Energy as Master Resource | 81
the break-even point is four years out, and until then most of the energy
invested in PV construction is a sunken cost, an incompletely compensated
energy expense.) “We cannot,” writes Murphy, “build our way out of the
problem. If we tried to outsmart the trap by building an eight-unit replace-
ment in year one, it would require 32 units to produce and only dig a deeper
hole. The essential point is that up-front infrastructure energy costs mean
that one step forward results in four steps back.”25
The grim truth, Murphy warns, is that on a sheer energetic basis it seems
to make more sense to continue to develop oil, even with a 5:1 EROI, than to
build wind or solar PV capacity with higher EROIs. While there are plenty
of reasons to move to solar and away from oil (climate change prominent
among them), EROI, according to Murphy, is not one of them. The prob-
lem is rooted in the sunken energy costs of petroleum infrastructure (which
makes the continued use of petroleum energetically cheap) and the non-
negotiable reality of the energy economy.26
The goal of a renewable energy economy is clear, but the path to it seems
blocked. The paradox is reminiscent of the one proposed by Zeno, whose log-
ic denied the possibility of all motion: you can never get from point A to point
B because first you must go halfway to point B, then halfway again, then half-
way again, and so on, never arriving. Legend has it that Diogenes of Sinope
refuted Zeno by standing up and walking about. The paradox of the Energy
Trap may not be so easily resolved. Refraining from energy expenditure on
consumption today in order to use that energy to invest in the infrastructure
we need to ensure energy consumption 10, 20, and 50 years into the future,
Murphy warns, will require a kind of sacrifice and political will that does
not come easily to representative democracies and for which there is scant
historical precedent. Politically, the most acceptable path is to finance the en-
ergetic investment not by decreasing energy use for consumption today but
by maintaining energy use for consumption while increasing the total energy
appropriation of the economy—an aggressive expansion of the economy’s
footprint in paradoxical service to the goal of achieving sustainability.27
Eventually, solar and renewables will hit a takeoff point: they will capture
enough energy to support the construction of additional solar and renew-
able infrastructure without requiring us to reallocate energy use away from
maintaining the living standards we then enjoy. Achieving this at a high level
of energy consumption becomes increasingly difficult as the average EROI
of our energy sources declines. If the net energy captured by the economy
begins to decline as the peak of fossil fuel production passes, the Energy
Trap seems unavoidable.
Can conservation and efficiency save us from the Energy Trap? Maybe.
The United States could significantly reduce gasoline use with the simple
expedient of carpooling, for instance. Four vehicle occupants instead of one
82 | State of the World 2013
represents a 75 percent savings,
and if the savings were dedicated
to building renewable infrastruc-
ture (a big “if,” but still), this would
go a long way toward solving the
problem. According to calcula-
tions of energy use per constant
gross domestic product dollar (see
Figure 7–1), current efficiency ef-
forts achieve an annual savings
of 1.39 percent, which could be
dedicated to building renewable
infrastructure with no decrease
in the amount of energy going to
consumer satisfactions.28
But these savings are not sus-
tainable. The low-hanging fruit
can be plucked only once, and marginal returns from future conservation
and efficiency efforts will necessarily decrease. And whatever savings we
achieve, there will be pressure to use them to increase or simply maintain
current consumption instead of building solar infrastructure. Yielding to
that pressure will condemn future humans to a poorer, stingier, less com-
modious life.
Sometimes a problem that seems irreducible at the macro scale can, like
Zeno’s paradox, be solved at the level of individual behavior. Would a ratio-
nal consumer postpone for a few years some of his or her energy-intensive
consumption in order to invest in insulating a house or installing solar pan-
els? Yes—given the right market signals and realistic assumptions about the
cost of energy tomorrow. Consumers decide to make this sort of investment
every day—and those decisions could cumulate into the macro result that
the Energy Trap tells us would be politically difficult to achieve.
This much is clear: sooner or later we will have an economy that runs on
its current solar income. The amount of energy that economy will have at its
disposal depends on the choices we make today.
Toward a New Worldview
Reality, economic reality included, is sufficiently complex that diametrically
opposed idea systems can serve as lenses through which to interpret it, with
both systems claiming to be confirmed by what is seen. When an economy is
founded on an EROI of 100:1, you can hold almost any economic theory you
want and still see an enormous generation of wealth. The decline in average
EROI of the world economy brings political challenges—including pressure
D
ol
la
rs
p
er
K
ilo
gr
am
o
f O
il
Eq
ui
va
le
nt
Figure 7–1. GDP per Unit of Energy Use, 2003–09
5.00
6.00
5.75
5.50
5.25
2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009
Source: World Bank
(in constant PPP dollars)
Energy as Master Resource | 83
for austerity in government budgeting—and a kind of
evolutionary pressure to get our economic theories right.
The incorporation of thermodynamics into economics as
a foundational idea system would bring the most influen-
tial social science into congruence with physical reality.29
It would also return economics to its roots in political
economy. A steady-state economy will have to face issues
of fairness and justice in distribution that were more eas-
ily addressed (or postponed to the future) in a high-EROI,
supposedly infinite-growth economy. And economically
rational, benefit-maximizing choices about energy use
will turn on such “externalities” as the social and political
costs and benefits of different energy systems, which fall
outside of the discipline of economics as currently prac-
ticed. Economics will either admit these issues into the
discipline or confess its abject impotence to illuminate the most pressing
economic issues of our era.
Ultimately, economics will have to recognize that we live on a finite plan-
et and that the laws of thermodynamics apply to economic life as to all other
life. This observation from the British physicist Arthur Eddington remains
as apt today as when it was written nearly a century ago: “The second law
that entropy always increases holds, I think, the supreme position among the
laws of Nature. If someone points out to you that your pet theory of the uni-
verse is in disagreement with Maxwell’s equations—then so much the worse
for Maxwell’s equations. If it is found to be contradicted by observation—
well, these experimentalists do bungle things sometimes. But if it is found to
be against the second law of thermodynamics I can give you no hope; there
is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation.”30
Had economists collapsed in deepest humiliation on being shown in the
1930s or again in the 1970s that their theories fell against the second law, we
would have made a great deal more progress toward the goal of establishing
our economy and civilization on a sustainable flow of matter-and-energy
throughput. Foresters have a saying that is appropriate here. The very best
time to plant a tree, like the best time to admit that energy is the master
resource, is decades ago. The second best time is today.
M
ar
io
R
ob
er
to
D
ur
an
O
rt
iz
Carpool sign on a Maryland Interstate highway.
Shakuntala Makhijani is a
research associate with World-
watch Institute’s Climate and
Energy Program. Alexander
Ochs is the director of the
program.
www.sustainabilitypossible.org
c h a p t e r 8
Renewable Energy’s
Natural Resource Impacts
Shakuntala Makhijani and Alexander Ochs
Our fossil-fuel-based economy is environmentally, socially, and economi-
cally no longer acceptable. Recent increases in the frequency, severity, and
regional spread of heat waves, droughts, wildfires, storms, floods, and other
extreme weather events are an early indication of even more damaging cli-
mate change impacts sure to come.
Although governments across the world have made a commitment to
limit Earth’s warming to 1.5–2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) over
pre-industrial levels in order to avoid disastrous climate impacts, current
emissions trends put us on a path to much greater warming. Global carbon
dioxide emissions from fossil fuel energy combustion, the single largest con-
tributor to greenhouse gases (GHGs), grew by 34 percent from 2000 to 2010.
Leading research institutions estimate that global average surface tempera-
tures will increase by between 2 and 11.5 degrees Fahrenheit by 2100, with
the most recent estimates projecting that the high end of this warming range
is the most probable if no swift action is taken. This warming will affect mil-
lions of people through droughts, water stress, decreased agricultural yield,
coastal flooding, global species extinctions, heat waves, and the spread of
infectious diseases.1
In addition to climate impacts, fossil fuel development and emissions
cause environmental damage, including altered landscapes, acid rain,
freshwater pollution and decline, and polluted soil and rivers, as well as
human health impacts such as damage to the brain, heart, kidney, lungs,
and immune system. These human and environmental costs are rarely in-
ternalized in polluters’ fossil fuel energy costs but are instead borne by so-
ciety as a whole.2
Socioeconomic costs are reason enough to question our fossil fuel econ-
omy. Today’s economies are vulnerable to energy commodity market vola-
tility; price spikes reduce economic output and cause layoffs. Some coun-
tries, among them the poorest on the planet, spend more than 10 percent
Worldwatch Institute, State of the World 2013: Is Sustainability Still Possible?,
DOI 10.5822/ 978-1-61091-458-1_8, © 2013 by Worldwatch Institute
84
Renewable Energy’s Natural Resource Impacts | 85
of their gross domestic product importing fossil fuels. U.S. taxpayers spend
$345 billion annually just to pick up the pollution and health bills related
to coal use.3
Reliance on unsustainable energy sources is no longer necessary; the
transition to a sustainable energy system based on high efficiency (see Box
8–1) and renewable sources, as well as smart grid and storage solutions, is
under way. Renewable technologies broke all growth records in recent years.
In 2011, new investments in renewables topped those in conventional en-
ergy technologies for the first time in modern history. U.S. wind power ca-
pacity almost tripled and solar energy jumped ninefold since 2007. And 17.1
percent of Germany’s electricity comes from renewable sources.4
These promising trends need to be accelerated if global GHG emissions
are to peak before 2020, which the consensus among climate scientists deems
necessary to avoid climate catastrophes. Numerous studies have shown that
renewable energy resources can fully meet global energy demand. But how
sustainable would such a system really be? Are resource inputs required that
limit the potential of individual renewable technologies? (See Table 8–1.)5
Renewable Energy Resources and Constraints
Solar. There are two main categories for solar electricity technologies: pho-
tovoltaic (PV) modules that convert light directly into electricity and con-
centrating solar power systems (CSP) that focus the sun’s heat to drive a
Current global energy demand is about 14 terawatts,
a figure that is expected to double by 2050. Given the
rapid acceleration in renewable energy expansion
that is needed just to meet energy needs without
fossil fuels, energy efficiency measures are essential
to ensure that new renewable capacity offsets rather
than supplements fossil fuel power production. Energy
conservation is especially important in the context of
sustainability constraints, as even renewable energy
sources can have significant resource and environ-
mental impacts.
Energy efficiency measures work synergistically
with renewable energy systems. When an electricity
consumer demands one less unit of energy because of
efficiency measures, the system typically saves much
more than one unit of energy because of avoided
losses during transmission and distribution. As a result,
efficiency improvements can amplify the benefits of
developing utility-scale renewable energy by increas-
ing the impact of added renewable power capacity.
Similarly, distributed (as opposed to centralized) renew-
able generation achieves efficiency gains by producing
energy at the point of use, thereby avoiding transmis-
sion and distribution losses.
Renewable energy sources such as wind, solar, small
hydro, wave, and tidal energy have the additional
efficiency advantage of converting natural flows of
mechanical energy or sunlight directly into electricity,
unlike fossil fuel combustion and nuclear power, which
require inherently inefficient thermal energy conver-
sion processes.
Source: See endnote 4.
Box 8–1. the role of efficiency and conservation
86 | State of the World 2013
table 8–1. renewable energy potentials, Impacts, and constraints
Renewable
Energy
Resource
Estimated
Global
Potential
Land Needs
Water Needs
Limiting
Material
Requirements
Other
Environmental
Impacts
Solar
photovoltaics
340 TW 0.29% of global land
area to meet 40%
of world energy
demand in 2030
(both PV and CSP)
Minimal Crystalline
silicon: silver
Thin film: tel-
lurium, indium,
germanium
Cadmium (heavy
metal) emissions—
small compared with
fossil fuels
Concentrating
solar power
240 TW 1.6 to 3.2 hectares
per MW
Technology de-
pendent; minimal
–3.0 liters per kWh
Possible (desert) eco-
system interference
Wind 40–85 TW 1.17% of global land
area to meet half
of world energy
demand in 2030
Minimal Neodymium
for permanent
magnet
generators
Possible interference
with bird migration
routes/bird kills
Land use change
Small hydro 1.6 TW
(includes
large
hydro)
Site and technology
dependent, can be
significant
Site and technolo-
gy dependent; di-
version, pollution,
and evaporation
of water resources
can occur
Neodymium
(for some new
technologies)
River ecosystem dam-
ages, flooded land,
methane emissions
possible, depending
on technology
Geothermal 2.6 TW
(excludes
EGS)
0.4 to 3.2 hectares
per MW
Binary: 1.02 liters
per kWh
Flash: Minimal,
but 10.2 liters
per kWh geofluid
evaporation
EGS: 1.10–2.73
liters per kWh
None Deforestation (often
in protected areas)
and interference with
sensitive ecosystems
possible; seismic
activity has been
associated with EGS
technologies
Wave and
tidal
Wave:
500 GW
Tidal:
20 GW
Concerns regard-
ing interference
with shipping lanes,
archaeological sites,
pipeline infrastruc-
ture, and nature
conservation
Minimal Neodymium
(for some
technologies)
Sedimentation; biodi-
versity loss; possible
impacts to migratory
bird, fish, and mammal
populations
Positive impacts
(artificial reefs) cited for
some technologies
Biomass 31.7 TW Depends on biomass
type—can be very
significant
Depends on
biomass crop /
source—can be
very significant
None Deforestation and bio-
diversity loss, chemical
pesticide and fertilizer
use, land degradation
Source: See endnote 5.
Renewable Energy’s Natural Resource Impacts | 87
steam turbine. Solar PV can be used at any scale, from small-scale electronic
appliances to decentralized household rooftop systems and from installa-
tions that power industrial facilities to utility-scale PV farms. Today’s CSP
systems are only viable at the utility level.
Solar technology costs are falling rapidly. Crystalline silicon PV module
costs fell by 70 percent from 2008 to January 2012 and are forecast to fall by
another 30 percent by 2015, without subsidies. PV and CSP installations are
now cost-competitive in locations with strong solar potential and relatively
expensive alternative power sources—despite distorted prices for fossil fuels
that do not reflect their costs to societies. Projections for PV and CSP sys-
tems estimate that, averaged over the systems’ lifetimes, generation costs in
strong resource areas like the southwestern United States will fall to 6–8¢ per
kilowatt-hour (kWh) in the near to medium term.6
Even when greatly limiting the areas for solar energy development to
likely developable resources based on cost and location considerations, the
potential capacities are estimated at 340 terawatts (TW) for PV and 240 TW
for CSP—much more than projections for energy demand in 2050, even
without any efficiency measures.7
While land use issues must be considered for individual projects, globally
the amount of suitable land area does not pose a significant constraint to
installing solar equipment. Existing roof area in the United States alone, ex-
cluding areas that are shaded or oriented away from the sun, could support
over 600 gigawatts (GW) of PV electricity generation, more than 20 percent
of the country’s current electricity demand.8
Today’s utility-scale CSP requires between 1.6 and 3.2 hectares per mega-
watt (MW) in areas with strong solar resources, depending on the techno-
logical specifications. Still, land availability does not pose a significant con-
straint to CSP either. For example, considering only strong physical resources
on uninterrupted available land, the American Southwest has almost 7,500
GW of resource potential and could provide more than four times current
U.S. electricity generation. While this estimate does not directly consider
desert ecosystem impacts, the potential to supply a large share of electricity
demand using just a fraction of this land suggests that harmful effects could
be limited. One study found that meeting 40 percent of global energy de-
mand in 2030 with solar PV and CSP would require only 0.29 percent of the
world’s land area. As a comparison, 11 percent of global land area is used for
crop production, and urban areas occupy 3 percent of land area worldwide.9
While PV generation requires minimal water (aside from panel clean-
ing needs in some locations), CSP is the most water-intensive renewable
energy technology, requiring 1.9–3.0 liters per kWh. But this is less than or
comparable to water needs for coal or nuclear plant cooling. In many ar-
eas with the strongest solar potentials, limited water resources rule out this
88 | State of the World 2013
“ conventional” form of CSP. However, air-cooled CSP plants offer an alter-
native mature technology, as they require 90 percent less water and generate
only 5 percent less electricity than water-cooled CSP.10
The material requirements for PV and CSP are extremely different. CSP
plants require an array of fairly unsophisticated mirrors, and the material
production needs neither limit the potential for the technology nor impose
a significant ecological footprint. Solar energy needs for scarce material re-
sources are mostly limited to module production for the three dominant
PV technologies: crystalline and polycrystalline silicon, thin-film PV panels,
and concentrator PV cells.
Silver used for electrodes poses a potential limiting factor to crystalline
silicon PV cell production. The common and inexpensive use of silver elec-
trodes that are 20–80 micrometers thick would limit potential capacity of
silicon PV cells to less than 0.6 TW. Using alternative electrodes that require
less silver would reduce—and possibly eliminate—this constraint, however,
allowing for about 15 TW of crystalline and/or polycrystalline silicon PV
(assuming that no more than 25 percent of the global silver resource is used
for PV cell production).11
Thin-film PV cells require an indium-tin-oxide conductor layer that in-
cludes some materials with resource limits, including tellurium, indium, and
germanium. Due in part to greater competition from other uses, germanium
and indium pose the greatest constraints to thin-film PV potential. With in-
dium as the limiting factor, thin-film PV potential is limited to 13–22 GW in
2020, 17–106 GW in 2050, and 17–152 GW in 2075. Germanium constraints
are even tighter, but alternative silicon- and gallium-based technologies can
replace germanium in thin-film modules, removing that limitation. Zinc-
oxide alternatives for the conductor layer are currently under development,
though future costs and ecological impacts are unknown.12
Emissions of cadmium, a heavy metal, from some types of solar thin-film
cells have been cited as a concern, but these systems produce only 1 percent
of the life cycle cadmium emissions of equivalent fossil fuel generation. The
key to limiting cadmium pollution is to ensure high rates of PV cell recovery
and materials recycling.13
Concentrator PV cells also require germanium. A shift to proven gallium
arsenide alternatives would prevent overdependence on this material, but
this technology has not reached commercial scale.14
Wind. Apart from hydroelectric power, wind has been by far the most
successful renewable electricity source to date, with 238 GW installed glob-
ally by the end of 2011. Wind power is used mostly for centralized utility-
scale generation, though smaller-scale applications are gaining popularity
for local and decentralized electricity production.15
Wind energy is one of the most economical renewable energy technolo-
Renewable Energy’s Natural Resource Impacts | 89
gies; at attractive locations, it is already fully competitive with fossil fuels.
Industry estimates project that the average onshore wind farm will be fully
competitive with conventional energy sources by 2016.16
Wind potential estimates at land-based and near-shore locations that have
strong resources and are practical for energy development range from 40 to
85 TW, far more than is needed to meet future worldwide energy needs even
under business-as-usual demand projections. According to one estimate,
meeting half of the world’s energy needs in 2030 with wind energy would
require about 1.17 percent of global land area, almost all of which would be
due to the space needed between turbines. The land use impacts of wind en-
ergy can be significantly reduced by using wind-farm land for other purposes
such as agriculture and by siting some wind turbines offshore. Wind energy
is the least water-intensive method of energy production, with operational
water use largely limited to what is needed to clean the turbines.17
Primary materials in wind turbines include steel and concrete for the bas-
al structures plus copper, glassfiber reinforced plastic, and carbon-filament
reinforced plastic for rotor blades. Concrete supplies will remain abundant,
as its primary components (sand, gravel, and limestone) are widely avail-
able and recycling technology is well established. Steel availability is also of
minor concern. At current prices and levels of production, the earth has
only about 100–200 years of economically recoverable iron ore remaining if
no new major mining areas are discovered. However, recycling technologies
for steel used in wind turbines are well established, and recycling rates for
construction plates and beams in the United States are close to 100 percent.
According to one estimate, adding over 300 GW of wind capacity in the
United States by 2030 would require less than 2 percent of the country’s
2008 steel use. These bulk materials are therefore not expected to impose
a serious constraint on meeting global energy demand with wind energy.18
The greatest future supply risk for the wind industry will be the avail-
ability of rare earth metals. As permanent magnet generators used in the
newest commercial-scale wind turbines are increasingly replacing gear-
based generators due to their greater efficiency, a rapid scale-up in pro-
duction of neodymium, their primary element, is required to keep pace
with needs of wind turbine manufacturers and the increasing demand for
permanent magnets in other sectors. China is currently the overwhelmingly
dominant producer of neodymium and other rare earth materials, despite
considerable reserves in other countries, including the United States. Sig-
nificant expansion of rare earth availability is not expected before 2015,
however, as countries other than China work to establish environmentally
sound mining and production practices.19
One study estimates that meeting 50 percent of global energy demand in
2030 with permanent magnet wind generators would require a more than
90 | State of the World 2013
fivefold increase in annual neodymium production. Current economically
available reserves could meet this level of production for about 100 years;
thereafter, neodymium recycling (which has been proved possible, although
at unknown cost) will be necessary to sustain wind generation. The wind in-
dustry will also be able to adapt to future neodymium shortages due to viable
alternative technologies that do not require permanent magnet generators.20
Small Hydropower. Hydropower is the world’s best-established renew-
able energy resource, providing over 15 percent of global electricity pro-
duction in 2011, mostly from large hydropower dams. Due to the signifi-
cant environmental and human impacts of large-scale hydroelectric dams,
however—including often devastating effects on river ecosystems, flooding
of land ecosystems and human settlements, methane emissions from sub-
merged and decaying vegetation, and consumption of scarce water resourc-
es—the discussion of hydropower is limited here to small-scale generation,
including both micro hydro (0.1 MW or less) and mini hydro (greater than
0.1 MW but less than 10 MW). Global hydropower technical potential in
likely developable locations is estimated at 1.6 TW. But hydropower re-
source estimates do not typically differentiate between large and small gen-
eration facilities, so it is difficult to judge the sustainability of developing
small hydro’s full technical potential.21
Some new small hydro models call for permanent magnet generators,
requiring rare earth inputs equivalent to those described for wind turbines.
Still, the availability of developable resources, much more than material
limitations for hydro generator manufacturing and installation, is the main
constraint on significant global expansion of small hydropower.
A widespread scale-up of small hydro facilities could have large cumula-
tive impacts. These effects include disturbance of aquatic ecosystems, up-
stream and downstream flooding, and reduced water quality and supply.
In some cases, the impacts—especially siltation (sediment buildup) and
eutrophication (depletion of oxygen in the water)—can be even greater for
small hydro than for large hydro on a per-kilowatt basis. Sound environ-
mental management can mitigate some of these impacts, but implemen-
tation of best practices should not be taken for granted, especially with
widespread proliferation in countries with limited capacities for monitor-
ing and enforcement. Less damaging applications, such as small-scale run-
of-the-river hydro to power remote locations, should be the focal point of
small hydro development.22
Geothermal. Geothermal energy, or thermal energy extracted from rock
beneath Earth’s surface, can be used to generate electricity or to provide
heating and cooling services. A major advantage of geothermal power over
intermittent renewable sources like the sun and the wind is that it can be
used as a baseload source of energy. The main limitation for geothermal
Renewable Energy’s Natural Resource Impacts | 91
electricity generation is the need for reservoirs with very high temperatures
(over 100 degrees Celsius) near Earth’s surface.23
Heat pumps and geothermal electricity generation are well-developed and
mature technologies that are cost-competitive in locations with viable re-
sources. Dry steam and flash steam
geothermal technologies use ex-
tracted hot liquid or vapor directly
to drive a turbine. Binary cycle
power plants use extracted fluids
to heat a secondary fluid, which in
turn drives a turbine.24
The share of geothermal in elec-
tricity generation currently stands
at only 0.3 percent worldwide,
but it is much higher in countries
with large potential. Nicaragua, for
example, already generates more
than 12 percent of its power from
geothermal sources, with addition-
al sites currently planned.25
The use of enhanced geother-
mal systems (EGS), a technology that is still in the demonstration phase,
has the potential to greatly expand the feasible area for electricity genera-
tion. EGS allows for the use of geothermal resources even where there is not
a permeable reservoir of high-temperature water by injecting high-pressure
water into a well to open and extend fractures, freeing up thermal energy
previously trapped in the rock. Including the resources accessible through
EGS increases the technically exploitable geothermal electricity generation
potential in the United States alone to nearly 3 TW, although seismicity con-
cerns could limit the areas considered safe and viable for EGS development.26
Geothermal electricity generation requires relatively high water con-
sumption compared with other renewable energy sources. EGS and binary
generation consume 1.10–2.73 and 1.02 liters per kWh generated, respec-
tively. These levels are comparable to the 0.49–3.94 liters per kWh of water
consumption from conventional thermal (coal, natural gas, and nuclear)
electricity generation. While flash generation consumes minimal water, it
makes direct use of water in the hydrothermal reservoir. Evaporation rates
of this “geofluid” average 10.2 liters per kWh, raising questions regarding
the long-term viability of geothermal flash generation as liquid volume and
pressure in the reservoir decline.27
Hot water suitable for geothermal energy is also produced at many oil
and gas wells. This “produced water” is typically discarded as waste, but it
M
ik
e
G
on
za
le
z
The Palinpinon Geothermal Power Plant in Negros Oriental, Philippines.
92 | State of the World 2013
can provide a cheap and efficient source of geothermal power. One study
calculates that over 70 GW of geothermal capacity could be established at
existing oil and gas wells within the United States by 2030.28
Wave and Tidal Power. Marine energy in the form of waves and tidal
patterns can be captured to generate electricity. Wave power generators cap-
ture the energy from the rising and falling of waves on the ocean surface,
and tidal generators on the ocean floor harness energy from the ebb and
flow of tides. The costs of these technologies remain prohibitively high for
commercial development, but they are expected to come down as technolo-
gies mature and more demonstration projects are implemented.29
Wave and tidal energy potentials in likely developable locations are es-
timated at 500 GW and 20 GW, respectively. Marine energy constraints in-
clude the need to avoid offshore areas with competing uses such as ship-
ping lanes, marine archaeological sites, sites of pipeline infrastructures, and
nature conservation. Some more recent wave and tidal power models also
use permanent magnet generators, requiring the same rare earth inputs as
described for wind turbines.30
In some cases, marine energy ecosystem impacts could actually be posi-
tive. For example, wave and tidal power infrastructure is expected to help
fish populations recover in some areas by preventing commercial fishing
and providing artificial reef structures for marine organisms. Negative im-
pacts are also possible, such as increased sedimentation around wave energy
buoys, which can lead to euthrophication and biodiversity loss. Additional
studies are needed on the impacts on migratory bird, fish, and mammal
populations, including on spawning areas, from the physical infrastructure
as well as from noise and electromagnetism.31
Biomass. Biomass energy covers a range of resources that can be com-
busted for electricity generation, including wood and wood wastes, agricul-
tural crops and residues, municipal solid waste, animal wastes, waste from
food processing, and aquatic plants and algae. Biomass has the advantage
of providing reliable baseload renewable power, and many biomass projects
are already cost-competitive with conventional power sources.32
Several studies have attempted to estimate the contribution that biomass
energy can sustainably make to energy needs, with wide-ranging results.
One study cited by the European Commission found that taking food, wa-
ter, and biodiversity sustainability constraints into account, biomass could
meet up to one third of energy demand in 2050, with up to half of this from
residue and wastes alone.33
The estimates on biomass energy vary widely due to different assump-
tions regarding food production and consumption, agricultural tech-
niques, and other variables. Land use is one of the primary concerns,
as biomass energy can result in high net GHG emissions in cases where
Renewable Energy’s Natural Resource Impacts | 93
forests or other carbon sinks are destroyed to clear agricultural land for
energy crops. This activity can also contribute to significant biodiversity
loss. Other environmental impacts of intensive farming include the use
of chemical pesticides and fertilizers, land degradation, and unsustainable
rates of water consumption.
The potential of biomass to provide sustainable energy therefore de-
pends largely on whether sustainable agriculture techniques are imple-
mented on a global scale. Furthermore, widespread concerns have been
raised about diverting crops or cropland from food to energy uses, exac-
erbating the food price increases of recent years. In order to mitigate envi-
ronmental and food price impacts, biomass electricity should be produced
from the widely available supply of different waste resources (although
even this approach has drawbacks, as removing agricultural waste can de-
prive soil of nutrients, especially in sustainable agricultural systems with
limited external inputs).
Addressing the Intermittency and Variability of
Renewable Energy
One of the major remaining barriers to meeting energy needs with renew-
ables is the reliability of intermittent renewable energy resources, notably
wind and solar. A number of technological solutions already exist for stor-
ing surplus renewable energy generated during periods when production
exceeds demand and then dispatching this energy at times of low renewable
generation. As with renewable energy technologies, advanced storage and
grid options have sustainability constraints of their own. (See Table 8–2.)34
Batteries. Several battery technologies that can be paired with renewable
energy systems are currently available or in development. Lead-acid and
nickel-cadmium batteries are both mature technologies with widespread
applications, including in hybrid and electric vehicles as well as for standby
power storage. Lead-acid batteries are already commonly used to store en-
ergy for PV systems. These systems are not considered suitable for bulk or
utility-scale storage due to high costs per unit of storage, but they work well
for stand-alone decentralized renewable energy storage, particularly at the
household level.35
The major sustainability limitation for these battery technologies is that
both lead and cadmium are toxic heavy metals. Lead-acid batteries enjoy
high recycling rates in many countries due to their predominant use as en-
gine starting batteries in automobiles. The toxicity risks of nickel-cadmium
batteries, on the other hand, have led the European Union to ban their use
except for limited applications. Use of these batteries should therefore be
limited to small-scale rural energy storage, in locations with robust bat-
tery recycling programs and regulations. Limited lead and nickel reserves
94 | State of the World 2013
(especially if the use of nickel-cadmium batteries for hybrid and electric
vehicles is greatly expanded) further constrain this technology’s viability as
a widely implementable storage solution.36
Lithium ion batteries (LIB) can provide storage capacity of up to 5 MW,
and they have higher energy density (and are thus lighter) than lead-acid
and nickel-cadmium batteries. LIBs are also free of heavy metal toxicity
risks. These batteries have multiple applications, including in hybrid and
electric vehicles. Costs are projected to decline from current levels but will
likely still make these batteries most suitable for small-scale decentralized
capacity rather than utility-scale renewable generation. The availability of
lithium resources is a frequently cited concern regarding the viability of LIBs
for widespread future use. However, economically exploitable lithium re-
serve estimates are rapidly increasing, from 4.1 million tons (Mt) in 2009
to 13 Mt in 2012. Additionally, the global resource base of 39 Mt of lithium
compares favorably to projected demand from 2010 to 2100, which is esti-
mated at less than 20 Mt even in the highest demand scenario.37
table 8–2. energy Storage and transmission technologies and constraints
Storage or Transmission
Technology
Technology
Status
Limiting Material Needs
Other Environmental Impacts
Lead-acid batteries Mature Lead Lead toxicity
Nickel-cadmium batteries Mature Nickel Cadmium toxicity
Lithium ion batteries Mature Lithium
Liquid metal batteries Demonstration None
Vanadium redox flow batteries Demonstration None
Pumped hydropower Mature None Same as hydropower: land use
and ecosystem impacts
Compressed air energy storage Mature None
Molten salt thermal storage Demonstration Sodium and potassium
nitrates (can be
synthetically produced)
Hydrogen Demonstration None Natural gas (for reformation) and
water needs
High-voltage direct current
transmission lines
Mature Copper Land use needs for transmission
lines
High-temperature supercon-
ducting cables
Demonstration None Land use needs for transmission
lines
Source: See endnote 34.
Renewable Energy’s Natural Resource Impacts | 95
Emerging battery technologies, including liquid-metal (sodium-sulfur)
batteries and vanadium redox flow batteries, are not yet commercialized
but hold promise for future renewable energy storage systems, including for
utility-scale generation up to 35 MW, a viable size for a wind farm, especially
if low-end cost estimates prove realistic.
Pumped Hydropower. Pumped hydropower uses excess electricity to
pump water from a lower to a higher reservoir during low-demand and
high-generation periods and then releases the stored water through a hy-
dropower turbine during peak demand periods, in effect turning intermit-
tent resources like wind and solar into on-demand baseload hydro energy
sources. Pumped hydro is a mature technology and can be used for utility
generation up to the GW scale for several hours of storage potential. Costs
vary widely, depending on the size and location of the plant.38
Pumped hydro systems are limited in their geographic scope to moun-
tainous landscapes with hydro resources. Furthermore, the sustainability
constraints of pumped hydropower are much the same as those for hydro-
power dams, including land use changes as well as human and ecosystem
impacts, especially in the case of large-scale systems. While pumped hydro-
power can provide sustainable energy storage on a case-by-case basis, its
potential for widespread implementation is limited.
Compressed Air Energy and Biogas Storage. Compressed air energy
storage is a mature technology that compresses air in tight underground
reservoirs during periods of low demand and releases and heats the air with
natural gas during peak demand periods, causing it to expand and drive
turbines to generate electricity. Like pumped hydro, it can provide storage
at the GW scale, but its potential is limited by the low availability of suitable
natural storage sites. Costs depend on location and are higher per unit of
storage for smaller systems. A number of projects are currently under way
that analyze the commercial feasibility of the use of gas (including biogas)
in specially designed appliances.39
Molten Salt Thermal Storage. Molten salt thermal storage systems are
used in conjunction with concentrating solar power generating facilities.
Molten salt absorbs and stores heat, which can be released to drive the CSP
system’s steam turbine during cloudy days or at night. Thermal storage can
be used for megawatt-scale CSP facilities and can store energy for up to two
days. Although molten salt storage is still in the demonstration stage, it has
the potential to be one of the more cost-effective storage options. Its storage
potential is largely limited to locations where CSP is a viable energy option.40
Molten salt storage requires large amounts of sodium and potassium ni-
trates. There is currently only one commercially exploited nitrate resource
in the world, in Chile, and the estimated reserve is insufficient to provide
12-hour storage to meet a significant share of global energy demand with
96 | State of the World 2013
CSP. This resource constraint can be eliminated through synthetic nitrate
production, although this would reduce the power output of CSP facilities,
as some energy would be reallocated for the production process.41
Hydrogen. Hydrogen is a potential energy storage option in the long-
term future, with applications for powering vehicles as well as storing
variable renewable generation up to the megawatt scale. Hydrogen can
be produced by the electrolysis of water or by reforming natural gas with
steam. Both processes require significant energy inputs. Hydrogen can be
produced with excess renewable generation, dispatching stored energy at
peak demand periods. Significant barriers remain to be addressed, how-
ever, including high costs, safety concerns, and issues relating to storage:
while hydrogen has high energy content by weight, it has a low energy
density by volume.42
Electrolysis and reformation to produce hydrogen consume water (0.27
and 0.56 liters per kWh respectively), both at or below the low range of
water consumption levels for conventional thermal power production.
From a sustainability perspective, electrolysis is the preferable technology
due to its lower water consumption and the requirement of natural gas for
reformation.43
Electricity Transmission and Distribution. Reliable integration of re-
newable energy generation into electricity grids is an essential aspect of a
future sustainable energy system, especially for utility-scale facilities. Ex-
tending the grid will result in environmental disturbance in the areas sur-
rounding new transmission lines. Much of this impact can be mitigated by
burying transmission cables, although this option is not as viable for high-
voltage lines.44
High-voltage direct current (HVDC) lines are considered one of the
most efficient means of long-distance transmission for moving electricity
from areas of strong renewable generation potentials to end users. HVDC
lines require large copper inputs, making copper availability a significant
challenge for a future efficient grid system. Even with copper recycling, the
need for new copper resources for HVDC lines, wind turbines, CSP facili-
ties, and grid connections for a renewable-powered world will require an
estimated 40 percent of total copper reserves, or the equivalent of 14 years
of global production at current levels. Aluminum requirements are not ex-
pected to add to the resource constraint, as only an estimated 1 percent of
global reserves are required for the necessary HVDC lines.45
High-temperature superconducting (HTS) cables provide another effi-
cient alternative and can transmit 10 times as much power over long distanc-
es as conventional copper transmission lines. Although HTS cable material
requirements include the rare earth element yttrium, this component is not
expected to pose a constraint to expanded use of HTS transmission. Yttrium
Renewable Energy’s Natural Resource Impacts | 97
reserves are sufficient to meet current production levels, and world yttrium
resources, although not yet quantified, are expected to be very large.46
Outlook for a Sustainable Renewable Energy System
As with all energy and infrastructure projects, renewable-energy develop-
ment must take environmental, resource, economic, and social constraints
into account in order to be truly sustainable. While material resource and en-
vironmental constraints pose a challenge to developing specific renewable en-
ergy systems in specific locations, these limitations can be overcome through
integrated energy planning, responsible environmental management, and the
implementation of clean and widely available substitute technologies.
The analysis in this chapter leads to three key conclusions. First, sustainable
renewable-energy planning should be integrated. A strong and efficient elec-
tricity grid can connect multiple generation sources over a broad geographic
area, which enables the integration of complementary renewable facilities.
For example, certain wind farms generate more energy during the morn-
ing and others generate more during the afternoon; likewise, different wind
resources have higher generation at different times of year. Different renew-
able resources such as wind and solar, which are each variable but often have
different times of peak production, can also be integrated. Combining these
complementary resources can go a long way to resolving renewable inter-
mittency and can create relatively consistent energy supply. Integration with
conventional energy technologies during the transition to a fully renewable
system is equally important. Natural gas, in particular, can act as an ally
of renewables due to its flexibility in dispatch, an advantage over coal and
nuclear energy.
Second, sustainable renewable-energy planning should be local. Decisions
for siting energy projects must be fully integrated with sustainable and just
land policies that ensure protection of ecologically sensitive areas, take into
account alternative land uses and environmental services, and fully respect
the rights of people living on or close to those lands. (See Box 8–2.) Renew-
able energy projects that would seriously compromise the surrounding envi-
ronment or threaten local communities should be abandoned or re-sited.47
Renewable energy developments should also be in complete accord with
priorities for sustainable water use to avoid large diversions of water from
natural systems and to preserve scarce resources for human needs. Water
scarcity already affects around 1.2 billion people globally, almost one fifth
of the world, and an additional 500 million people are at risk of scarcity. In
cases where renewable-resource strength is strong enough to justify project
development in water-scarce locations, alternative technologies (such as air
cooling) should be used to minimize water consumption.48
And third, sustainable renewable-energy planning should at the same
98 | State of the World 2013
time be global. This is certainly true for the climate crisis, which in the long
run can only be solved if all countries contribute to reducing energy-related
GHG emissions. But it is also true with regard to the worldwide availability
of scarce resources and the extensive environmental damage that can re-
sult from material production. Rare earth mining and processing in China,
for example, demonstrates the need for strict regulations as extraction of
these materials increases around the world for renewable energy, grid, and
storage technologies. Robust environmental protections are needed to pre-
vent further soil erosion, damage to vegetation and cropland, surface and
groundwater pollution, landslides, and clogged rivers. Governments must
not abandon unsustainable practices at home while accepting similar or
worse procedures elsewhere.49
Recycling regimes should be implemented and strengthened for the ma-
terials required for sustainable energy development that are already in wide
use today. These include bulk materials such as cement, copper, and steel as
well as rarer or toxic materials such as neodymium and cadmium.
The technical, economic, and resource challenges to transitioning to a
fully sustainable global energy system are enormous, but they can be fully
addressed with solutions that exist today. Rapidly declining renewable en-
ergy costs and the need to replace aging fossil fuel infrastructure present an
opportunity to rapidly usher in a new era of truly sustainable energy.
While globally the land area required to power the
world with renewable energy sources is minimal,
local land use impacts of individual projects can be
significant. Areas with strong renewable resources
can overlap with ecologically rare or sensitive areas
or with private or indigenous land rights. Some of
the strongest geothermal resources in the United
States, for example, are located on public land, but
regulations are in place to protect national parks and
wilderness areas from development. Clearing cropland
for biomass energy resources has caused devastating
deforestation in some rainforest nations, including
Malaysia and Indonesia. Transporting energy from new
renewable facilities can also have negative land use
impacts if transmission lines pass through forests or
other sensitive ecosystems.
With regard to local and indigenous land rights,
hydropower dams have flooded millions of homes in
China, Latin America, and elsewhere. As large wind,
solar, and other renewable generation expands,
increased land rights disputes can be expected that are
similar to existing conflicts over the siting of conven-
tional power plants and their transmission lines.
The extent to which environmental impacts of
renewable energy projects are mitigated and land
rights are respected depends on the strength and effec-
tiveness of the regulatory regime in place.
Source: See endnote 47.
Box 8–2. Land Use priorities and Land rights considerations
c h a p t e r 9
Conserving
Nonrenewable Resources
Gary Gardner
Gary Gardner is a senior fellow
at the Worldwatch Institute.
www.sustainabilitypossible.org
A 2012 study by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
(MIT) cast a long shadow across the otherwise bright future of clean tech-
nologies like wind power and electric cars. The study warned that global
supplies of neodymium, which is used in the magnets in wind turbines, and
dysprosium, used in electric vehicles, could soon be scarce in markets world-
wide as demand for clean technologies skyrockets. Demand for neodymium
could increase by 700 percent and demand for dysprosium by 2,600 per-
cent over the next 25 years, they calculated, if serious goals for reductions
in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are adopted. But it may be beyond the
capacity of markets to meet these levels of demand. These “rare earth el-
ements” are currently mined almost exclusively in China, which restricts
mining licenses and exports in an effort to conserve supplies.1
The challenge of sufficient market supply in the decades ahead is not
confined to little-known elements. It extends to more common resources,
such as phosphorus, a mineral critical to agriculture, and metals like copper
and gold. Because these resources are nonrenewable, a growing chorus of
analysts worries that whereas minerals and metals in the twentieth century
were easy to reach and cheap to extract, nonrenewables this century may be
increasingly scarce and costly to bring to market.2
Neodymium and dysprosium are not geologically scarce, it should be not-
ed, and as with many minerals, new sources are regularly identified. (Green-
land emerged as a possible new source of rare earth elements after the 2012
MIT study appeared.) The issue instead is the accessibility of metals and min-
erals and whether their extraction can continue to be profitable. Indeed, non-
renewable resources could become increasingly market-scarce this century
as a perfect storm of constraints—from declining resource quality to rising
prices for water, energy, and other inputs to extraction—begin to kick in. To-
gether, these constraints create a markedly more worrisome environment for
nonrenewable resources than the one that existed just a decade ago.3
Worldwatch Institute, State of the World 2013: Is Sustainability Still Possible?,
DOI 10.5822/ 978-1-61091-458-1_9, © 2013 by Worldwatch Institute
99
100 | State of the World 2013
Increasing Dependence on Nonrenewables
Nonrenewable materials are the blood and bones of industrial economies.
High-speed roads, multistory buildings, electronic gadgets, high-yield agri-
culture—these and myriad other achievements of industrial economies are
built on massive quantities of nonrenewable resources. Indeed, most mate-
rials flowing through industrial economies—in the United States the share
is 95 percent; in China, 88 percent—are nonrenewables, a stark contrast to
pre-industrial societies whose economies were dominated by wood, water,
plant fibers, animal skins, and other renewable resources.4
The rise of industrial economies in the twentieth century marked an ex-
ponential increase in the extraction of nonrenewable resources, from con-
struction gravel and agricultural minerals to base metals, precious metals,
and fuels. (See Figure 9–1.) Note in particular the very rapid rise in global
output since 2000, as economic growth in emerging economies in Asia and
Latin America has accelerated. Note, too, the minimal impact of the glob-
al recession of 2009: it slowed but did not reverse the use of nonrenew-
ables, and the pace quickly resumed once global economic output picked
up. Supply optimists are quick to
note, correctly, that the trend over
the last century was one of rising
output and falling prices—surely
conclusive evidence of plentiful
supply. But because of galloping
demand and emerging constraints
on supply, that run of abundance
could be coming to an end.5
Today many emerging indus-
trial economies in Asia and Latin
America are moving into a re-
source-intensive phase of indus-
trialization, as they build roads,
buildings, water and sewage sys-
tems, airports, power grids, irriga-
tion canals, railroads, and a host of
other works of infrastructure that
require enormous volumes of energy, metals, minerals, and other nonre-
newables. The increase in demand is huge: analysts at the McKinsey Global
Institute note that China and India “are experiencing roughly ten times
the economic acceleration of the Industrial Revolution, on 100 times the
scale”—because of their far larger populations—“resulting in an economic
force that is 1000 times as big.”6
Bi
lli
on
T
on
s
Source: Kelly and Matos
Figure 9–1. World Extraction of Nonrenewable Materials,
1901–2010
1900 1915 1930 1945 1960 1975 1990 20202005
0
2
4
6
8
10
Conserving Nonrenewable Resources | 101
Despite the run-up in resource demand, industrial nations continue to
build throw-away economies. Advances in recycling over the past 40 years have
been modest at best, as data for metals show. Whether measuring the share of
discarded metal that gets recycled (the end-of-life recycling rate) or the share
of newly manufactured metal that is recycled metal (recycled content), recy-
cling levels are mostly poor. More than half of 60 metals studied by the U.N.
Environment Programme have an end-of-life recycling rate of less than 1 per-
cent, and fewer than a third of the 60 are recycled at 50 percent or more.7
In sum, the voracious materials appetite of industrial countries, the rap-
id expansion of emerging industrial economies, and the ingrained modern
habit of using materials only once before they are discarded raise an urgent
question: Will the market supply of nonrenewable resources be plentiful and
affordable enough to meet human needs in the decades ahead?
Suggestions of Scarcity
Several signals suggest that market scarcity could
increasingly become the norm for nonrenewable
resources. The indicators include rapidly rising
prices for nonrenewables, the declining quality of
resources and difficulty accessing them, the rising
cost of inputs to mining and oil drilling, the grow-
ing environmental burden of extractive activity,
and the possibility that “net energy” will be insuf-
ficient to support mining and pumping.
In this chapter, scarcity refers to market scar-
city. (See Box 9–1.) While sometimes exacerbated
by declining geological supplies, market scarcity is
generally driven by economic, political, or other
constraining factors. Some of these are temporary
obstacles, but others are intractable and can render
resources as unavailable as if they were physically
depleted.
Rising Prices. The first worrisome development
suggestive of scarcity is the sharp upward trend in
the prices of nonrenewable resources starting in
2002. This is best appreciated in contrast to the
overall decline in prices during the last century.
U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) data for 86 metals
and minerals show an average price decline of 0.9
percent annually between 1900 and 2001; for metals, a subset of the 86, the
average annual decline was 1.4 percent. But between 2002 and 2010, prices
of the 86 resources increased annually by 6.4 percent and those for metals
The term scarcity brings up images of physical insuf-
ficiency and raises the specter of “running out.” But a
range of issues can limit supply long before a resource
is exhausted. Often the tightest constraint on sup-
ply is cost: if the energy needed to extract a resource
becomes too expensive, or if environmental regulations
prohibit cheap extraction methods, or if low-quality
minerals require extensive processing to be economi-
cally useful, the resources may become too expensive
to tap. Political considerations may affect supply as well.
Some nations prohibit exploitation of key nonrenew-
able resources, preferring to tap overseas supplies and
treating their own endowment as a strategic reserve. In
either case, market supply is constrained and resources
can be described as scarce, even if they remain geologi-
cally abundant.
On the other hand, resource availability can increase
even as a resource is being depleted. Advances in
drilling or mineral processing, for example, can lower
the cost of extraction and increase supplies. Similarly,
recycling can increase resource supplies and reduce
market scarcity.
Box 9–1. What is Scarcity?
102 | State of the World 2013
went up 11 percent. So great was the change of fortune that rising prices
over the eight-year period entirely canceled the price declines of the twen-
tieth century. Although some prices softened in 2012 because of a slowing
Chinese economy, this is likely temporary; the pressure on prices could well
resume with renewed demand.8
Supply optimists argue that the recent run-up in prices is merely an
anomaly in the century-long trend of downward prices and that the run-up
is driven by speculation and hoarding. But Jeremy Grantham, chief strate-
gist at the investment firm GMO and a student of resource trends, uses
statistical analysis to counter this argument. He has found that for 27 of
the 33 commodities he studied, there is less than a 3-percent probability
that their sharp increases in price over the past decade are an extension of
the twentieth-century trend of declining prices. For the 11 commodities
with the greatest price rises, the odds are less than one tenth of 1 percent
that they are part of the old trend. He concludes that humanity has entered
a new era of global resource use in which commodities will no longer be
cheap and abundant.9
The drop in prices during the last century was largely the result of pro-
ductivity gains that outpaced the rise in extraction costs. But these costs have
recently risen as metals and minerals have become more difficult to get to
and as their quality has declined. Lower-quality and less-accessible ores often
require more processing to coax out smaller quantities of metal, which adds
to costs. And contrary to the expectations of supply optimists, increasing
prices are not prompting similar increases in output. In Australia between
1989–90 and 2005–06, for example, prices in the mining sector increased by
an average 9 percent annually (with the greatest increases occurring since
2000), whereas the tonnage of materials increased by only 3 percent.10
Ore Grade Declines. A second indication of growing scarcity, at least with
regard to metals, is the decline in ore grade—that is, the shrinking share of
desired metals in mined rock. The downward trend in ore quality is not new;
it extends back decades for many metals, and more than a century for some.
But ore grade attracted little attention among policymakers during the past
century when metals extraction was robust and prices were falling.
No publicly available dataset exists to document a decline in ore grades
for all metals across the entire world, but leading research demonstrates that
the problem is widespread. Gavin Mudd of Monash University in Austra-
lia, whose research on mining covers a broad range of metals, documents
long-term ore grade declines for gold in the United States, South Africa,
Brazil, and Canada (see Figure 9–2) and for nickel in Canada and Russia. He
finds similar declining ore values in Australia for copper, nickel, uranium,
lead, zinc, silver, gold, iron, diamonds, and bauxite. While ore grades can in-
crease as new discoveries, new technologies, or new techniques open access
Conserving Nonrenewable Resources | 103
to high-grade ores, increases in ore grade are fewer and smaller as mining
matures in each nation—and the long-term trend over several decades is al-
most always a decline in ore grades. Mudd concludes that “based on known
deposits, it is hard to envisage new discoveries or mining techniques leading
to ore grades rising in the future.”11
Environmental Costs. Lower-grade minerals can have greater environ-
mental impact, in terms of both inputs and pollutants. Consider water,
which is often needed in greater supply as ore grades decline, although the
particular characteristics of a mine—open pit versus underground, for ex-
ample, or the chemistry of the particular metal and even water quality and
climate—also affect the quantity of water needed. The inverse relationship
between declining ore grades and increased water use has been documented
in Mudd’s research for a number of metals. (See Table 9–1.) 12
As long as the energy used in
mining is fossil in origin, greater
energy use will typically drive
greater emissions of greenhouse
gases—and all the more as ore
grades decline. Gavin Mudd uses
a rough-cut analysis to show that
a decline in ore grade of copper
from 0.95 percent in 2008 to 0.40
percent in 2050 would be associ-
ated with easily a doubling (and
very possibly much more) of GHG
table 9–1. relationship between Ore Grade and Water Use
Metal Ore Grade embodied Water
(percent) (cubic meters per ton of metal)
Lead-zinc 10–15 29
Copper 1–2 172
Uranium 0.04–0.3 505
Source: See endnote 12.
G
ol
d
G
ra
de
(g
/t
A
u)
Source: Mudd
Figure 9–2. Gold Grade, Selected Countries, 1835–2010
1830 1850 1870 1890 1910 1930 1950 1970 1990 2010
Brazil
United States
South
Africa
Australia
Canada
0
10
20
30
40
50
general trend
104 | State of the World 2013
emissions from copper mining just when policymakers are struggling to re-
duce emissions by 50–80 percent below 2000 levels. Meeting these ambitious
GHG goals would require emissions cuts per ton of copper of at least 75
percent. Unless these reductions are made through much greater efficiency,
they will depend on a scaling back of mining.13
Declining ore grades and increasingly inaccessible minerals are driving
a trend toward ever-larger mines in which greater tonnages of waste rock
are generated per ton of metal extracted. At the Rossing uranium mine in
Namibia, expansion of the open pit mine to maintain production led to an
increase in the annual generation of waste rock from 7.5 tons in 2005 to
42 tons in 2010. Today waste rock tonnage can often be at least as great as
the tonnage of ore mined, and sometimes it is several times greater—3.5
times greater in the case of Rossing—which can mean more remediation
after a mine is closed. Indeed, the growing environmental cost of operating
ever-larger mines is yet another factor that could constrain mining output
in the future.14
Scarce and Expensive Inputs. Tight supplies of inputs to the extraction
of nonrenewable resources could hamper mining and pumping activities.
Energy is the input of greatest concern, particularly as awareness increases
of “peak oil” and the finite nature of fossil fuels. Materials analyst Andre
Diederen notes that while “the absolute amount of various metal minerals
in the earth’s crust are large beyond imagination,” the bulk of these minerals
“might as well not be there” because of the energy required to extract them.
Because minerals extraction is so directly tied to availability of cheap energy,
Diederen expects that the global peak in net energy production by the mid-
2020s will also bring about the peak of global minerals production, as many
minerals simply become too energy-intensive to get access to.15
The problem is made worse by declining ore grades, which increase the
energy needed to find, extract, and process minerals. In Australia, for ex-
ample, the energy intensity of mining—the amount of energy needed to
produce a ton of metal or mineral—increased by 3.7 percent annually be-
tween 1989–90 and 2005–06, largely because of the shift to lower-grade and
more-remote resources that require more energy-intensive technologies, ac-
cording to government officials.16
Metals output faces an ore-grade governed “mineralogical barrier”—the
grade at which the energy needed to continue mining becomes prohibi-
tively expensive. For copper (Cu), a long-standing estimate of the mineral-
ogical barrier is 0.1 percent Cu. This is below the global average ore grade
for copper of 0.62 percent Cu. But economic impacts begin to kick in well
before the mineralogical barrier is reached. The energy intensity of copper
production begins to increase as ore grades approach 1 percent Cu (that is,
10 times higher than the mineralogical barrier) and grows exponentially
Conserving Nonrenewable Resources | 105
below 0.25 Cu. Reaching the mineralog-
ical barrier for copper may be decades
away, but the economic consequences
should appear sooner.17
Thus, two reinforcing trends are rac-
ing toward a collision that could trans-
late to declining market availability of
minerals in the near to medium term:
energy scarcity could well limit minerals
output even as declining ore values re-
quire ever-greater inputs of energy.
But a third compounding trend is in
play as well, known as the “energy return
on energy invested” (EROI). (See Chap-
ter 7.) The power of the EROI argument
lies in its compelling logic: drilling for
oil or digging for coal makes little sense if the energy required for extraction
is greater than the energy extracted—that is, if the energy return on energy
invested is negative.
Indeed, analysts suggest that the energy invested in pumping and drill-
ing is growing rapidly while the yields of wells and mines decline: the EROI
is dipping to worrisome levels. Cutler Cleveland of Boston University has
found that the EROI of oil and gas in the United States declined from 100:1
in 1930 (which means that the energy in 1 barrel of oil could pump out 100
barrels) to 30:1 in 1970 and 11:1 in 2000. In other words, more and more en-
ergy is needed to extract the same amount of energy content as companies
drill or dig deeper or as they extract lower-quality resources that need to be
processed more extensively.18
The implications are sobering. The surplus, or net, energy—the energy
liberated from mines or wells after an energy investment of a barrel of oil
or a ton of coal—was the life force for the extraordinary economic, techno-
logical, social, and other advances of the last two centuries. Without exag-
geration, that surplus energy is the foundation of our civilization. Now, as
a growing share of extracted energy is needed to extract even more energy,
less surplus energy is available for all other economic activity—including
mining and other extractive activities.
Worse still, the break-even EROI may actually be much higher than 1:1.
Charles Hall of the State University of New York calculates the minimum
EROI for transportation fuels as 3:1, after accounting for the energy need-
ed to process the fuel, build the machinery to use it (say, a car), and build
and maintain the infrastructure (highways) needed by the machinery. But
economic disruptions could arrive well before the 3:1 threshold is reached.
Pit of the Prominent Hill copper, silver, and gold mine in South Australia.
G
eo
m
ar
tin
106 | State of the World 2013
Hall’s modeling suggests that price increases associated with a declining
EROI start to accelerate when EROI reaches roughly 10:1—very close to the
11:1 EROI that Cleveland calculated for 2000. Once the price-acceleration
threshold of various fossil fuels is reached, the viability of every process that
uses fossil energy is called into serious question.19
Another little-recognized dynamic that could affect extractive activity is
the growing tendency of price increases in one resource to spread to others.
The McKinsey Global Institute reports that prices across four commodity
categories—energy, metals, agricultural raw materials, and food—are more
closely connected than at any time in the past century. This means that the
price of inputs, such as water and energy, can move together to drive up
mining costs.20
Creating a Circular Economy
Emerging indications of tight resource supplies require a comprehensive
societal effort to conserve remaining stocks and be smarter about resource
use. The challenge is to increase resource productivity markedly, similar to
the increases in labor productivity over the past 100 years—about 1 percent
annually in the first half of the last century, then 2–3 percent a year after
1950. This may well be achievable: analysts have long asserted that fivefold
increases in material productivity are possible in industrial economies—if
policymakers make this a priority. The key is to decouple resource use from
economic growth.21
One conceptual framework for large and steady increases in resource
productivity, known as a “circular economy,” emphasizes meeting economic
needs using a minimum of natural resources. By eliminating the wasteful
one-way flow of resources that characterizes industrial economies today, a
circular economy reduces the need for virgin resources and the environ-
mental degradation associated with extractive activities. Creating a circular
economy requires resource policies designed to conserve nonrenewables, as
well as policies that generate more-intelligent patterns of production and
consumption.
A circular economy features intelligent policies that treat nonrenewable
resources for what they are: scarce and finite assets. Removal of public sub-
sidies for nonrenewable minerals and fuels, such as the $600 million to $1
trillion in public subsidies paid by governments to fossil fuel companies,
is a logical place to start, because such subsidies encourage use of nonre-
newable resources and the environmental problems created by extractive
activities. The European Commission has set a goal of eliminating envi-
ronmentally harmful subsidies by 2020, and in 2009 and 2010 the Group of
20 industrial nations and Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation announced
that they would end fossil fuel subsidies. Steps like these are helpful, and if
Conserving Nonrenewable Resources | 107
expanded to cover all nonrenewable resources, they would help create an
ethic of conservation.22
Indeed, far from being subsidized, nonrenewable resources arguably
should be taxed at their source—at the mine shaft and the oil well—to en-
courage conservation. Many countries already tax
mining—but not at levels that discourage use of
virgin nonrenewables and encourage development
of a sophisticated infrastructure for materials re-
cycling and product remanufacturing (including,
perhaps, landfill mining—see Box 9–2). High tax-
es, along with programs that help mining compa-
nies convert to recycling activities, would help cre-
ate employment (recycling is more labor-intensive
than mining) and would husband virgin mineral
stocks for the future.23
Beyond the mining sector, governments can
take steps to create an ethic of resource conser-
vation throughout their economies. In 2011 the
European Commission released Roadmap to a Re-
source Efficient Europe, which seeks to ensure that
by 2020 “waste” is essentially an obsolete concept,
with discarded material fed back into the economy
as raw materials. One tool to this end is “take-
back” laws under which producers re-assume re-
sponsibility for products at the end of their useful
lives. Such laws create a strong incentive for com-
panies to reduce the materials used in products
and packaging and to make them recyclable or re-
manufacturable. These practices typically save ma-
terials and energy: a 2009 report noted that studies
at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and
in Germany have found that some 85 percent of
the energy and materials embodied in a product
are preserved in remanufacturing.24
Take-back laws and other reuse and recycling initiatives require proper
infrastructure in order to collect, separate, recycle, and reuse materials. San
Francisco built a waste collection infrastructure that accommodates recycla-
bles, compostables, and trash as an essential step to achieving its “zero waste
to landfills” goal by 2020. As of 2012, some 78 percent of materials collected
in that city are recovered for composting or recycling—compared with 34
percent for the United States as a whole. Next, products must be designed
for recycling, like the parts on BMW automobiles that are bar-coded with
The need to conserve virgin nonrenewable resources
and tap existing resources raises an intriguing question:
can landfills be mined? The potential appears to be
enormous—the USGS reported in 2005 that landfills in
the United States alone contain enough steel to build
11,000 Golden Gate bridges. Landfill mining has been
proposed periodically since the 1950s, but it is regularly
rejected for reasons of cost.
Yet it is already happening. A waste management
firm in
Belgium
has begun excavation of the Remo
Milieubeheer landfill some 80 kilometers east of Brus-
sels. Its aim is to recycle 45 percent of the site’s 16.5 mil-
lion tons of content, convert residues into construction
materials, and siphon off methane from the landfill to
generate electricity—enough to power 200,000 homes
over the 20-year life of the project, according to the
firm. It will then return the land to nature.
A number of factors make the Belgian landfill proj-
ect viable, including the high price of metals and other
materials, the fact that the landfill is well mapped (so
that they know the location of various types of refuse),
rising demand for recycled products, and government
subsidies in the form of renewable energy credits. But
the firm believes the Belgian project is the way of the
future, and it is working to interest other authorities
worldwide in landfill mining.
Source: See endnote 23.
Box 9–2. can Landfills Be Mined?
108 | State of the World 2013
information about metal content and recycling possibilities. Finally, tech-
nologies for materials separation and recycling must be improved to make
recycling more economical.25
But building a circular economy also requires attention to production
and consumption patterns. Businesspeople, policymakers, and analysts
have come up with an array of creative ideas for giving consumers what
they need at reduced levels of materials use. Table 9–2 summarizes many
of these initiatives.26
Because consumerism is a strong driver of resource use, policies are
needed to steer consumption in resource-light directions. These could in-
clude taxing consumption rather than income (with a design that protects
consumption of basics such as food and shelter), subsidizing solar panels
table 9–2. Innovative practices that reduce consumption of Materials and energy
Innovation Description Example
Services in place
of goods
Focus is on the service
a consumer needs,
rather than a good
Car sharing gives participants access to a private automobile
without requiring them to own one. A survey of more than 6,000
car-sharing participants in North America found that cars per
household fell from 0.47 to 0.24 after signing up for car sharing.
Eco-industrial
parks
Discards from one
production process
become inputs to
another
China is particularly ambitious, having created more than 50 eco-
industrial parks. In Guigang City, wastes from a sugar refinery, paper
plant, cement mill, thermo-electric plant, and local farms are used
as inputs to other industrial operations.
Whole system
design
One process serves
multiple purposes
Cogeneration uses the waste heat from electricity generation to
heat and cool buildings and to heat water, achieving energy effi-
ciencies of 65–75 percent compared with 45 percent when electric-
ity generation and heating/cooling are provided separately.
Intelligent design Advantages are sought
wherever possible
Bus rapid transit (BRT) systems, conceived in Brazil, offer the high-
speed advantages of a subway system at the lower cost of surface
transportation. Passengers prepay and can board quickly, and buses
have dedicated lanes and driver control of stoplights. By making
public transport more attractive and affordable, BRT reduces the
demand for material-intensive private cars.
Shared use Goods serve multiple
users
Dozens of tool libraries, toy libraries, and other sharing institutions
give people access to infrequently used goods. Portland, Oregon,
has three tool libraries, for example.
Competitive
efficiency
Efficiency improve-
ments are bench-
marked and ratcheted
upward
A Japanese government program designates the most energy-
efficient consumer products as Top Runners and challenges all
products to meet the Top Runner standard within five years. Goals
for 21 major energy-using consumer products have been met—
and often exceeded.
Source: See endnote 26.
Conserving Nonrenewable Resources | 109
and other technologies that shift consumption away from nonrenewables,
and using government procurement power to expand the market for goods
with high recycled content or with other sustainability advantages. Conser-
vation of nonrenewables will not happen without rethinking the dominant
model of consumerist-driven economies.
The challenge of conserving nonrenewable resources is great, and it will
require long-term thinking and a new conservation ethic among policymak-
ers and publics. Whether people in the twenty-first century are up to the
task remains to be seen. Jeremy Grantham of the investment firm GMO
observes, with sadness and deep irony, that investing in increasingly market-
scarce nonrenewable resources could prove profitable in the decades ahead,
even as the prospects for human civilization decline. The challenge is to re-
verse incentives, rules, and other structures that cause us to be myopic us-
ers of resources and replace them with principles and practices that would
make our children, and their children, grateful and proud.27
The Krupp Bagger 288 is the world’s biggest bucket wheel excavator and one of the biggest vehicles ever built.
M
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Getting to True Sustainability
Despite scattered attempts to impute progress on climate change to the U.N.
summit in Rio de Janeiro in June 2012, the consensus persists that it pro-
duced lots of gaseous talk and no significant action—leaving, according to
one cartoonist, Rio’s statue of Christ the Redeemer gasping for purer air.
Climate change is only the most prominent environmental trend that
threatens sustainability; the first section of this book details several other ar-
eas where humanity seems to be overdrawing its accounts with nature. Yet we
are hardly helpless. This section samples a variety of measures that, if pur-
sued vigorously, could set us on a sustainable path. Indeed, had we done so
after the first Rio summit 20 years ago, we would be well down that path now.
A long first stride would be jettisoning consumer cultures. As Erik
Assadourian writes, consumerism has turned out to undermine both hu-
man well-being and the planet’s life-support functions. But it is a willfully
engineered way of living, supported by enormous sums spent annually on
advertising, subsidies, tax breaks, and public relations. We can, and must,
replace it with a culture of sustainability.
Many cultural options might qualify as sustainable, but certain attributes
seem critical. Robert Costanza and his coauthors argue for an economy that
focuses on human well-being rather than on economic growth as an end in
itself. Pavan Sukhdev urges sharp reforms of corporations—the main agents
Getting to True Sustainability | 111
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112 | State of the World 2013
of the “brown economy”—which account for 60 percent of global gross do-
mestic product but also generate trillions of dollars of externalities and exert
pernicious influence on national policies. Jeff Hohensee describes the efforts
of international accounting agencies to build externality disclosure into rou-
tine corporate reporting—an important step in the right direction.
Energy is perhaps the most daunting challenge before us. In a real sense,
fossil energy is the author of modern civilization—but now threatens to de-
stroy it. The only solution, say Thomas Princen and his colleagues, is to take
a true precautionary approach and leave fossil fuels in the ground by “dele-
gitimizing” them, as happened with slavery and smoking. In their place, we
must rapidly transition to renewables, and T. W. Murphy tallies the pros and
cons of solar, wind, biomass, and other alternatives. He notes, however, that
they are inferior in many respects to fossil fuels and warns against delaying
the renewable transition so long that it diverts too much energy from other
uses. In any case, such a transition will falter absent serious efficiency efforts,
and Phillip Saieg reminds us that buildings remain a neglected but highly
promising sector for those.
Like energy, global agriculture is at a turning point. Danielle Nierenberg
notes that 1.5 billion people are overweight while billions of others are hun-
gry or malnourished, all while the system wastes staggering amounts of food.
Agriculture can help solve multiple problems through reducing food waste,
promoting agroecological approaches to farming, and focusing on nutrient-
rich, indigenous foods rather than high-calorie commodified foods. Those
indigenous foods are stewarded by native peoples all over the globe, and
in separate chapters Melissa Nelson and Rebecca Adamson (with her co-
authors) make the case that the ongoing mistreatment of native peoples is
not only unjust but shortsighted, as it threatens loss of valuable knowledge
of key biodiversity habitats and ways of living sustainably in them.
Finally, how to achieve these changes? If civilizational survival is not
motivation enough, Kathleen Moore and Michael Nelson believe that eco-
disasters are violations of human rights and principles of justice. Dwight
Collins and his coauthors suggest that an appreciation of humanity’s place
in the universe, through the teaching of Big History, can support effective
planet-wide action.
In the end it boils down to politics. Melissa Leach offers strategies for
bridging and connecting top-down and bottom-up approaches and stresses
deliberation, citizen mobilization, network building, and the shrewd exploi-
tation of political openings. Creating such a movement, says Annie Leonard,
requires the realization that individual actions are “a fine place to start” but
“a terrible place to stop.” They must be linked to organized political action,
to “bigger visions and bolder campaigns” for broad change.
—Tom Prugh
Erik Assadourian is a senior
fellow at Worldwatch Institute
and director of the Transform-
ing Cultures Project. He is
codirector of State of the
World 2013.
www.sustainabilitypossible.org
At the heart of how humans live their lives are the cultures they are part
of. These cultures—and the norms, stories, rituals, values, symbols, and
traditions that they incorporate—guide nearly all of our choices, from
what we eat and how we raise our children to how we work, move, play,
and celebrate. Unfortunately, consumerism—a cultural pattern that was
nurtured by a nexus of business and government leaders over the past
few centuries—has now spread around the globe, becoming the dominant
paradigm across most cultures. More people are defining themselves first
and foremost through how they consume and are striving to own or use
ever more stuff, whether in fashion, food, travel, electronics, or countless
other products and services.1
But consumerism is not a viable cultural paradigm on a planet whose
systems are deeply stressed and that is currently home to 7 billion people,
let alone on a planet of 8–10.6 billion people, the population the United
Nations projects for 2050. Ultimately, to create a sustainable human civili-
zation—one that can thrive for millennia without degrading the planet on
which we all depend—consumer cultures will have to be re-engineered into
cultures of sustainability, so that living sustainably feels as natural as living
as a consumer does today.2
Granted, this is no easy task. It will and is being resisted by myriad in-
terests that have a huge stake in sustaining the global consumer culture—
from the fossil fuel industry and big agribusiness to food processors, car
manufacturers, advertisers, and so on. But given that consumerism and the
consumption patterns it fuels are not compatible with the flourishing of a
living planetary system, either we find ways to wrestle our cultural patterns
out of the grip of those with a vested interest in maintaining consumerism
or Earth’s ecosystems decline and bring down the consumer culture for the
vast majority of humanity in a much crueler way.
c h a p t e r 1 0
Re-engineering Cultures to
Create a Sustainable Civilization
Erik Assadourian
Worldwatch Institute, State of the World 2013: Is Sustainability Still Possible?,
DOI 10.5822/ 978-1-61091-458-1_10, © 2013 by Worldwatch Institute
113
114 | State of the World 2013
Consuming the Planet
In 2008, people around the world used 68 billion tons of materials, includ-
ing metals and minerals, fossil fuels, and biomass. That is an average of 10
tons per person—or 27 kilograms each and every day. That same year, hu-
manity used the biocapacity of 1.5 planets, consuming far beyond what the
Earth can sustainably provide.3
Of course, not every human consumes at the same level. While the aver-
age Southeast Asian used 3.3 tons of materials in 2008, the average North
American used 27.5 tons—eight times as much. And the spread of consum-
erism has driven many regions to dramatically accelerate material consump-
tion. Asia used 21.1 billion tons of materials in 2008, up 450 percent from
the 4.7 billion tons that the region used in 198
0.4
This vast differentiation in consumption is often explained as simply a
difference in development levels—with growth in consumption trends rou-
tinely celebrated by leading newspapers, policymakers, and economists, re-
gardless of the current size of the host economy. In reality, however, such
high levels of consumption often undermine the well-being of high-income
consumers themselves, while also deeply undermining humanity’s long-
term well-being and security.
The United States, for example, now suffers from an obesity epidemic
in which two thirds of Americans are overweight or obese. This leads to
significant increases in mortality and morbidity from a variety of chronic,
diet-related diseases like diabetes, heart disease, and several forms of can-
cer. Worse, obesity has reached a point that it is affecting children and
even shortening the average American life span, not to mention costing
the United States $270 billion a year in additional health care costs and
lost productivity.5
Beyond the personal impact, this obesity epidemic—which has spread
around the world, with 1.9 billion people now overweight or obese glob-
ally and suffering similar health impacts—adds significantly to the demands
humanity puts on Earth. Obesity has added an extra 5.4 percent of human
biomass to the planet—15.5 million tons of human flesh—which means
that people are eating enough extra food each year to feed an additional 242
million people of healthy weight. And obesity is just one manifestation of
the ills of overconsumption, to which we could add urban sprawl, traffic,
air pollution from automobiles and factories, and dependence on a growing
number of pharmaceutical drugs like anti-depressants.6
Consuming at such high levels is depleting the capacity of Earth to pro-
vide vital ecosystem services—from a stable climate, due to the profligate
use of fossil fuels and consumption of meat, to provision of freshwater and
fish, through pollution by chemicals and plastics. And as high consump-
Re-engineering Cultures to Create a Sustainable Civilization | 115
tion levels are promoted as ways to increase well-being, development, and
economic growth, these pressures only increase. Indeed, if all humans con-
sumed like Americans, the earth could sustain only about one quarter of the
human population without undermining the planet’s biocapacity. But even
if everyone only consumed like the average Chinese, the planet could sustain
just 84 percent of today’s population.7
Why are people consuming so much? The answer cannot be simply be-
cause they can afford to. In short, it stems from decades of engineering of
a set of cultural norms, values, traditions, symbols, and stories that make it
feel natural to consume ever larger amounts—of food, of energy, of stuff.
Policymakers changed laws, marketers and the media cultivated desire, busi-
nesses created and aggressively pushed new products, and over time “con-
sumers” deeply internalized this new way of living.8
In a majority of societies today, consumerism feels so natural that it is
hard to even imagine a different cultural model. Certain goods and ser-
vices—from air conditioning and large homes to cars, vacation travel, and
pets—are seen as a right, even an entitlement. Yet it is these and countless
other lifestyle choices that in the aggregate are undermining the well-being
of countless humans, today and for centuries into the future.9
Moving away from consumerism—now propped up by more than $500
billion in annual advertising expenditures, by hundreds of billions of dol-
lars in government subsidies and tax breaks, billions more in lobbying and
public relations spending, and the momentum of generations of living the
consumer dream—will undoubtedly be the most difficult part of the transi-
tion to a sustainable society. Especially if, as analysts predict, an additional 1
billion consumers join the global consumer class by 2025.10
But ultimately consumerism will decline whether people act proactive-
ly or not, as human society has far transcended Earth’s limits. Our profli-
gate use of fossil fuels has all but guaranteed an increase in average global
temperatures of 2 degrees Celsius, and current projections suggest that
unless a dramatic shift in policies and behaviors occurs, an increase of 4
degrees Celsius or more by the end of this century, or even mid-century,
is possible.11
These vast climatic changes will bring unprecedented heat waves, mega-
storms, massive droughts, dramatic floods, population displacements, and
the deaths of tens, even hundreds of millions of people—not to mention
political instability. (See Chapter 31.) None of these are conducive to the
perpetuation of a global consumer culture, though surely a small elite will
still be able to maintain the materialistic version of “the good life.” Ideally,
however, we will not accept this as our likely future but instead will grapple
with the main challenge of our times: re-engineering human cultures to be
inherently sustainable. (See Box 10–1.)12
116 | State of the World 2013
Learning from Past Greatness
Keep in mind that cultures are always changing in large ways and small—
sometimes organically and other times intentionally with a push in certain
directions, whether driven by religious, political, technological, or other
forces. There have been many spectacular beneficial cultural shifts in recent
history: slavery was abolished in the United States, apartheid disappeared in
South Africa, women have equal representation in many societies, fascism
was defeated in Western Europe. Of course, some of these shifts required
military power, not just “people power,” and none of the victories is guaran-
teed to stay with us indefinitely without vigilance. But perhaps the biggest
cultural transformation of all—one often overlooked but in reality one to
draw inspiration from—was the initial engineering of consumerism.
At first there was resistance to the introduction of some elements of
When discussing the transition beyond consumerism,
opponents often conjure up a return to hunting and
gathering and living in caves. In reality, if proactive—
that is, if we do not wait until Earth’s systems are irre-
vocably degraded—humanity can maintain a decent
quality of life for all (and not just current consumers) at
a much lower level of impact.
Roland Stulz and Tanja Lütolf of Novatlantis looked
at what an equitable and sustainable consumption
level would look like. They found that from an energy
perspective—with a commitment to move to a sustain-
able energy paradigm based on renewables (admittedly
a big qualifier)—the average human could continu-
ously use 2,000 watts of energy (or 17,520 kilowatt-
hours per year) for all of his or her needs, including,
food, transportation, water, services, and possessions.
This is the current global average energy use—but it
is unequally divided, with people in industrial countries
using far more, such as in the United States, which uses
six times this amount per person. What does living off
this amount of energy look like?
One Australian researcher and inventor, Saul Griffith,
analyzed a 2,000-watt lifestyle at a personal level and
found that he would need to own one tenth as much
stuff and make it last 10 times as long, that he would
have to fly rarely, drive infrequently (and mostly in
efficient vehicles fully loaded with passengers), and
become six-sevenths vegetarian.
Put simply, a 2,000-watt lifestyle looks like the way
much of the world lives today, or better, but gone
are the celebrated entitlements of the high-income
lifestyle—79 kilograms of meat a year (2.5 servings a
day), nearly daily access to a private car (often with only
one passenger), air-conditioned homes, family pets, and
unfettered access to flights around the world. In truth,
these luxuries will no longer be routinely accessible to
the vast majority of people in a truly sustainable society,
though they may be available as rarer treats, like the
once-every-three-years flight to visit his parents that
Saul Griffith factored in to his new energy allowance.
Sometimes these lost consumer luxuries will be diffi-
cult sacrifices to accept after a lifetime with free access to
them, though rarer consumption of luxuries may actually
make them more enjoyable, like escaping to a cool café
on a very hot day or enjoying meat on special occasions.
But offsetting these lost consumer luxuries will in all
likelihood be improved health, more free time, less stress,
a strengthening of community ties (as people rely on
each other instead of on privatized services), and—most
important—a stop to the decline of major ecosystems
on which a stable human civilization depends.
Source: See endnote 12.
Box 10–1. What Would a culture of Sustainability Look Like?
Re-engineering Cultures to Create a Sustainable Civilization | 117
consumerism. For example, the first generation of factory workers typi-
cally chose to work fewer hours when receiving raises, not buy more stuff.
The purpose of life, after all, was not to spend most of a person’s waking
hours in hot, dangerous conditions, away from family and community. This
resistance could be seen over and over: to disposable goods that were in-
troduced in the 1950s, which went against the cultural norm of thrift that
had been so important to family survival; even to the switch from oil lamps
to gas lights, which to some seemed unnaturally bright and “glaring.” But
over time people got used to new products, some of which did indeed im-
prove life quality and many of which were at least marketed as such by clever
entrepreneurs and a new advertising industry. Eventually we could hardly
imagine life without an abundance of products. Three sectors deserve spe-
cial recognition for so effectively shifting (and continuing to shift) cultural
norms around transportation, food, and even relationships—and in turn,
even if unintentionally, helping to engineer a global consumer culture.13
The automobile industry offers an excellent case study on how to change
cultural norms. Car companies used nearly every societal institution to shift
transportation norms and even our understanding of the street, which be-
fore cars came along was understood as multimodal—shared by humans,
horses, carts, and trolleys. A combination of tactics shifted this norm.
Automobile companies bought up city trolley systems and disman-
tled them. They distributed propaganda (disguised as safety educational
materials) in schools, teaching children from an early age that the street
was built for cars, not them. Companies helped create and finance citizen
groups to oppose people who were concerned with the spread of cars and
the accidents they were causing. They even helped local police forces fine,
arrest, or shame pedestrians who crossed streets wherever they wanted to
(known today as “jaywalkers”—a word that was intentionally spread by
car companies and their allies), helping to further establish the car as the
dominant user of streets. And of course they spent huge sums marketing
cars as sexy, fun, and liberating. Today the car industry spends $31 billion
a year just in the United States on advertising and has effectively exported
car culture to developing countries—like China, where the automobile fleet
has grown from less than 10 million to 73 million in just 11 years—using
lessons learned in earlier successes.14
The fast-food industry provides another good example. Serving over 69
million people around the world every day, McDonald’s is a global power.
So it may come as a surprise that less than a century ago the hamburger—
today’s iconic American meal—was a taboo food, unsafe, unclean, and eaten
only by the poor. But technological changes, including the assembly line and
the automobile, helped make the conditions right for a transformation in
how we eat: quickly, on the go, and out of the home. McDonald’s not only
118 | State of the World 2013
seized on this, it accelerated the transformation, retraining the palates of
entire generations of Americans and now the 119 countries in which the
company operates.15
McDonald’s did not just create a cheap and tasty food, it effectively tar-
geted children to get them to eat at McDonald’s early on—shaping their
palate for both the company’s food and the high-sugar, high-salt, high-fat
consumer diet. McDonald’s was one of the earliest companies to market to
children. It created cartoon characters to appeal to kids, including the glob-
ally recognized clown, Ronald McDonald. The company built playgrounds
in its restaurants and offered toys in its kids’ meals to get children excited to
go to McDonald’s (and to pressure their parents to bring them), even before
they had acquired a taste for the food. Add to that the more than $2 billion
in global advertising the company spends each year, and the sheer economic
and political power today to keep its prices low (through lobbying and com-
modity purchasing power), and you have a powerful shaper of cultural and
dietary norms that has a global and even generational reach.16
The third relevant case study is the pet industry. In India, dog ownership
has grown significantly in recent years. In part this has been driven by de-
mographic changes that include later marriages and increasing social isola-
tion, but the obvious solution to this did not have to be pet ownership. Yet
a global pet industry, recognizing an opportunity to grow, worked to stoke
this enormous potential new market. It is part of the larger industry effort to
transform pets into family members so that more people will buy pets and
that owners will spend more on them (which industry and many owners call
their “children”).17
And it has worked. People spend more than $58 billion on pet food each
year around the world. Americans spend another $11.8 billion on pet sup-
plies annually—with nearly $2 billion of that on just cat litter, adding up
to billions of pounds of litter annually diverted to landfills—and $13.4 bil-
lion on veterinarian care that is often more sophisticated than most humans
have access to. Considering the ecological impact of the millions of dogs and
cats (133 million dogs and 162 million cats in just the top five dog- and cat-
owning countries in the world), this is not just another curious consumer
trend. Two German Shepherds have a larger ecological footprint from their
food requirements alone than a person in Bangladesh does in total. And un-
fortunately it is Bangladeshis—whose country is one of the most vulnerable
to climate change—not wealthier people’s pets, who will bear the brunt of
climate change.18
These products and countless others—from doughnuts to disposable
diapers—are all being spread to new consumer populations, supported by
$16,000 of advertising every single second somewhere in the world. So how
do we transform the world’s cultures so that living sustainably becomes as
Re-engineering Cultures to Create a Sustainable Civilization | 119
natural as living as a consumer has been made to feel today? Just as con-
sumer interests learned over the decades as they worked to stimulate mar-
kets and, intentionally or inadvertently, engineer cultural norms, it will be
essential to use the full complement of societal institutions to shift cultural
norms—business, media and marketing, government, education, social
movements, even traditions.19
First Attempts to Pioneer Cultures of Sustainability
While consumerism is being spread more aggressively every year, many cul-
tural pioneers are working to spread a culture of sustainability, in both bold
and subtle ways, locally and globally, and often in ways they may not even
recognize as culture changing. The most effective of these pioneers tend to
use dominant societal institutions to normalize an alternative set of prac-
tices, values, beliefs, stories, and symbols.20
Within the business sector, a handful of executives are using their com-
panies to transform broader consumption norms. The clothing company
Patagonia, for instance, recognizing that its continued success depends on
the earth and that “the environmental cost of everything we make is aston-
ishing,” has taken the bold step of encouraging its customers to not even buy
its products unless truly needed, encouraging them to instead either buy
used Patagonia products or do without. The company even worked with
eBay to create a ready supply of used Patagonia gear.21
While some change will be driven by large corporations—which have
significant capital and influence at their disposal—the real drivers of a cul-
ture of sustainability in the business sector are entrepreneurs and business
leaders working to transform the sector’s mission altogether, with a positive
social purpose being first and foremost and with revenue generation simply
being the means to achieve that. The good news is that an increasing num-
ber of business leaders, when creating new businesses, are establishing these
“social enterprises” with the specific goal of using their businesses, and the
profits they generate, to improve society. In Thailand, the restaurant Cab-
bages & Condoms has for decades helped to normalize safe sex to prevent
sexually transmitted diseases and unwanted pregnancies—using a clever
mix of décor, events, and information. It donates its profits to the Popula-
tion and Community Development Association (its parent organization) to
promote family planning projects in Thai communities.22
And today, more social enterprises like these are flourishing and even
locking their beneficial missions directly into their corporate charters.
Many businesses are now incorporating or getting certified as “B” or “ben-
efit” corporations. Twelve states in the United States have set up laws that
allow businesses to incorporate as benefit corporations, which requires
them to work toward having an overall positive effect on society and the
120 | State of the World 2013
environment. And the company must take into account the impact of its
decisions on not just shareholders but all stakeholders, including workers,
local communities, and the planet. Where laws do not allow incorporation
as a benefit corporation, many businesses have worked with B Lab, a non-
profit organization, to be certified as B corporations. As of fall 2012, there
were 650 certified B corporations in 18 countries and 60 industries, with
annual revenues of more than $4.2 billion.23
Within government, more policymakers are recognizing the need to use
this institution to help steer citizens toward consuming less and living more
sustainably, editing out unsustainable options like supersized sodas in New
York City and plastic bags in San Francisco. (See Box 10–2.) And some are
supporting sustainable choices like mass transit, bicycle lanes, even super
accessible libraries, as with the series of library kiosks that Madrid placed in
its subway system.24
A few governments are starting to lead even bolder transformations—
such as expanding fundamental rights to the planet itself. Just as the intro-
duction of human rights transformed the legal realm and was a catalyst for
social change around the world, Earth’s rights could have the same potential.
In recent years, Ecuador and Bolivia have both incorporated Earth’s rights
into their constitutions, in turn empowering people to legally defend Earth’s
interest even when no humans are directly harmed—for example, by stop-
ping mining projects in an uninhabited area.25
Beyond governance, local communities are organizing themselves to
both reinforce sustainability norms locally and inspire others to do the
same. There are now hundreds of ecovillages around the world modeling
sustainable and low-consumption lifestyles. And hundreds of Transition
Towns are working to transform existing communities to be both more sus-
tainable and more resilient. While all these efforts are small in scale and
scope, their potential to inspire and experiment with new cultural norms is
exponentially larger.26
A number of schools and universities are also working to embed sus-
tainability directly into their school cultures, including integrating environ-
mental science, media literacy, and critical thinking into their curricula. In
Europe, 39,500 schools have now been awarded a “Green Flag” for greening
their curricula, empowering students to make their schools more sustain-
able, and articulating the schools’ ecological values alongside their educa-
tional values. Some schools are also modeling a sustainable way of living,
from integrating gardening programs and renewable energy production
onto school grounds to changing what is served in the cafeteria. In Rome,
a leader in school food reform, two thirds of food served in cafeterias is or-
ganic, one quarter is locally sourced, and 14 percent is certified Fair Trade.27
Like education, cultural and religious traditions play a central role in
Re-engineering Cultures to Create a Sustainable Civilization | 121
shaping our understandings of the world. Fortunately, more religious com-
munities are drawing attention to practices and teachings that reinforce our
sustainable stewardship of Creation. These initiatives include everything
from promoting carbon fasts for Lent to reclaiming shemitah—the seven-
year sabbath cycle in Judaism—to encourage sustainability. Perhaps most
On September 13, 2012, after months of debate, stacks
of scientific reports, several City Hall press events, and
a $1-million counter-campaign by the soda industry,
the New York City Board of Health banned the sale of
large cups of sodas and other sugary drinks. For Mayor
Michael Bloomberg, the ban was the “the single big-
gest step any city has taken to curb obesity.” But some
people are not so sure. Fearing that the ban will spread
to other cities (Richmond, California, and Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania, are considering similar action), the soda
industry promises to fight on. Many New Yorkers are
also skeptical—60 percent view the ban as infringing
on their consumer freedom. And yet the science is
clear: large portion sizes, defined as 32 ounces or more
for soda and sugary drinks, increase consumption, often
beyond the point of any additional satisfaction, and are
a major driver of the obesity crisis.
With this ban, Mayor Bloomberg joins the swell-
ing ranks of policymakers, scientists, public interest
groups, and communities that are re-engineering the
norms of consumerism through a frontal assault on the
fabric of choice. Colleges and universities are remov-
ing trays from their cafeterias, making it more difficult
for students to pile on food as they move down the
line. This simple “choice edit” has reduced food waste
by 30 percent on many campuses. A plastic bag tax in
Washington, DC, and a ban in San Francisco have pro-
duced striking reductions in plastic-bag pollution; more
important, it has begun to foster a culture of reuse (in
this case, of cloth shopping bags) that could spill over
into other consumer venues.
The construction of bicycle superhighways in Den-
mark and the focus on better bike paths, joined with
financial incentives to bicycle to work in the United
States, promise to make the choice of riding a bike
over driving a car more attractive. And communities
like Albert Lea in Minnesota are enjoying better health,
longer life spans, and greater happiness by subtly
changing everything from the size of plates in restau-
rants and the choice of snacks in vending machines to
the configuration of sidewalks and the availability of
walking paths.
Successful choice editors tend to focus on small
aspects of choice that produce big outcomes, like
the food trays in cafeterias or the 5¢-per-bag tax in
Washington. They foster choices that clearly deliver
benefits to health and happiness. They also strive to
preserve choice, or at least the illusion of choice. The
ban on incandescent lightbulbs soon to take effect in
the United States will succeed in part because of the
expanding choice of acceptable lighting alternatives.
The best choice editors, moreover, resist reacting too
quickly to initial public objections to choice edits. They
know that people frequently become habituated to
their new choices and forget their initial objections.
Scores of choice-editing strategies for sustainability
are hiding in plain sight. They remain largely untapped
in part because of qualms about the manipulative qual-
ity of choice editing. It is easy to forget, though, that
existing patterns of choice are often no less manipula-
tive than the more-sustainable patterns that choice
editors advocate. After all, 32-ounce drink cups were
created to drive consumers to buy more, while the lack
of good sidewalks and bicycle paths subtly but firmly
pushed people to motorized transport. Reconfiguring
cultural norms will mean, in part, overcoming the aver-
sion to choice editing while simultaneously engaging
the public in a conversation about the growing costs of
a consumer society.
—Michael Maniates
Professor, Allegheny College
Source: See endnote 24.
Box 10–2. Shifting Norms with choice editing
122 | State of the World 2013
important is the greening of life’s rites of passages—births, coming-of-age
celebrations, weddings, and funerals—which, while infrequent, have dispro-
portionate impacts both on the planet and on shaping cultural norms.28
In many cultures, funeral traditions reinforce an idea that humans are
separate from nature, with humans being embalmed and hermetically
sealed in coffins to delay the decaying process. If, on the other hand, fu-
nerals celebrated our return to the natural cycle of life and reinforced our
place as part of a larger living Earth system, this ritual could play an im-
portant role in nurturing a culture of sustainability. Instead, the current
form uses significant ecological resources. In the United States, 3.1 million
liters of embalming fluid, 1.5 million tons of concrete, 90,000 tons of steel,
and more than 45 million board feet of lumber are used each year in buri-
als, costing the average family about $10,000, often a significant financial
burden at a distressing time. Groups like The Green Burial Council are
helping to shift this tradition, promoting natural burial—free of chemicals
and of expensive coffins or vaults and in natural cemeteries that provide
parkland for people to enjoy, space for biodiversity, and trees to absorb
carbon dioxide.29
Storytelling and myth building also have tremendous potential to help
transform cultures, from efforts like Big History, which is working to in-
corporate sustainability into cultural creation stories (see Chapter 20), to a
plethora of documentaries and films that wrestle with sustainability themes.
Two examples are worth noting for their similarity: the documentary Crude
and the blockbuster science-fiction film Avatar. These films, each produced
in 2009, are essentially the same story, both about indigenous peoples fight-
ing to protect their land from those pursuing the resource wealth under-
neath. Avatar—with its global reach and $2.8 billion in sales so far—in par-
ticular has the potential to deeply shift beliefs and raise awareness that our
current consumptive path will lead to the future of Earth described by the
protagonist Jake Sully in the final moments of the film: “There’s no green
there. They killed their Mother.” 30
Finally, given that media—and the marketing now embedded at its every
level—play such a powerful role in shaping modern cultures, social market-
ing and “ad jamming” will be a powerful means to harness marketing energy
for positive ends. Examples include social marketing efforts like The Story
of Stuff project, which uses short, catchy videos to build political support
for reduced consumption (see Chapter 23), and ad jamming efforts by Ad-
busters, the Billboard Liberation Front, and The Yes Men. The Yes Men, for
example, uses fake ads and press conferences to draw attention to hypocriti-
cal positions of businesses and global institutions, such as their subversive
effort to pose as Dow Chemical representatives and announce that the com-
pany would pay reparations for the 1984 Bhopal disaster (leading to a stock
Re-engineering Cultures to Create a Sustainable Civilization | 123
plunge of 4.2 percent in 23 minutes and the company’s temporary loss of
$2 billion in market value) and their efforts to jam the multimillion-dollar
“We Agree” advertising campaign by the oil company Chevron. With few
resources—leveraged in aikido-like fashion—these efforts garner significant
Chevron ad from its “We Agree” advertising campaign.
Spoof ad of Chevron’s “We Agree” advertising campaign, Inspired by The Yes Men’s ad
jamming campaign, by Jonathan McIntosh.
jo
na
th
an
m
ci
nt
os
h
Ch
ev
ro
n
124 | State of the World 2013
attention and undermine the public relations efforts of those spending mil-
lions on advertising to shape the public’s view of the company, their prod-
ucts, and, more generally, progress.31
Just as water can erode rock into a grand canyon, the continuing pursuit
of culture-changing efforts can add up to much more than their constituent
parts. And the seeds that pioneers like these sow today, even if they fail to
take root while consumerism is dominant, may sprout as humanity desper-
ately reaches for a new set of norms, symbols, rituals, and stories to rebuild a
semblance of normality once Earth’s systems unravel under the unbearable
burden of sustaining a global consumer economy.
Tilting at Cultural Norms?
When the dominant institutions of most societies are primarily still pro-
moting consumerism, and probably will not stop anytime soon, how will
upstart efforts to engineer cultures of sustainability have any chance of suc-
cess? Ultimately, if Don Quixote had just waited long enough, the passage
of time would have brought down his windmill giants. The same is true
for the consumer culture giants, which depend completely on the bounty
of the energy embedded in fossil fuels, abundant resources, and a stable
planetary system provided to humanity at this stage in its development.
(See Box 10–3.)32
But given Earth’s weakening capacity to absorb greenhouse gases and
other wastes generated in pursuit of the consumer dream, the end of the
consumer culture will come—willingly or unwillingly, proactively chosen
or not—and sooner than we would like to believe. The only question is
whether we greet it with a series of alternative ways of orienting our lives
and our cultures to maintain a good life, even as we consume much less.
Every culture-changing effort, whether small or large, will help facilitate this
transition and lay the foundation for a new set of cultural norms—quite
possibly only implemented when humanity has no other choice.
While some will argue until the bitter end that letting go of certain con-
sumer luxuries is a step backwards, as North Face apparel company co-
founder and environmentalist Doug Tompkins notes, “What happens if you
get to the cliff and you take one step forward or you do a 180-degree turn
and take one step forward? Which way are you going? Which is progress?”
Patagonia founder Yvon Chouinard answered that the solution for a lot of
the world’s problems may be “to turn around and take a forward step. You
can’t just keep trying to make a flawed system work.”33
The challenge will be convincing more individuals that further efforts to
spread a consumer culture are truly a step in the wrong direction and that
the faster we use our talents and energies to promote a culture of sustain-
ability, the better off all of humanity will be.
Reengineering Cultures to Create a Sustainable Civilization | 125
Since 1990, development has been added to the rub-
bish heap of dismantled ideas in history. The develop-
ment age lasted 40 years, from President Truman’s
announced intention at the onset of the Cold War to
raise the living standards of poor nations through to
the Washington Consensus in 1989 that paved the way
for the end of Keynesianism and the ascent of market
fundamentalism.
The epoch of development was then replaced by
the age of globalization. It was not the nation-state
developing but the purchasing power of consumer
classes worldwide. Cold War divisions faded away,
corporations relocated freely across borders, politicians
and many others pinned their hopes on the model of
a western-style consumer economy. In a rapid—even
meteoric—advance, a number of newly industrializing
countries acquired a larger share of economic activity.
For them, it was as if President Truman’s promise—that
poor nations would catch up with the rich—had finally
come true. But this success was paid for by destruc-
tion of local and global ecosystems. Development-as-
growth turns out to be mortally dangerous.
Since the outbreak of the financial crisis in 2007, the
age of security is on the rise. States line up to bolster
the failing confidence of the economy, and in turn the
economy burdens the state with an insurmountable
pile of debt. The newcomers are preoccupied with the
fossil and biotic raw materials needed for growth: the
resource imperialism of China, India, and Brazil is similar
to that of the rich countries, albeit in fast motion. Above
all, the age of security is an era when human security
of the poor and powerless is being violated on a large
scale. Freeways cut through neighborhoods, high-rise
buildings displace traditional housing, dams drive tribal
groups from their homelands, trawlers marginalize local
fishers, supermarkets undercut small shopkeepers. As
development proceeds, the land and the living spaces
of indigenous peoples, small farmers, and the urban
poor are put under ever more pressure.
Economic growth is of a cannibalistic nature; it feeds
on both nature and communities, and shifts unpaid
costs back onto them as well. The shiny side of develop-
ment is often accompanied by a dark side of displace-
ment and dispossession; this is why economic growth
has time and again produced impoverishment next to
enrichment.
In hindsight, the consumptive Euro-Atlantic devel-
opment path turns out to be a special case; it cannot be
repeated everywhere and at any time. Access to biotic
resources from colonies and fossil raw materials from
the crust of the earth were essential to the rise of the
Euro-Atlantic civilization. There would have been no
industrial or consumer society without the mobilization
of resources from both the expanse of geographical
space and the depth of geological time. Climate chaos
as well as the limits to growth suggest that the past
200 years of Euro-Atlantic development will remain a
parenthesis in world history.
Indeed, it is difficult to see how, for example, the auto-
mobile society, chemical agriculture, or a meat-based
food system could be spread completely across the
globe. In other words, pursuing the resource- intensive
Euro-Atlantic model requires social exclusion by its very
structure; it is unfit to underpin equity on a global scale.
Development-as-growth cannot continue to be a guid-
ing concept of international politics unless global apart-
heid is taken for granted. Politics, therefore, is at a cross-
roads. The choice is for either affluence with persistent
disparity or moderation with prospects for equity. If there
is to be some kind of prosperity for all world citizens, the
Euro-Atlantic model needs to be superseded, making
room for ways of living, producing, and consuming that
leave only a light footprint on the earth.
—Wolfgang Sachs
Senior Fellow, Wuppertal Institute
Source: See endnote 32.
Box 10–3. Development and Decline
c h a p t e r 1 1
Building a Sustainable and
Desirable Economy-in-Society-
in-Nature
Robert Costanza, Gar Alperovitz, Herman Daly, Joshua Farley, Carol
Franco, Tim Jackson, Ida Kubiszewski, Juliet Schor, and Peter Victor
The current mainstream model of the global economy is based on a num-
ber of assumptions about the way the world works, what the economy is,
and what the economy is for. (See Table 11–1.) These assumptions arose
in an earlier period, when the world was relatively empty of humans and
their artifacts. Built capital was the limiting factor, while natural capital was
abundant. It made sense not to worry too much about environmental “ex-
ternalities,” since they could be assumed to be relatively small and ultimately
solvable. It also made sense to focus on the growth of the market economy, as
measured by gross domestic product (GDP), as a primary means to improve
human welfare. And it made sense to think of the economy as only marketed
goods and services and to think of the goal as increasing the amount of these
that were produced and consumed.1
Now, however, we live in a radically different world—one that is
relatively full of humans and their built capital infrastructure. We need to
reconceptualize what the economy is and what it is for. We have to first
remember that the goal of any economy should be to sustainably improve
human well-being and quality of life and that material consumption and
GDP are merely means to that end. We have to recognize, as both ancient
wisdom and new psychological research tell us, that too much of a focus on
material consumption can actually reduce human well-being. We have to
understand better what really does contribute to sustainable human well-
being and recognize the substantial contributions of natural and social
capital, which are now the limiting factors to improving well-being in
many countries. We have to be able to distinguish between real poverty, in
terms of low quality of life, and low monetary income. Ultimately we have
to create a new model of the economy that acknowledges this new “full-
world” context and vision.2
Some people argue that relatively minor adjustments to the current
Robert Costanza is a visiting
fellow in the Crawford School
of Public Policy, Australian Na-
tional University. Gar Alperovitz
is Lionel R. Bauman Professor
of Political Economy at the
University of Maryland. Herman
Daly is professor emeritus in
the School of Public Policy at
the University of Maryland.
Joshua Farley is an associate
professor in the Department
of Community Development &
Applied Economics and Public
Administration at the University
of Vermont. Carol Franco is a
project administrator at the
Woods Hole Research Center.
Tim Jackson is a professor of
sustainable development at
the University of Surrey, United
Kingdom. Ida Kubiszewski is a
visiting fellow in the Craw-
ford School of Public Policy,
Australian National University.
Juliet Schor is a professor of
sociology at Boston College.
Peter Victor is a professor in the
Faculty of Environmental Stud-
ies at York University.
www.sustainabilitypossible.org
Worldwatch Institute, State of the World 2013: Is Sustainability Still Possible?,
DOI 10.5822/ 978-1-61091-458-1_11, © 2013 by Worldwatch Institute
126
Building a Sustainable and Desirable Economy-in-Society-in-Nature | 127
table 11–1. Basic characteristics of current economic Model, Green economy Model,
and ecological economics Model
Current Economic Model Green Economy Model Ecological Economics Model
Primary
policy goal
More: Economic growth
in the conventional sense,
as measured by GDP. The
assumption is that growth
will ultimately allow the so-
lution of all other problems.
More is always better.
More but with lower
environmental impact:
GDP growth decoupled
from carbon and from
other material and
energy impacts.
Better: Focus must shift from merely
growth to “development” in the real
sense of improvement in sustainable
human well-being, recognizing that
growth has significant negative by-
products.
Primary
measure
of progress
GDP Still GDP, but recogniz-
ing impacts on natural
capital.
Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare,
Genuine Progress Indicator, or other
improved measures of real welfare.
Scale/carrying
capacity/role
of environment
Not an issue, since markets
are assumed to be able to
overcome any resource lim-
its via new technology, and
substitutes for resources
are always available.
Recognized, but as-
sumed to be solvable
via decoupling.
A primary concern as a determinant
of ecological sustainability. Natural
capital and ecosystem services are not
infinitely substitutable, and real limits
exist.
Distribution/
poverty
Given lip service, but
relegated to “politics” and
a “trickle-down” policy: a
rising tide lifts all boats.
Recognized as impor-
tant, assumes greening
the economy will reduce
poverty via enhanced
agriculture and employ-
ment in green sectors.
A primary concern, since it directly
affects quality of life and social capital
and is often exacerbated by growth: a
too rapidly rising tide only lifts yachts,
while swamping small boats.
Economic
efficiency/
allocation
The primary concern,
but generally including
only marketed goods and
services (GDP) and market
institutions.
Recognized to include
natural capital and the
need to incorporate
its value into market
incentives.
A primary concern, but including both
market and nonmarket goods and
services and the effects. Emphasis on
the need to incorporate the value of
natural and social capital to achieve
true allocative efficiency.
Property
rights
Emphasis on private
property and conventional
markets.
Recognition of the need
for instruments beyond
the market.
Emphasis on a balance of property rights
regimes appropriate to the nature and
scale of the system, and a linking of rights
with responsibilities. Includes larger
role for common-property institutions.
Role of
government
Government interven-
tion to be minimized and
replaced with private and
market institutions.
Recognition of the need
for government inter-
vention to internalize
natural capital.
Government plays a central role,
including new functions as referee,
facilitator, and broker in a new suite of
common-asset institutions.
Principles of
governance
Laissez-faire market
capitalism.
Recognition of the need
for government.
Lisbon principles of sustainable gov-
ernance.
Source: See endnote 1.
128 | State of the World 2013
economic model will produce the desired results. For example, they maintain
that by adequately pricing the depletion of natural capital (such as putting
a price on carbon emissions) we can address many of the problems of the
current economy while still allowing growth to continue. This approach
can be called the “green economy” model. Some of the areas of intervention
promoted by its advocates, such as investing in natural capital, are necessary
and should be pursued. But they are not sufficient to achieve sustainable
human well-being. We need a more fundamental change, a change of our
goals and paradigm.3
Both the shortcomings and the critics of the current model are
abundant—and many of them are described in this book. A coherent and
viable alternative is sorely needed. This chapter aims to sketch a framework
for a new model of the economy based on the worldview and following
principles of ecological economics:4
• Our material economy is embedded in society, which is embedded in our
ecological life-support system, and we cannot understand or manage our
economy without understanding the whole interconnected system.
• Growth and development are not always linked, and true development
must be defined in terms of the improvement of sustainable human well-
being, not merely improvement in material consumption.
• A balance of four basic types of assets is necessary for sustainable human
well-being: built, human, social, and natural capital (financial capital is
merely a marker for real capital and must be managed as such).
• Growth in material consumption is ultimately unsustainable because
of fundamental planetary boundaries, and such growth is or eventually
becomes counterproductive (uneconomic) in that it has negative effects on
well-being and on social and natural capital.
There is a substantial and growing body of new research on what actually
contributes to human well-being and quality of life. Although there is still
much ongoing debate, this new science clearly demonstrates the limits of
conventional economic income and consumption’s contribution to well-
being. For example, economist Richard Easterlin has shown that well-
being tends to correlate well with health, level of education, and marital
status and shows sharply diminishing returns to income beyond a fairly
low threshold. Economist Richard Layard argues that current economic
policies are not improving well-being and happiness and that “happiness
should become the goal of policy, and the progress of national happiness
should be measured and analyzed as closely as the growth of GNP (gross
national product).”5
In fact, if we want to assess the “real” economy—all the things that
contribute to real, sustainable, human well-being—as opposed to only
the “market” economy, we have to measure and include the nonmarketed
Building a Sustainable and Desirable Economy-in-Society-in-Nature | 129
contributions to human well-being from nature, from family, friends, and
other social relationships at many scales, and from health and education.
Doing so often yields a very different picture of the state of well-being than
may be implied by growth in per capita GDP. Surveys, for instance, have
found people’s life satisfaction to be relatively flat in the United States (see
Figure 11–1) and many other industrial countries since about 1975, in spite
of a near doubling in per capita income.6
A second approach is an aggregate measure of the real economy that has
been developed as an alternative to GDP, called the Index of Sustainable
Economic Well-Being, or a variation called the Genuine Progress Indicator
(GPI). The GPI attempts to correct for the many shortcomings of GDP as a
measure of true human well-being. For example, GDP is not just limited—
measuring only marketed economic activity or gross income—it also counts
all activity as positive. It does not separate desirable, well-being-enhancing
activity from undesirable, well-being-reducing activity. An oil spill increases
GDP because someone has to clean it up, but it obviously detracts from
society’s well-being. From the perspective of GDP, more crime, sickness,
war, pollution, fires, storms, and pestilence are all potentially good things
because they can increase marketed activity in the economy.7
GDP also leaves out many things that actually do enhance well-being
but that are outside the market, such as the unpaid work of parents caring
H
ap
pi
ne
s S
ca
le
Th
ou
sa
nd
2
00
5
$
Source: Hernández-Murillo and Martinek
Figure 11–1. Happiness and Real Income in the United States,
1972–2008*
1972 1976 1980 1984 1988 1992 1996 2000 2004 2008
Mean Happiness
Income per Capita
35
30
25
20
15
101.0
1.5
2.0
2.5
3.0
* Mean happiness is the average reply from respondents to the U.S. General Social Survey when asked,
“Taken all together, how would you say things are these days? Would you say that you are not too
happy [1], pretty happy [2], or very happy [3]?”
130 | State of the World 2013
for their children at home or the nonmarketed work of natural capital in
providing clean air and water, food, natural resources, and other ecosystem
services. And GDP takes no account of the distribution of income among
individuals, even though it is well known that an additional dollar of income
produces more well-being if a person is poor rather than rich.
The GPI addresses these problems by separating the positive from the
negative components of marketed economic activity, adding in estimates of
the value of nonmarketed goods and services provided by natural, human,
and social capital and adjusting for income-distribution effects. Comparing
GDP and GPI for the United States, Figure 11–2 shows that while GDP has
steadily increased since 1950, with the occasional dip or recession, the GPI
peaked in about 1975 and has been flat or gradually decreasing ever since.
The United States and several other industrial countries are now in a period
of what might be called uneconomic growth, in which further growth in
marketed economic activity (GDP) is actually reducing well-being, on
balance, rather than enhancing it.8
A new model of the economy consistent with our new full-world context
would be based clearly on the goal of sustainable human well-being. It would
use measures of progress that openly acknowledge this goal (for example,
GPI instead of GDP). It would acknowledge the importance of ecological
sustainability, social fairness, and real economic efficiency.
One way to interrelate the goals of the new economy is by combining
planetary boundaries as the “environmental ceiling” with basic human needs
as the “social foundation.” This creates an environmentally sustainable,
D
ol
la
rs
p
er
P
er
so
n
Source: Talberth, Cobb, and Slattery
Figure 11–2. Gross Domestic Product and Genuine Progress
Indicator, United States, 1950–2004
1950 1957 1964 1971 1978 1985 1992 1999 2006
0
10,000
20,000
30,000
40,000
50,000
Genuine Progress Indicator
Gross Domestic Product
Building a Sustainable and Desirable Economy-in-Society-in-Nature | 131
socially desirable and just space within which humanity can thrive. (See
Chapter 3.)9
A Framework for a New Economy
A report prepared for the United Nations Rio+20 Conference described in
detail what a new economy-in-society-in-nature might look like. A number
of other groups—for example, the Great Transition initiative and the Future
We Want—have performed similar exercises. All are meant to reflect the es-
sential broad features of a better, more-sustainable world, but it is unlikely
that any particular one of these will emerge wholly intact from efforts to
reach that goal. For that reason, and because of space limitations, those vi-
sions will not be described here. This chapter instead lays out the changes
in policy, governance, and institutional design that are needed in order to
achieve any of these sustainable and desirable futures.10
The key to achieving sustainable governance in the new, full-world
context is an integrated approach—across disciplines, stakeholder groups,
and generations—whereby policymaking is an iterative experiment
acknowledging uncertainty, rather than a static “answer.” Within this
paradigm, six core principles—known as the Lisbon principles following
a 1997 conference in Lisbon and originally developed for sustainable
governance of the oceans—embody the essential criteria for sustainable
governance and the use of common natural and social capital assets:11
• Responsibility. Access to common asset resources carries attendant
responsibilities to use them in an ecologically sustainable, economically
efficient, and socially fair manner. Individual and corporate responsibilities
and incentives should be aligned with each other and with broad social and
ecological goals.
• Scale-matching. Problems of managing natural and social capital assets
are rarely confined to a single scale. Decisionmaking should be assigned
to institutional levels that maximize ecological input, ensure the flow of
information between institutional levels, take ownership and actors into
account, and internalize social costs and benefits. Appropriate scales of
governance will be those that have the most relevant information, can respond
quickly and efficiently, and are able to integrate across scale boundaries.
• Precaution. In the face of uncertainty about potentially irreversible impacts
on natural and social capital assets, decisions concerning their use should
err on the side of caution. The burden of proof should shift to those whose
activities potentially damage natural and social capital.
• Adaptive management. Given that some level of uncertainty always exists in
common asset management, decisionmakers should continuously gather
and integrate appropriate ecological, social, and economic information
with the goal of adaptive improvement.
132 | State of the World 2013
• Full-cost allocation. All of the internal and external costs and benefits,
including social and ecological, of alternative decisions concerning the
use of natural and social capital should be identified and allocated, to the
extent possible. When appropriate, markets should be adjusted to reflect
full costs.
• Participation. All stakeholders should be engaged in the formulation and
implementation of decisions concerning natural and social capital assets.
Full stakeholder awareness and participation contributes to credible,
accepted rules that identify and assign the corresponding responsibilities
appropriately.
This section describes examples of worldviews, institutions and
institutional instruments, and technologies that can help the world move
toward the new economic paradigm.12
Respecting Ecological Limits. Once society has accepted the worldview
that the economic system is sustained and contained by our finite global
ecosystem, it becomes obvious that we must respect ecological limits. This
requires that we understand precisely what these limits entail and where
economic activity currently stands in relation to them.
A key category of ecological limit is dangerous waste emissions, including
nuclear waste, particulates, toxic chemicals, heavy metals, greenhouse
gases (GHGs), and excess nutrients. The poster child for dangerous
wastes is greenhouse gases, as excessive stocks of them in the atmosphere
are disrupting the climate. Since most of the energy currently used for
economic production comes from fossil fuels, economic activity inevitably
generates flows of GHGs into the atmosphere. Ecosystem processes such
as plant growth, soil formation, and dissolution of carbon dioxide (CO
2
)
in the ocean can sequester CO
2
from the atmosphere. But when flows into
the atmosphere exceed flows out of the atmosphere, atmospheric stocks
accumulate. This represents a critical ecological threshold, and exceeding it
risks runaway climate change with disastrous consequences. At a minimum,
then, for any type of waste where accumulated stocks are the main problem,
emissions must be reduced below absorption capacity.
Current atmospheric CO
2
stocks are well over 390 parts per million, and
there is already clear evidence of global climate change in current weather
patterns. Moreover, the oceans are beginning to acidify as they sequester
more CO
2
. Acidification threatens the numerous forms of oceanic life
that form carbon-based shells or skeletons, such as mollusks, corals, and
diatoms. In short, the weight of evidence suggests that we have already
exceeded the critical ecological threshold for atmospheric GHG stocks. (See
Chapter 2.) This means that we must reduce flows by more than 80 percent
or increase sequestration until atmospheric stocks are reduced to acceptable
levels. If we accept that all individuals are entitled to an equal share of CO
2
Building a Sustainable and Desirable Economy-in-Society-in-Nature | 133
absorption capacity, then the wealthy nations need to reduce net emissions
by 95 percent or more.13
Another category of ecological limit entails renewable-resource stocks,
flows, and services. All economic production requires the transformation
of raw materials provided by nature, including renewable resources (for
example, trees). To a large extent, society can choose the rate at which it
harvests these raw materials—that is, cuts down trees. Whenever extraction
rates of renewable resources exceed their regeneration rates, however, stocks
decline. Eventually, the stock of trees (the forest) will no longer be able to
regenerate. So the first rule for renewable-resource stocks is that extraction
rates must not exceed regeneration rates, thus maintaining the stocks to
provide appropriate levels of raw materials at an acceptable cost.
But a forest is not just a warehouse of trees; it is an ecosystem that
generates critical services, including life support for its inhabitants. These
services are diminished when the structure is depleted or its configuration
is changed. So another rule guiding resource extraction and land use
conversion is that they must not threaten the capacity of the ecosystem
stock or fund to provide essential services. Our limited understanding of
ecosystem structure and function and the dynamic nature of ecological and
economic systems mean that this precise point may be difficult to determine.
However, it is increasingly obvious that the extraction of many resources
to drive growth has already gone far beyond this point. Rates of resource
extraction must therefore be reduced to below regeneration rates in order to
restore ecosystem funds to desirable levels.
Protecting Capabilities for Flourishing. In a zero-growth or contracting
economy, working-time policies that enable equitable sharing of the
available work are essential to achieve economic stability and to protect
people’s jobs and livelihoods. Reduced working hours can also increase
people’s ability to flourish by improving the work/life balance, and there
is evidence that working fewer hours can reduce consumption-related
environmental impacts. Specific policies should include greater choice
for employees about working time; measures to combat discrimination
against part-time work as regards grading, promotion, training, security of
employment, rate of pay, health insurance, and so on; and better incentives
to employees (and flexibility for employers) for family time, parental leave,
and sabbatical breaks.14
Systemic social inequality can likewise undermine the capacity to
flourish. It expresses itself in many forms besides income inequality, such as
life expectancy, poverty, malnourishment, and infant mortality. Inequality
can also drive other social problems (such as overconsumption), increase
anxiety, undermine social capital, and expose lower-income households to
higher morbidity and lower life satisfaction.15
134 | State of the World 2013
The degree of inequality varies widely from one sector or country to
another. In the U.S. civil service, military, and university sectors, for example,
income inequality ranges within a factor of 15 or 20 between the highest and
lowest paying jobs. Corporate America has a range of 500 or more. Many
industrial nations are below 25.16
A sense of community—which is necessary for democracy—is hard to
maintain across such vast income differences. The main justification for
such differences has been that they stimulate growth, which will one day
filter down, making everyone rich. But in today’s full world, with its steady-
state or contracting economy, this is unrealistic. And without aggregate
growth, poverty reduction requires redistribution.
Fair limits to the range of inequality need to be determined—that is, a
minimum and a maximum income. Studies have shown that most adults
would be willing to give up personal gain in return for reducing inequality
they see as unfair. Redistributive mechanisms and policies could include
revising income tax structures, improving access to high-quality education,
introducing anti-discrimination legislation, implementing anti-crime
measures and improving the local environment in deprived areas, and
addressing the impact of immigration on urban and rural poverty. New
forms of cooperative ownership (as in the Mondragón model) or public
ownership, as is common in many European nations, can also help lower
internal pay ratios.17
The dominance of markets and property rights in allocating resources
also can impair communities’ capacity to flourish. Private property rights
are established when resources can be made “excludable”—that is, when
one person or group can use a resource while denying access to others.
But many resources essential to human welfare are “non-excludable,”
meaning that it is difficult or impossible to exclude others from access to
them. Examples include oceanic fisheries, timber from unprotected forests,
and numerous ecosystem services, including waste absorption capacity for
unregulated pollutants.
Absent property rights, resources are “open access”—anyone may use
them, whether or not they pay. However, individual owners of property
rights are likely to overexploit or underprovide the resource, imposing costs
on others, which is unsustainable, unjust, and inefficient. Private property
rights also favor the conversion of ecosystem stocks into market products
regardless of the difference in contributions that ecosystems and market
products have to human welfare. The incentives are to privatize benefits and
socialize costs.
One solution to these problems, at least for some resources, is common
ownership. A commons sector, separate from the public or private sector,
can hold property rights to resources created by nature or society as a whole
Building a Sustainable and Desirable Economy-in-Society-in-Nature | 135
and manage them for the equal benefit of all citizens, present and future.
Contrary to wide belief, the misleadingly labeled “tragedy of the commons”
results from no ownership or open access to resources, not common
ownership. Abundant research shows that resources owned in common can
be effectively managed through collective institutions that assure cooperative
compliance with established rules.18
Finally, flourishing communities will be supported and maintained by
the social capital built by a strong democracy. A strong democracy is most
easily understood at the level of community governance, where all citizens
are free (and expected) to participate in all political decisions affecting
the community. Broad participation requires the removal of distorting
influences like special interest lobbying and funding of political campaigns.
The process itself helps to satisfy myriad human needs, such as enhancing
people’s understanding of relevant issues, affirming their sense of belonging
and commitment to the community, offering opportunity for expression
and cooperation, and strengthening the sense of rights and responsibilities.
Historical examples (though participation was restricted to elites) include
the town meetings of New England and the system of ancient Athenians.19
Building a Sustainable Macroeconomy. The central focus of macro-
economic policies is typically to maximize economic growth; lesser goals
include price stabilization and full employment. If society instead adopts
the central economic goal of sustainable human well-being, macroeconomic
policy will change radically. The goals will be to create an economy that offers
meaningful employment to all and that balances investments across the four
types of capital to maximize well-being. Such an approach would lead to
fundamentally different macroeconomic policies and rules.
A key leverage point is the current monetary system, which is inherently
unsustainable. Most of the money supply is a result of what is known as
fractional reserve banking. (See Box 11–1.) Banks are required by law to
retain a percentage of every deposit they receive; the rest they loan at interest.
However, loans are then deposited in other banks, which in turn can lend out
all but the reserve requirement. The net result is that the new money issued
by banks, plus the initial deposit, will be equal to the initial deposit divided
by the fractional reserve. For example, if a government credits $1 million to
a bank and the fractional reserve requirement is 10 percent, banks can create
$9 million in new money, for a total money supply of $10 million. In this way,
most money is today created as interest-bearing debt. Total debt in the United
States—adding together consumers, businesses, and the government—is
about $50 trillion. This is the source of the national money supply.20
There are several serious problems with this system. First, it is highly
destabilizing. When the economy is booming, banks will be eager to loan
money and investors will be eager to borrow, which leads to a rapid increase
136 | State of the World 2013
in money supply. This stimulates further growth, encouraging more lending
and borrowing, in a positive feedback loop. A booming economy stimulates
firms and households to take on more debt relative to the income flows they
use to repay the loans. This means that any slowdown in the economy makes
it very difficult for borrowers to meet their debt obligations. Eventually
some borrowers are forced to default. Widespread default eventually creates
a self-reinforcing downward economic spiral, leading to recession or worse.
In recent decades the United States has seen the
eclipse of banking regulations, leading to a radical con-
centration of money power in too-big-to-fail banks and
Wall Street generally. In 1994, the five largest U.S. banks
held 12 percent of total U.S. deposits. By 2009 they held
nearly 40 percent. The country’s 20 largest banks con-
trol almost 60 percent of bank assets. Market concentra-
tion is even higher in other banking-type businesses,
such as credit cards, debt and equity underwriting, and
derivatives trading. Many of America’s earlier leaders
warned against such concentration of power in the
hands of a financial elite. As Thomas Greco notes in The
End of Money and the Future of Civilization, “Thomas Jef-
ferson said, ‘I sincerely believe . . . that banking establish-
ments are more dangerous than standing armies.’”
Today banks are required to hold deposits that are
only a small fraction—less than 10 percent—of the
loans they make. Anyone who takes on debt is creating
new money. Banks do not actually lend money; they
create promises to supply money they do not possess.
Mary Mellor has summed up the resulting situation:
“The most important outcome of the dominance of
bank issued money is that the supply of money is
largely in private hands determined by commercial
decisions, while the state retains responsibility for
managing and supporting the system, as has become
clear through the [2008] financial crisis.” In the United
States, the Federal Reserve can powerfully influence the
supply and hence the price of money, but private banks
decide how much to lend and where to lend it. The
capital allocation process has become far removed from
institutions that serve the public interest and is instead
dominated by institutions and individuals seeking only
to maximize profits.
The evidence is already abundant that today’s
system of money and finance cannot deliver a fair and
sustaining economy. Its transformation is an integral,
essential aspect of the overall transition to a new
economy. Otto Scharmer of the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology explains why: “Today we have a system
that accumulates an oversupply of money and capital
in areas that produce high financial and low environ-
mental and social returns, while at the same time we
have an undersupply of money and capital in areas that
serve important societal and community investment
needs (high social and low financial returns, such as
the education of children in low-income communi-
ties).” Among other urgently needed reforms, econo-
mist Herman Daly has recommended returning the
power to create money to government by abandoning
today’s fractional-reserve banking and moving to a
100 percent reserve requirement on demand deposits.
Banks would lend time deposits, and the depositor
would not have access to the money for the period
of the deposit. The lending bank would have to count
on new and renewing short-term time deposits or on
long-term time deposits. These requirements would
eliminate the bank’s ability to create new money. As
needed, government would create new money instead.
As Daly explains, “This would put control of the money
supply and seigniorage (profit made by the issuer of fiat
money) in hands of the government rather than private
banks, which would no longer be able to live the alche-
mist’s dream by creating money out of nothing and
lending it at interest.”
—James Gustave Speth
Professor of Law, Vermont Law School
Source: See endnote 20.
Box 11–1. the Social costs of the U.S. Banking System
Building a Sustainable and Desirable Economy-in-Society-in-Nature | 137
Second, the current system steadily transfers resources to the financial
sector. Borrowers must always pay back more than they borrowed. At 5.5
percent interest, homeowners will be forced to pay back twice what they
borrowed on a 30-year mortgage. Conservatively speaking, interest on the
$50 trillion total debt (in 2009) of the United States must be at least $2.5
trillion a year, one sixth of national output.21
Third, the banking system will only create money to finance market
activities that can generate the revenue required to repay the debt plus
interest. Since the banking system currently creates far more money than
the government, this system prioritizes investments in market goods over
public goods, regardless of the relative rates of return to human well-being.
Fourth, and most important, the system is ecologically unsustainable.
Debt, which is a claim on future production, grows exponentially, obeying
the abstract laws of mathematics. Future production, in contrast, confronts
ecological limits and cannot possibly keep pace. Interest rates exceed
economic growth rates even in good times. Eventually, the exponentially
increasing debt must exceed the value of current real wealth and potential
future wealth, and the system collapses.
To address this problem, the public sector must reclaim the power to
create money, a constitutional right in the United States and most other
countries, and at the same time take away from the banks the right to do so
by gradually moving toward 100-percent fractional-reserve requirements.
A second key lever for macroeconomic reform is tax policy. Conventional
economists generally look at taxes as a necessary but significant drag on
economic growth. However, taxes are an effective tool for internalizing negative
externalities into market prices and for improving income distribution.
A shift in the burden of taxation from value added (economic “goods,”
such as income earned by labor and capital) to throughput flow (ecological
“bads,” such as resource extraction and pollution) is critical for shifting
toward sustainability. Such a reform would internalize external costs, thus
increasing efficiency. Taxing the origin and narrowest point in the throughput
flow—for example, oil wells rather than sources of CO
2
emissions—induces
more-efficient resource use in production as well as consumption and
facilitates monitoring and collection. Such taxes could be introduced in a
revenue-neutral way, for example by phasing in resource severance taxes
while phasing out regressive taxes such as those on payrolls or sales.22
Taxes should also be used to capture unearned income (rent, in economic
parlance). Green taxes are a form of rent capture, since they charge for the
private use of resources created by nature. But there are many other sources
of unearned income in society. For example, if a government builds a light
rail or subway system—more-sustainable alternatives to private cars—
adjacent land values typically skyrocket, providing a windfall profit for
138 | State of the World 2013
landowners. New technologies also increase the value of land, due to its role
as an essential input into all production. Because the supply of land is fixed,
any increase in demand results in an increase in price. Landowners therefore
automatically grow wealthier independent of any investments in the land.
High taxes on land values (but not on improvements, such as buildings)
allow the public sector to capture this unearned income. Public ownership
through land trusts and other means also allows for public capture of the
unearned income and eliminates any reward from land speculation, thus
stabilizing the economy.23
Tax policy can also be used to reduce income inequality. (See Figure
11–3.) Taxing the highest incomes at high marginal rates has been shown
to significantly reduce income inequality. There is also a strong correlation
between tax rates and social justice. (See Figure 11–4.) High tax rates that
contribute to income equality appear to be closely related to human well-
being. This suggests that tax rates should be highly progressive, perhaps
asymptotically approaching 100 percent on marginal income. The measure
of tax justice should not be how much is taxed away but rather how much
income remains after taxes. For example, hedge fund manager John Paulson
earned $4.9 billion in 2010. If Paulson had to pay a flat tax of 99 percent, he
would still retain nearly $1 million per week in income.24
Other policies for achieving financial and fiscal prudence will almost
certainly be required as well. Our relentless pursuit of debt-driven growth
has contributed to the global economic crisis. A new era of financial and
fiscal prudence needs to increase the regulation of national and international
Fe
w
er
P
ro
bl
em
s
M
or
e
Pr
ob
le
m
s
Source: Wilkinson and Pickett
Figure 11–3. Relationship between Income Inequality and Social
Problems Score in Selected Industrial Countries
More Equal
Japan
Sweden
Norway
Finland
Denmark
Austria
Germany
Netherlands
France
Canada
Spain
Switzerland
Ireland
Greece
Italy
Australia
New Zealand
United
Kingdom
Portugal
United States
More Unequal
Belgium
Building a Sustainable and Desirable Economy-in-Society-in-Nature | 139
financial markets; incentivize domestic savings, for example through secure
(green) national or community-based bonds; outlaw unscrupulous and
destabilizing market practices (such as “short selling,” in which borrowed
securities are sold with the intention of repurchasing them later at a lower
price); and provide greater protection against consumer debt. Governments
must pass laws that restrict the size of financial sector institutions,
eliminating any that impose systemic risks for the economy.25
Finally, as indicated earlier, we need to improve macroeconomic
accounting, replacing or supplementing GDP as the prime economic
indicator. GDP does, however, belong as an indicator of economic efficiency.
The more efficient we are, the less economic activity, raw materials, energy,
and work are required to provide satisfying lives. When GDP rises faster
than life satisfaction, efficiency declines. The goal should be to minimize
GDP, subject to maintaining a high and sustainable quality of life.
Is a Sustainable Civilization Possible?
The brief sketch presented here of a sustainable and desirable “ecological
economy,” along with some of the policies required to achieve it, begs the
important question of whether these policies taken together are consistent
and whether they are sufficient to achieve the goals articulated. Can we have
In
de
x
of
S
oc
ia
l J
us
tic
e
Total Tax Revenue as Share of GDP (Percent)
Turkey
Mexico
Chile
South Korea
Japan
Australia
Greece
SpainSlovakia
Portugal
Poland
Ireland
New Zealand
Switzerland Canada
Hungary
Czech
Republic
Netherlands
France
Austria
Belgium
Italy
Iceland
Finland
Norway Denmark
Source: Wilkinson and Pickett, OECD
Figure 11–4. Relationship between Tax Revenue as a Percent of GDP
and Index of Social Justice in Selected Industrial Countries
4
5
6
7
8
9
15 20 25 30 35 40 45 50
Luxembourg
Germany
United States
United Kingdom
Sweden
140 | State of the World 2013
a global economy that is not growing in material terms but that is sustain-
able and provides a high quality of life for most, if not all, people? Several
lines of evidence suggest that the answer is yes.
The first comes from history. Achieving long-lasting zero- or low-growth
desirable societies has been difficult—but not unheard of. While many
societies have collapsed in the past and many of them were not what would
be called “desirable,” there have been a few successful historical cases in
which decline did not occur, as these examples indicate:26
• Tikopia Islanders have maintained a sustainable food supply and non-
increasing population with a bottom-up social organization.
• New Guinea features a silviculture system that is more than 7,000 years old
with an extremely democratic, bottom-up decisionmaking structure.
• Japan’s top-down forest and population policies in the Tokugawa era arose
as a response to an environmental and population crisis, bringing an era of
stable population, peace, and prosperity.
A second line of evidence comes from the many groups and communities
around the world that are involved in building a new economic vision and
testing solutions. Here are a few examples:
• Transition Initiative movement (www.transitionnetwork.org)
• Global EcoVillage Network (gen.ecovillage.org)
• Co-Housing Network (www.cohousing.org/)
• Wiser Earth (www.wiserearth.org)
• Sustainable Cities International (www.sustainablecities.net)
• Center for a New American Dream (www.newdream.org)
• Democracy Collaborative (www.community-wealth.org)
• Portland, Oregon, Bureau of Planning and Sustainability (www.portland
online.com/bps/)
All these examples to some extent embody the vision, worldview, and
policies elaborated in this chapter. Their experiences collectively provide
evidence that the policies are feasible at a smaller scale. The challenge is to
scale up some of these models to society as a whole. Several cities, states,
regions, and countries have made significant progress along that path,
including Portland in Oregon; Stockholm and Malmö in Sweden; London;
the states of Vermont, Washington, and Oregon in the United States;
Germany; Sweden; Iceland; Denmark; Costa Rica; and Bhutan.27
A third line of evidence for the feasibility of this vision is based on
integrated modeling studies that suggest a sustainable, non-growing
economy is both possible and desirable. These include studies using such
well-established models as World3, the subject of The Limits to Growth in
1972 and other more recent books, and the Global Unified Metamodel of
the BiOsphere (GUMBO).28
A recent addition to this suite of modeling tools is LowGrow, a model
of the Canadian economy that has been used to assess the possibility of
constructing an economy that is not growing in GDP terms but that is stable,
with high employment, low carbon emissions, and a high quality of life.
LowGrow was explicitly constructed as a fairly conventional macroeconomic
model calibrated for the Canadian economy, with added features to simulate
the effects on natural and social capital.29
LowGrow includes features that are particularly relevant for exploring a
low-/no-growth economy, such as emissions of carbon dioxide and other
greenhouse gases, a carbon tax, a forestry submodel, and provisions for
redistributing incomes. It measures poverty using the Human
Poverty
Index
of the United Nations. LowGrow allows additional funds to be spent on
health care and on programs for reducing adult illiteracy and estimates their
impacts on longevity and adult literacy.
A wide range of low- and no-growth scenarios can be examined with
LowGrow, and some (including the one shown in Figure 11–5) offer
considerable promise. Compared with the business-as-usual scenario, in
this scenario GDP per capita grows more slowly, leveling off around 2028,
at which time the rate of unemployment is 5.7 percent. The unemployment
rate declines to 4 percent by 2035.
By 2020 the poverty index declines
from 10.7 to an internationally
unprecedented level of 4.9, where
it remains, and the debt-to-GDP
ratio declines to about 30 percent
and is maintained at that level
to 2035. GHG emissions are 41
percent lower at the start of 2035
than in 2010.30
These results are obtained by
slower growth in overall government
expenditures, net investment, and
productivity; a positive net trade
balance; cessation of growth in
population; a reduced workweek; a
revenue-neutral carbon tax; and increased government investment in public
goods, on anti-poverty programs, adult literacy programs, and health care. In
addition, there are more public goods and fewer status goods through changes
in taxation and marketing; there are limits on throughput and the use of space
through better land use planning and habitat protection and ecological fiscal
reform; and fiscal and trade policies strengthen local economies.
No model results can be taken as definitive, since models are only as
good as the assumptions that go into them. But what World3, GUMBO, and
Building a Sustainable and Desirable Economy-in-Society-in-Nature | 141
In
de
x
(2
00
5
=
1
00
)
Source: Victor
Figure 11–5. A Low-/No-Growth Scenario
2005 2010 2015 2020 2025 2030 2035
0
50
100
150
200
300
250
GDP per Capita
GHG Emissions
Unemployment
Debt-to-
GDP Ratio
Poverty
142 | State of the World 2013
LowGrow have provided is some evidence for the consistency and feasibility
of these policies, taken together, to produce an economy that is not growing
in GDP terms but that is sustainable and desirable.
This chapter offers a vision of the structure of an “ecological economics”
option and how to achieve it—an economy that can provide nearly full
employment and a high quality of life for everyone into the indefinite
future while staying within the safe environmental operating space for
humanity on Earth. The policies laid out here are mutually supportive and
the resulting system is feasible. Due to their privileged position, industrial
countries have a special responsibility for achieving these goals. Yet this is not
a utopian fantasy; to the contrary, it is business as usual that is the utopian
fantasy. Humanity will have to create something different and better—or
risk collapse into something far worse.
Pavan Sukhdev is founder-
director of Corporation 2020.
This chapter is based on
Corporation 2020: Transforming
Business for Tomorrow’s World
(Washington, DC: Island Press,
2012), as well as on the e-chap-
ter “Why Corporation 2020? The
Case for a New Corporation in
the Next Decade.”
www.sustainabilitypossible.org
There is an emerging consensus among government and business leaders
that all is not well with the market-centric economic model that dominates
today’s world. Although it has delivered wealth in most economies over the
last half-century and pulled millions out of poverty, it is recession-prone,
leaves too many people unemployed, widens the gap between the rich and
the poor, creates ecological scarcities that affect water and food, and gener-
ates environmental risks such as climate change.
Planetary boundaries are now being approached—and in some do-
mains, have been breached—across many critical axes, including green-
house gas emissions, the nitrogen cycle, freshwater use, land use and food
security, ocean fisheries, and coral reefs. Within the next decade, significant
changes are needed in the way we deal with Earth’s resources. The failure
of intergovernmental efforts points to the need to recognize the vital role
of the private sector in determining economic direction and resource use
globally. The corporate world must be brought to the table as planetary
stewards rather than value-neutral agents that are free-riding their way to
global resource depletion.1
The rationale for engaging with the private sector is compelling: corpo-
rations produce almost everything we consume, generating 60 percent of
global gross domestic product (GDP) and providing a comparable share of
global employment. Their advertising creates and drives consumer demand.
Their production feeds this demand and drives economic growth.2
Corporations thus drive our economic system, but the way they have
been operating also threatens the system’s very survival. Externalities—the
unaccounted costs to society of doing “business as usual”—by just the top
3,000 public corporations cost an estimated $2.15 trillion, or 3.5 percent of
GDP, every year. Corporate lobbying frequently influences national policies
and politics to the detriment of the public good. Advertising often converts
human insecurities into wants, wants into needs, and needs into exces-
c h a p t e r 1 2
Transforming the Corporation
into a Driver of Sustainability
Pavan Sukhdev
Worldwatch Institute, State of the World 2013: Is Sustainability Still Possible?,
DOI 10.5822/ 978-1-61091-458-1_12, © 2013 by Worldwatch Institute
143
144 | State of the World 2013
sive consumer demand. Corporate production rises to meet such demand,
which has already made humanity’s ecological footprint exceed the planet’s
biocapacity by over 50 percent. We are now living by consuming Earth’s
capital, not its interest.3
We can blame consumerism, but consumerism was created by the cor-
poration and its marketing and advertising. We can blame the free market,
and indeed the free market has been the rallying cry of many in the private
sector. But what they usually mean by “free market” is the “status-quo mar-
ket.” Around $1 trillion per year
in harmful subsidies—including
$650 billion in fossil fuel subsi-
dies—promote “business-as-usu-
al” while obscuring its associated
environmental and societal costs.
The finger of blame must finally
point to the main agent of our
“brown economy”: today’s corpo-
ration and the rules that govern its
operations and behaviors.4
To break free of this system,
the rules of the game need to be
changed, so that corporations are
enabled to truly compete on the
basis of innovation, resource con-
servation, and satisfaction of multiple stakeholder demands—rather than
on the basis of who can best influence government regulation, avoid taxes,
and obtain subsidies for harmful activities in order to optimize shareholder
returns. These rules of the game include policies regarding accounting prac-
tices, taxation, financial leverage, and advertising that can result in a new
corporate model, an agent for tomorrow’s green economy.
This new model can be called Corporation 2020 because the pace at
which we are approaching planetary boundaries suggests that 2020 is the
date by which it needs to be in place in order for us not to cross these bound-
aries. Like a biological species that evolves in response to its environment,
and in turn influences it, today’s corporation can evolve into Corporation
2020 in response to a changed environment of prices, institutions, and regu-
lations. Its success can lead to a green economy. Achieving such an environ-
ment requires that four important change drivers be in place:
• First, taxes and subsidies have to be transformed to tax the “bads” more
(such as resource extraction and fossil fuel use) and tax the “goods”
(such as wages and profits) less, rather than the other way around, as is
the case today.
Sh
an
W
el
ls/
Ca
rt
oo
n
M
ov
em
en
t
Transforming the Corporation into a Driver of Sustainability | 145
• Second, we must introduce rules and limits to govern financial leverage,
especially if the borrower is considered “too big to fail.”
• Third, advertising norms and standards must be introduced so that adver-
tising is much more responsible and accountable.
• Fourth, all major corporate externalities—both positive and negative—
must be measured, audited, and reported as disclosures in the annual fi-
nancial statements of companies.
These four reforms will together ensure that the new corporate model
evolves from the old and does so profitably. As it increasingly wins business
away from the old model, its net impacts on society will be positive be-
cause it is now hard-wired to create positive externalities, not negative ones.
Collectively, its activities will bring us closer to a green economy, one that
increases human well-being and social equity and decreases environmental
risks and ecological losses.
Using Taxes as Incentives
The end of the twentieth century saw global consumption of almost ev-
ery principal industrial commodity increase dramatically, fueling the 242
percent economic expansion of the last four decades. Between 1973 and
2009, world energy consumption nearly doubled from the equivalent of 4.6
billion to 8.4 billion tons of oil. Fossil fuels—coal, petroleum, and natural
gas—represented over 80 percent of global energy consumption during
this period.5
This practice of fueling our economic activity using nonrenewable re-
sources has been very effective at increasing GDP, but it is ultimately not
sustainable. Most of the increase in energy use has occurred, and will con-
tinue to occur, in the developing world. If the material living standards there
were equal to those of the average American, the natural resource inputs
required for this consumption would exceed five Earths’ worth of global
ecological capacity.6
Taxing the resource base of our predominantly “brown” economy—
coal, petroleum, and many other minerals—can steer the market away
from resource-intensive growth and toward smart-technology industries
in renewable energy, clean water, new and better materials, and waste man-
agement. Taxing resources and removing all resource subsidies would force
a revaluation of resources, in turn allowing us to manage, not simply ex-
tract, natural assets. Resource taxation will not only reduce the resource
intensity of consumption, it has the potential to generate new revenues and
additional financing that can be used for high-priority areas such as educa-
tion and health care—or it can be applied against the rising cost of nature’s
remaining resources.
146 | State of the World 2013
The philosophy of free markets and small government has long demon-
ized taxation as a job-killing, “socialist” redistribution tool that robs the rich
in order to feed the inefficiencies of “big government.” Like any tool, how-
ever, taxes are either good or bad depending on how they are used. Using
taxes to revalue natural resources positions an innovative Corporation 2020
as the successful protagonist of twenty-first century capitalism.
“Too Big to Fail” is Too Big
Over the last few decades, “sustainability” has become nearly synonymous
with environmental initiatives. But as has become evident over the last few
years, businesses have not even succeeded in being financially sustainable,
let alone environmentally sustainable. In general, it should not be worrying
if a business is not financially sustainable, because bankruptcy is a normal
element of a functioning market. But governments have increasingly viewed
a diverse group of companies as “too big to fail”—a term that refers not only
to big banks (which provide clearing and settlement, which if disrupted can
have far-reaching economic consequences) but now includes giant insurers,
airlines, and auto manufacturers. These companies are hotbeds of “moral
hazard”—they are inherently incentivized to take risks that push the entire
economic system toward instability because they are comforted by the confi-
dence that governments will socialize their losses when meltdowns happen.
The problem with having so many such companies is that it adds to sys-
temic risks. Financial leverage has played a large role in each of the last four
major economic crises in the world—the Latin American debt crisis, the
savings and loan crisis in the United States, the Asian debt crisis, and the
recent global financial crisis led by the housing sector. The wisdom of allow-
ing a growing population of “too big to fail” companies yet more financial
leverage to grow even larger is highly questionable, even when cloaked in the
garb of promoting growth or aiding development.7
At present, most regulators are shying away from addressing the risks
that excess leverage imposes. Even when they do engage the idea of more or
better controls, they focus mainly on further capital requirements for banks
and financial intermediaries. We know this cannot be the answer because
out of the four financial crises just mentioned, the last two happened while
sophisticated capital adequacy regulations by the Bank for International
Settlements and the European Community were in place for the banks in-
volved. They are in effect leaving the better interests of society to be met
by the “invisible hand” of markets. In other words, investor behavior is ex-
pected to determine how much leverage is appropriate, with fund manag-
ers becoming the unlikely conscience-keepers of society. Unfettered markets
were never meant to solve social problems, yet the system today is set up as
if they were.
Transforming the Corporation into a Driver of Sustainability | 147
It is essential that we re-evaluate and rebuild the financial sector’s regula-
tory infrastructure to better monitor systemic risk and control of leverage.
In addition, we must explore regulatory options for nonbanking corpora-
tions that include reasonable limitations on leverage.
The most widespread tools to control leverage of financial institutions
are reserve requirements and capital adequacy ratios:
• Reserve requirements. These represent the fraction of deposits that banks
are required to retain either as cash in the vault, as a balance directly with
the central bank, or as government and other high-quality liquid securities.
Reserve requirements help limit the leverage in the banking system as a
whole and also help reduce the risk of liquidity problems.
• Capital adequacy ratios. Whereas reserve ratios are akin to using “brute
force” to preempt bank liquidity away from markets, capital adequacy ra-
tios are a more subtle device in that they use the economic disincentive
of raising the capital costs of leverage to achieve similar ends. A capital
adequacy ratio limits an institution’s financial leverage by requiring the
financial firm to have a minimum amount of capital—including owner-
ship equity and other forms of long-term capital—based on a specified
percentage of the firm’s assets.
For nonfinancial corporations, other tools are available:
• Consortium banking. An interesting case of nonfinancial corporations’ le-
verage being monitored actively is India’s “consortium banking” arrange-
ments. Under these schemes, banks form lending groups that share key
financial information about their corporate borrowers, including informa-
tion about their credit ratings, financial exposure, securities outstanding,
and compliance with financial covenants. This enables the group to mini-
mize the possibility that a borrowing firm can play banks off against one
another in order to take on more leverage than is advisable.8
• Eliminating the tax deductibility of interest. One significant incentive for
corporations to increase their use of debt is the tax deductibility of interest
expenses. This creates a clear inducement for companies to lever up, with
governments effectively subsidizing a portion of the cost of debt. A simple
solution would be to impose limits on the tax deductibility of interest ex-
pense for nonfinancial corporations by phasing out or capping the total
amount of interest deductible.
• Strengthening disclosure requirements. Improved disclosure requirements
need to be enacted for off-balance-sheet obligations and derivative trans-
actions. Proper measurement and reporting of leverage is critical to the
effective control of leverage at nonfinancial firms.
• Constraining leverage from acquisitions. Mergers and acquisitions (M&A)
represent an important source of leverage around the world, especially
when they take the form of leveraged-buyout (LBO) transactions, which
148 | State of the World 2013
involve the heavy use of debt. Approximately 14,000 LBOs took place in
2007, up from 5,000 in 2000. LBOs often have leverage ratios of at least 4
or 5 and higher, meaning that the majority of the funds they use to acquire
the new company consist of loans that must be paid back. M&A trans-
actions that exceed a given transaction amount—such as $10 billion—
should be subject to review and approval by that country’s central bank
(in the United States, the Federal Reserve) in order to ensure the amount
of leverage used is not likely to sink the company in debt and create down-
stream economic ripples.9
Breaking the Cycle of Advertising and Consumption
In addition to making taxes more effective and placing limits on leverage,
we must look closely at the demand side of the equation and ask what is
driving today’s unsustainable level of consumption. This brings us to the is-
sue of corporate advertising. (See also Chapter 10.) Global advertising turn-
over is estimated to be around
$500 billion, which is less than
Walmart and Carrefour combined
are worth. So while advertising is
a relatively small global business,
it has an inordinately high share
of voice: it impinges on us more
than any other communication,
every day of the week, every week
of the year. And every commercial
message that enters our conscious
or unconscious mind was placed
there by marketing and advertis-
ing companies.10
Marketing and advertising con-
vert wants into needs, sometimes
creating new wants out of human
insecurities, which are then skillfully transformed into new consumer needs
that must be met. It would not be an exaggeration to say that advertising is
the single biggest force driving consumer demand today.
But for many consumers, advertising has become the bane of modern
existence. So there are opposing forces at play. Consumer resistance has built
up, and in some cases vocal consumer resistance has resulted in legislation
to control advertising, if not ban it entirely. Consumers increasingly want
to shut down the cacophony—or at least “talk back.” A delightful example
of this two-way interaction is the Bubble Project, in which communication
designer Ji Lee pasted 50,000 blank stickers that looked like “speech bubbles”
Billboard landscape in Alexandria, Egypt.
D
av
id
E
ve
rs
Transforming the Corporation into a Driver of Sustainability | 149
on advertisements throughout New York City, allowing passers-by to write
in their reactions, thoughts, and witticisms.11
In other parts of the world, legislation has intervened to keep public
spaces “public.” In 2007, São Paulo became the first major city outside the
communist world to ban almost all outdoor advertising. In a city with two
conflicting identities—it is both the commercial capital of Brazil and the
epicenter of gang violence and extensive slums—São Paulo’s Lei Cidade
Limpa (Clean City Law) is now considered an unexpected success. Nearly all
outdoor advertisements—including billboards, outdoor video screens, and
ads on buses—were torn down, and the size of storefront signage was regu-
lated. The law was enforced with nearly $8 million in fines. Despite protests
and legal challenges, more than 70 percent of city residents welcomed the
move. In fact, even Nizan Guanaes, head of Grupo ABC, Brazil’s largest ad-
vertising group, said “I think it’s a good law. It was a challenge for us because,
of course, it’s easier to simply throw garbage advertising all over your city.”12
Apart from legislative actions, consumers are also increasingly unwill-
ing to put up with advertising that is misleading. The ability to talk back
empowers two-way communication and co-creation. Bob Garfield, journal-
ist and advertising commentator, coined the term “listenomics” to describe
the trend toward businesses using open-source techniques to find ideas for
product development, marketing, production, and many other activities
that have traditionally been controlled by isolated corporate departments.
These companies can be viewed as either encouraging or co-opting these
forces, depending on your viewpoint.13
Regardless, it is clear that a certain degree of serious change in advertising
is going to come endogenously—through the changing balance of power
between consumer and producer. However, this is an evolutionary process
and will take time—several decades perhaps. But what can be done over the
next decade, given the urgency of reform in the corporate world?
Two basic principles underlie the movement for change during this de-
cade. The first principle for advertising goes beyond what industry self-reg-
ulation and governmental standards generally require: corporate advertisers
need to treat all consumers as equal, no matter where they live—whether in
an industrial country or the developing world.
Second, transparency and disclosure are key elements of accountable ad-
vertising. A robust practice of disclosure around advertising can improve
the comparison between corporate bodies and also push them to be more
accountable. An annual Accountable Advertising Report would reveal which
relevant industry standards have been used, provide a place to share newly
created corporate principles on responsible advertising, and, most impor-
tant, be a vehicle for companies to differentiate themselves from—and be
better than—their competitors.
150 | State of the World 2013
Therefore in addition to following the two principles just described, four
strategies can bring us closer to a more accountable system of advertising:
• Disclose life span on products and in all advertisements. This would drive
individuals to question whether they really need a new version of an item
or whether they should purchase an item that has such a short life span in
the first place.
• Disclose countries of origin on the product. On the product itself, this should
be a simple visual that highlights all the countries in which any part of
the product was produced. While this simplifies a more formal life-cycle
analysis process, its simplicity is what makes it effective in getting people to
avoid products that have too many “miles” in their assembly or that come
from countries where human rights are disrespected or nature is exces-
sively exploited.
• Recommend on the product itself how to dispose of it. Advertisers should
communicate how to dispose of a product when advertising it, so that
consumers recognize the residual or waste value of the product and the
responsibility they have to dispose of it properly.
• Voluntarily commit a “10 percent development donation” on total advertising
spent in developing countries. This recommendation is specific to the devel-
oping world: to offset “footprint” expansion in local economies, advertis-
ers could support local sustainability projects through a 10 percent “ad
dollars to development dollars” commitment. The benefit of a proportion
like this is that companies might have an incentive to spend less on adver-
tising, which in some cases may reduce consumption.
These principles and strategies are not the only tools available to move
us toward a more acceptable form of “accountable advertising,” but they
would be a start—and they would be especially effective if coupled with
additional taxes and bans on the most pernicious forms of advertising, such
as ads that promote social ills like smoking and those that target vulner-
able populations like children. As companies begin to think more seriously
about both the unintended consequences of their production as well as the
potential good they could do with their advertising, new tools and strategies
will surely emerge.
Taking Externalities into Account
The modern corporation is responsible for immense negative externali-
ties, the largest of which is most likely its impact on the environment.
Many corporations undertake processes that have negative impacts on
the environment, such as air pollution or deforestation. Sometimes these
impacts are rare, catastrophic events, like BP’s oil spill in the Gulf of
Mexico. But they can also be so ubiquitous that people do not even no-
tice them anymore. One recent study estimates that 3,000 of the biggest
Transforming the Corporation into a Driver of Sustainability | 151
public companies alone cause $1.44 trillion in damages from their green-
house gas emissions.14
On the other hand, corporations can also create positive externalities.
One leader in creating human capital has been the Indian software giant
Infosys. Its primary training campus in Mysore is the largest corporate uni-
versity in the world, with the capacity to train 14,000 employees at a time.
Simply due to the sheer scale of its training initiatives, Infosys is probably
one of the largest generators of
positive human-capital externali-
ties in the world. The reason is
that Infosys’s training programs
enhance the earning potential
of thousands of people, some of
whom leave to work in organiza-
tions elsewhere. Thus these people
represent a positive externality for
society for which the company
receives no economic gain—an
externality estimated to be worth
over $1.4 billion in 2012.15
It is clearly to companies’ own
benefit to measure their positive
externalities, but it is essential for
the survival of the economy as a
whole that they start measuring
and disclosing their negative externalities as well. Our current under-
standing of the extent to which corporations cause externalities is fuzzy
at best. There is a common aphorism in business management that “you
cannot manage what you do not measure.” Most corporations only mea-
sure financial performance, not their externalities—the third-party effects
of doing “business as usual.” The same problem is seen at the country level
as well: governments are fixated on measuring only GDP and targeting
its growth, forgoing many more holistic and relevant macroeconomic in-
dicators such as Green GDP, Inclusive Wealth, and so on, which subtract
negative environmental externalities from overall economic performance.
We need a better accounting framework, one that reflects both positive
and negative externalities in a corporation’s financial statements and thus
makes transparent not only its holistic impact on the economy, society, and
the environment, but also its exposure to risks of resource constraints and
regulation. Furthermore, the external impacts of companies must be stan-
dardized. (See also Chapter 13.) Although there may be a dozen ways, for
instance, to calculate the freshwater externalities of a cement plant—across
Part of the Infosys training campus in Mysore.
N
ik
hi
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ul
ka
rn
i
152 | State of the World 2013
locations, ecosystem types, and types of cement plants—there should not be
a dozen accounting standards. On the contrary, there should be just one—
with clear parameters and simple enough for the industry to use.
The recently formed TEEB for Business Coalition (The Economics of
Ecosystems & Biodiversity) has as its primary task to standardize the meth-
odologies for calculating exactly these types of corporate externalities. As
of November 2012, an ambitious program of first establishing priorities
and then quantifying the top 100 global externalities has been launched. A
mechanism of this type ensures that investors are adequately aware of the
broad set of relevant risks faced by any corporation with large externalities,
as opposed to the narrower risks that are currently measured and reported.16
A uniform reporting mechanism established by combining leading cur-
rent research on externalities valuation and risk assessment would ensure
awareness of the current and projected magnitude of a corporation’s opera-
tions, supply chain, and investments’ external impact on society, economy,
and capital stock. It would also allow corporations to identify sources of
negative and positive impacts that they can target to improve.
Moving toward a More Responsible Corporation
If the recommendations of this chapter are implemented—taxation shifted
toward resource extraction, corporate leverage limited for those “too big to
fail,” advertising made more accountable, and externalities measured and
disclosed—the new corporations will likely look quite different from those
of today. They will be more responsible, with goals aligned to the communi-
ties and societies that host them.
First of all, tomorrow’s corporation will be a “capital factory,” not just a
goods-and-services factory. It will create financial capital for its sharehold-
ers through its operations, but without depleting (and ideally, while grow-
ing) natural capital, social capital, and human capital for society at large—
the stakeholders of the corporation.
Second, Corporation 2020 will be a community. The loss of community
around the world is a palpable result of the dominant economic model. Cor-
poration 2020 can be a modern-day community, tied by a shared culture
created by its values, mission, goals, objectives, and governance. It can (and
in the best of today’s companies, it already does) recreate the sense of belong-
ing that has been lost due to the forces of modernization and globalization.
Third, the corporation of tomorrow must be an institute of learning and
skills training, providing employees with an increasing base of knowledge
and skills with which to add value to the corporation and also add to each
individual’s earnings profile.
Finally, the goals of Corporation 2020 should be the goals of human soci-
ety: increased human well-being, increased social equity, improved social and
Transforming the Corporation into a Driver of Sustainability | 153
communal harmony, reduced ecological scarcities, and reduced environmen-
tal risks. Profitability is undoubtedly a key objective for Corporation 2020,
which ensures its financial sustainability while pursuing these goals, but it is
not the only objective. There are other important goals—not just those de-
termined by the corporation’s shareholders but also those determined by its
stakeholders: the public, those who are affected by the corporation.
If the ideas presented here seem complex, that is because they have to
be. Complex problems merit complex solutions, and there are no elegant or
easy ways to transform corporate purpose and behavior to create a sustain-
able economy. Too many people still underestimate the urgency, extent, and
complexity of the challenge ahead. No one institution, be it government
or civil society or the market or the corporation itself, can succeed alone.
And the challenge is too often presented as solely about the environment,
or social justice, or economics. But it is in fact a challenge of survival for the
corporation itself, for the modern economies that corporations constitute
and operate, and for human civilization as we know it.
Jeff Hohensee is an associate of
the Colorado-based nonprofit
Natural Capitalism Solutions.
www.sustainabilitypossible.org
A bag of groceries carried into the house is a snapshot of the global econo-
my. The raspberries could have come from Chile. The plastic container they
came in could have been manufactured in Mexico from oil extracted in the
Middle East. Even things that seem local might not be: bread baked in Los
Angeles, for instance, could be made with wheat from the San Joaquin Valley
in California, water from Colorado, and salt from Pakistan.
The world’s economy is a web of activities that span the globe. The com-
mercial activities of the world’s largest corporations extend around the
world, collectively touching almost everywhere, and their gross revenues of-
ten exceed those of many national economies. This economic web supplies
the labor, materials, and resources that make the products and services we
enjoy. The environmental and social impacts of these activities are broad
and deep but rarely counted in corporate reporting, forcing business lead-
ers to make decisions with partial information. But some promising recent
trends in corporate reporting could provide regulators, investors, corporate
decisionmakers, and community leaders with more accurate views of the
activities that affect their companies and communities.
Most notable in this trend is “integrated reporting,” a new form of cor-
porate disclosure that integrates financial data with the environmental and
social challenges that affect a company’s health. In the mid-1990s, the Prince
of Wales initiated the Accounting for Sustainability (A4S) project in the
United Kingdom. A4S proposed that reporting regimes integrate strategy,
governance, and financial performance into the social, environmental, and
economic contexts of a company. A4S’s work draws from concepts like eco-
logical economics, natural capitalism, and full-cost accounting.1
Numerous attempts have been made to build these concepts into cor-
porate reporting, including Baxter’s Environmental Financial Statement,
Puma’s Environmental Profit & Loss Statement, Wilhelm’s Return on Sustain-
ability, Willard’s Sustainability Advantage, and Krzus and Eccles’ One Report.
c h a p t e r 1 3
Corporate Reporting
and Externalities
Jeff Hohensee
Worldwatch Institute, State of the World 2013: Is Sustainability Still Possible?,
DOI 10.5822/ 978-1-61091-458-1_13, © 2013 by Worldwatch Institute
154
Corporate Reporting and Externalities | 155
Building on this work, A4S collaborated with the Global Reporting Initiative
(GRI) to spearhead the creation of the International Integrated Reporting
Council (IIRC). The IIRC is currently piloting an integrated report as an
alternative to traditional corporate reports, as described later in this chapter.
The integrated report has the potential to help corporate directors and offi-
cers make better decisions as well as to help investors and other stakeholders
understand better how a company is really performing and its impacts in
local communities.2
Externalities
The global economy provides people with the food on their tables, the shel-
ter over their heads, and many of the routine supplies of daily life. Over the
past 30 years, in great part because of the expansion of the global econo-
my, more than a half-billion people have been brought out
of abject poverty. This has increased life expectancy and
improved the quality of life. As documented throughout
this book, however, the rapid expansion of globalism has
also increased water and air pollution and the production
of hazardous wastes, and it has brought most major eco-
systems to the brink of collapse. We have lost many of the
services these ecosystems provide, such as clean air, clean
water, and arable soil. As global population has increased,
so has per capita natural resource use, energy consumption,
and demands on the environment to provide raw materials
and other natural resources.3
From a corporate reporting standpoint, these negative
impacts are often considered externalities, which are costs
(such as air pollution) or benefits from an economic activity
that are not fully reflected in the price of the good or service
involved. Externalities disguise the actual cost of goods by
leaving these costs or benefits unaccounted for in product
pricing and in corporate reporting. To take just one exam-
ple, the emissions from the long-haul trucks used to bring
goods to market cause air pollution that imposes health care
costs that are not included in the price of the goods sold. In
California’s San Joaquin Valley, it is estimated that meeting federal clean air
standards would save the region air pollution–related health care costs of
more than $1,600 per person a year—for $6 billion in annual savings for the
region’s economy. Yet the cost of air pollution from long-haul trucks is not
included in the cost of San Joaquin Valley farm goods.4
Unreported externalities can also hide business risks. “Chemicals of con-
cern” is a case in point. According to the California Department of Toxic
Ri
ch
ar
d
&
Sl
av
om
ir
Sv
ita
lsk
y/
Ca
rt
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M
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156 | State of the World 2013
Substances Control, “because of the many chemicals in commerce . . . and
the increased interest by scientists and the public in understanding the types
of toxicity that chemicals may pose, more and more scientists and toxicolo-
gists are identifying ‘emerging chemicals of concern,’ or ECCs. . . . Some ex-
amples of ECCs include bisphenol A, phthalates, arsenic, perchlorate, non-
ylphenols, synthetic musks and other personal care product ingredients.”5
Bisphenol A (BPA) illustrates the potential of an ECC to have a measur-
able financial impact on business profit even before such chemicals are regu-
lated. BPA is an endocrine disruptor that has been associated with a wide
variety of health problems, including miscarriages, retarded infant brain
development, obesity, heart disease, and cancer. Evidence that BPA was a
chemical of concern first emerged in 1931. Transparent corporate reporting
would have notified all involved that a risk existed. Instead, more than half
a century went by until the adverse effects of low-dose exposure on labo-
ratory animals were widely reported in 1997. It was another decade until
several government agencies questioned the safety of BPA, which prompted
a public outcry. Shortly thereafter, several retailers pulled drinking bottles
containing BPA from their shelves. In 2010, Canada became the first country
to declare BPA a toxic substance.6
The worst consequence of this delay in reporting, of course, is that mil-
lions of people were fed a hazardous chemical. But the cost to companies
of quickly transitioning away from BPA was also huge. They carried an
unreported risk that was entirely predictable. The cost of a quick, expensive
transition to BPA-free products could have been avoided if companies had
acknowledged the risk and avoided using BPA in the first place. Unreported
externalities like these burden the public, which is forced to shoulder the
costs that companies should bear, but they also pose risks to companies
and investors.
The omission of externalities in corporate reporting is not a small prob-
lem. The global value of externalities is staggering: it was estimated at nearly
$7 trillion—11 percent of the value of the global economy—in 2008. And
just 3,000 companies were responsible for 35 percent of these costs. Among
the largest of the unreported externalities are those related to oil. Since the
Industrial Revolution, this form of natural capital has been extracted and
used in the production of electricity, gasoline, diesel fuel, fertilizer, herbi-
cides, plastics, and explosives. The negative impacts of the petrochemical
industries on ecosystems, cultural heritage, and economic equity—chief
among them, climate change—have been well documented. According to
the Principles for Responsible Investment Initiative, the environmental ex-
ternalities of the oil and gas industries are valued at more than $300 billion
a year. The exclusion of undisclosed externalities is a significant oversight
that needs to be addressed.7
Corporate Reporting and Externalities | 157
Corporate Reporting of Externalities
Efforts to promote corporate reporting of externalities have taken both
mandatory and voluntary forms. A variety of regulatory bodies are respon-
sible for what is included in mandatory corporate reporting as well as what
is left out. In the United States, the private, nonprofit Financial Account-
ing Standards Board sets Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP)
for financial reporting. The International Accounting Standards Board sets
International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), the measure used for
financial reporting in most other countries. GAAP and IFRS are being com-
bined into one system through a convergence process that will eventually
produce a unified accounting standard. This process, however, has not ad-
dressed externalities, nor is financial reporting likely to do so soon.
Limited progress has been made in other mandatory corporate reports.
In the United States, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) over-
sees mandatory reporting for companies whose stock is traded in that
country. Beginning in 1982, SEC Regulation S-K required disclosure of the
cost of compliance with environmental regulations and the potential cost of
legal proceedings for environmental liabilities when those costs were large
enough to affect earnings. While not explicitly mentioning environmental
externalities, the SEC also requires companies to disclose trends, events,
and uncertainties that may materially (measurably) affect the company’s
financial position.8
After years of pressure from groups like Ceres (a nonprofit founded in
1989 as the Coalition for Environmentally Responsible Economies), in 2010
the SEC took the unprecedented action of issuing an interpretative release on
disclosure of externalities related to climate change. This guidance explains
the SEC’s position on how climate change risk should be addressed under
existing reporting requirements by expanding the requirement for environ-
mental externalities to include the indirect consequences of climate change.9
Numerous voluntary corporate reporting initiatives encourage disclosure
of environmental, social, and governance externalities to varying degrees. In
the 1980s, many corporations began reporting voluntarily on sustainability
metrics. These are commonly called corporate social responsibility (CSR) re-
ports. The pioneers of CSR reporting gave shareholders, regulators, and other
interested parties previously unavailable views into the positive and negative
impacts of corporate activities. While the early CSR reports were better than
nothing, the points made there were often incomplete and, in some cases,
intentionally misleading. By the 1990s Ceres, the World Resources Institute,
and several other groups launched an initiative to create standards for CSR
reporting. This effort led to the Global Reporting Initiative.
GRI has become what many call the gold standard for CSR reporting.
158 | State of the World 2013
By 2008, some 80 percent of the world’s 250 largest corporations were pro-
ducing GRI-based CSR reports. This movement dramatically improved the
quality and transparency of corporate sustainability reporting. Yet compa-
nies can exclude vast portions of their sustainability impacts from CSR re-
porting and still achieve a high GRI reporting standard.10
BP’s 2009 CSR report described
its environmental controls and ap-
proach to risk by stating that its
“commitment to competence is
through having the right people
with the right skills doing the right
thing supported by our leadership
framework.” The report included
an entire section on deep-water
drilling that touted BP’s technical
expertise. BP’s 2010 CSR report
then had to address the Deepwa-
ter Horizon oil spill in the Gulf
of Mexico. In a sea of carefully
worded narrative, it reported that
almost all of the environmental
metrics in the report improved
over the previous several years. The metrics in BP’s 2010 CSR report prove,
to the point of absurdity, that CSR reporting, as currently configured is in-
sufficient to guarantee reporting of externalities.11
Integrated Reporting
The most promising move to include externalities in corporate reporting is
the integrated report proposed by the International Integrated Reporting
Council. The IIRC’s participants include the Global Reporting Initiative,
WWF, and the World Resources Institute. The world’s largest accounting
firms are involved, as are the key regulatory agencies responsible for cor-
porate reporting. Diverse multinational corporations have been involved
in establishing the IIRC framework and piloting the integrated reports, in-
cluding AB Volvo, the Clorox Company, the Coca-Cola Company, Deloitte
LLP, Deutsche Bank, Jones Lang Lasalle, Microsoft, Sainsbury’s, Tata Steel,
and Unilever.12
An integrated report, as described by the IIRC, is “a principles-based
approach that requires senior management and those charged with gov-
ernance to apply considerable judgement to determine which matters are
material and to ensure they are appropriately disclosed given the specific cir-
Flotilla of vessels working to stop the flow of oil at the site of the Deepwater
Horizon spill.
U
.S
. C
oa
st
G
ua
rd
Corporate Reporting and Externalities | 159
cumstances of the organization and, where appropriate, the application of
generally accepted measurement and disclosure methods.” The conceptual
foundation of an IIRC integrated report specifically mentions the disclosure
of externalities:
• Capital (resources and relationships): The IIRC’s 2011 Discussion Paper
noted that “Integrated Reporting . . . makes visible an organization’s use
of and dependence on . . . ‘capitals’ (financial, manufactured, human,
intellectual, natural and social), and the organization’s access to and
impact on them.”
• External factors: A July 2011 draft outline notes that the framework for
integrated reporting “is expected to discuss how external factors affect
the organization both directly and indirectly, for example, how they af-
fect the availability, affordability, and quality of capitals that the orga-
nization depends upon and impacts in creating and preserving value.
External factors include macro and micro economic conditions, market
forces, the speed and impact of technological change, societal issues, en-
vironmental challenges, and the legislative and regulatory environment
in which the organization operates.”13
The integrated report framework includes a description of a company’s
business model that describes the forms of capital it relies on, strategic ob-
jectives to add value to these capitals, and delivery of products or services to
achieve these objectives.
The IIRC challenges corporate reporting requirements, stating that poli-
cymakers should “question capital market orthodoxy and challenge tradi-
tional accounting practices, business models and value creation methods.
One concern is whether capital is being allocated in the most effective way to
achieve sustainable returns over the short, medium and long term.” This has
far-reaching implications for sustainability. An integrated report discloses
the external environmental and social factors that directly and indirectly af-
fect a company. In doing this, IIRC’s integrated report effectively eliminates
the concept of externalities by bringing indirect environmental and social
costs inside corporate reporting.14
The U.S. nonprofit Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (SASB)
is establishing sustainability standards that can be used in integrated re-
porting and other forms of corporate disclosure. The SASB views the SEC
as one of its primary stakeholders, and the Board’s objective is to create
sustainability accounting standards for use by SEC registrants (publicly
held companies) using the definition of materiality found in U.S. securities
law (essentially, “big enough to matter”—which is sensitive to context, in
that a sum that is material to a hot dog vendor would be immaterial to a
transnational corporation).15
Ultimately, more-relevant, transparent, and useful disclosures of nonfi-
160 | State of the World 2013
nancial information by SEC registrants will affect the quality of disclosures
made by companies around the world. In using the SEC definition of mate-
riality, SASB is creating a de facto mandatory reporting environment for dis-
closure of material nonfinancial information. Even if the integrated report
does not become mandatory, the SASB key performance indicators have the
potential to credibly include externalities in mandatory investor reporting.
The Future of Corporate Reporting of Externalities
The persistent disconnect between “business as usual” and the need to re-
port externalities is made clear by an Association of Chartered Certified
Accountants 2012 survey. Forty-nine percent of the respondents identified
natural capital as measurably valuable for businesses. The same survey notes
that few companies include the value of natural capital in their financial
reports. This omission puts investors, companies, and communities at risk.16
At the Rio+20 Conference in 2012, a group of 37 investment compa-
nies—including the International Finance Corporation, part of the World
Bank Group—released an official Natural Capital Declaration that states
the need to accurately calculate and disclose the value of externalities in
corporate reporting: “It is becoming ever clearer that natural capital can
have an impact on specific financial products, as well as on long-term
growth. Endorsement of the Declaration represents an opportunity to
understand how natural capital, as part of a range of other material [en-
vironmental, social, and governance] issues, can affect your institution’s
bottom line.” Signatories of the Natural Capital Declaration specifically
committed to collaborating with the IIRC and other stakeholders to “build
a global consensus around the development of Integrated Reporting, which
includes Natural Capital as part of the wider definition of resources and
relationships key to an organization’s success.” More than at any other time
in history, the value of reporting externalities is being recognized as a criti-
cal part of corporate reporting.17
The IIRC’s work aims to fix the problem altogether. The integrated re-
port has the potential to transform the nature of corporate reporting. By the
beginning of December 2012, some 80 companies were piloting the IIRC’s
integrated report. The results of these pilots will be reviewed by the IIRC,
which includes the accounting standards boards that oversee all financial
reporting. The groundwork has been laid for a significant change in corpo-
rate reporting. The right players to mandate the change are at the table. The
IIRC’s work thus has the potential to create a level playing field that requires
all corporations to include externalities in the information they disclose
about performance.18
Coal, oil, and gas—fossil fuels: we can’t do without them. They are the life-
blood of modern industrial civilization. These highly concentrated, widely
available stores of energy have unleashed modern civilization’s astonishing
productivity, liberating billions of people from drudgery and insecurity.
Finding more fossil fuels and getting them to markets around the world is
the challenge of our times.
Fossil fuels: we must do without them. They feed the fire in the oven
destined to bake civilization beyond recognition. When these hydrocar-
bons from the concentrated, pressurized remains of ancient organisms are
burned, they overwhelm the Earth’s ecosystems and condemn billions of
people to climate-induced misery. Shifting to renewable energy sources and
alternative ways of life is the challenge of our time.
Two existential positions, poles apart. Both may be accurate. The contra-
diction is the crux of the contemporary energy and environment dilemma
and one reason governments have done so little in the face of obvious and
ramifying threats.
Is there a way out? Not as long as technological optimism and trust in
the magic of “the market” sustain the belief that the growth-dependent,
consumerist, debt-laden, risk-accumulating world is the best of all possible
worlds. Not when those who live in this world and those who aspire to join
it see no reason to exchange the current model for an uncertain new model.
Not when leaders and citizens alike cannot imagine replacing the current,
fossil-fuel-dependent economic and social system. Why? Because too many
people believe that the next energy transition, like previous transitions—
from human power to animal power, animal to wood, wood to coal, and
coal to oil—will make life better for all. As happened before, they believe,
the next energy source will spur convenience, higher speeds, greater labor
productivity, and more consumer choice—material progress forever. The
bridge, this view has it, is new technologies to extract and burn every last bit
Thomas Princen is a profes-
sor of natural resources and
environment at the University
of Michigan. Jack P. Manno is
a professor of environmental
studies at SUNY College of Envi-
ronmental Science and Forestry.
Pamela Martin is a professor
of politics at Coastal Carolina
University.
www.sustainabilitypossible.org
c h a p t e r 1 4
Keep Them in the Ground:
Ending the Fossil Fuel Era
Thomas Princen, Jack P. Manno, and Pamela Martin
Worldwatch Institute, State of the World 2013: Is Sustainability Still Possible?,
DOI 10.5822/ 978-1-61091-458-1_14, © 2013 by Worldwatch Institute
161
162 | State of the World 2013
of affordable oil, coal, and gas. This is the dominant worldview, what we dub
the “industrial progressive” view.1
It is time to choose a different view and a different future. A first step
is to recognize that Earth’s “gift” to humanity of high-quality fossil fuels,
those that pack the greatest energy wallop, is a one-time nonrenewing and
diminishing reserve. There was a “before” (before the late nineteenth cen-
tury), when fossil fuels powered only a tiny proportion of the world’s work,
and there will be an “after,” when fossil fuels are reserved for tasks for which
they, and they alone, are best suited. The question humanity faces at this
historic juncture is how to navigate the transition, and how to do so given
that the fossil fuel era will end and these fuels will be rationed—although on
the current path, not soon enough to avert catastrophic climate and other
environmental and social impacts.
The choice to keep fossil fuels in the ground in the face of otherwise over-
whelming pressures to exploit them to the end is, we have come to believe,
the only way to ensure that greenhouse gases and other pollutants remain
out of the atmosphere and out of our bodies. The power and momentum of
the fossil fuel complex is simply too great. And the predominant approach
to ground-level air pollution, high-level climate change, and petrochemi-
cal contamination of human beings and nonhumans—that is, to manage
fossil fuel emissions—is too ineffectual, too much of an accommodating,
end-of-pipe approach. All too often, such an approach reduces a couple of
centuries of history to one chemical element, carbon, when the real problem
is upstream, in a global infrastructure and power structure that is extremely
adept at drilling holes, blasting mountains, and laying pipes.
The Problem: Extraction . . . Not Emissions, Fossil Fuels . . .
Not Carbon
The central problem is not emissions, but extraction. Put differently, it is
not about carbon dioxide but fossil fuels—not about what comes out of the
exhaust pipes and smokestacks but what comes out of the ground. To direct
political attention away from end-of-pipe management to extraction is to
be precautionary, a widely accepted approach for known toxic and ozone-
depleting substances but not, as yet, for fossil fuels.
A carbon focus is reductionist, possibly the greatest and most dangerous
reductionism of all time: a 150-year history of complex geologic, political,
economic, and military security issues all reduced to one element—carbon.
This framing implies that the problem only arises once fuels are burned.
It effectively absolves of responsibility all those who organize to extract,
process, and distribute. It leaves unquestioned the legal requirement to ex-
tract created by the selling of fossil-fuel reserves in futures markets and the
widespread use of reserves for collateral in financial transactions. So con-
Keep Them in the Ground: Ending the Fossil Fuel Era | 163
structed, extraction is called “production,” and the burden of harm and of
responsibility for amelioration falls on governments and consumers rather
than on extractors. Inside the carbon logic, extraction is presumed to be a
given—normal, inevitable, even desirable. What is more, the carbon lens
portrays the global ecological predicament as one-dimensional: deal with
carbon emissions, and everything else will follow.
To focus on fossil fuel extraction, in contrast, is to ask how and why re-
moval of these fuels is deemed inevitable and net beneficial. A fossil fuel focus
does not take such how-and-why questions as self-evident (people want the
energy, producers get it). It directs analytic and political attention upstream
to a whole set of decisions, incentives, and institutions that conspire to bring
to the surface hydrocarbons that otherwise sit safely and permanently in
the ground. It forces us to consider that once fossil fuels are extracted, their
by-products—ground-level pollution, atmospheric greenhouse gases, pet-
rochemical endocrine disruptors—inevitably and unavoidably move into
people’s bloodstream, into ecosystems, and into the atmosphere and oceans.
To question extraction is to consider deliberately limiting an otherwise
valuable resource, rationing and setting priorities for its uses. It is to take
renewable energy, conservation, equity, and environmental justice seriously
and to create the institutions, local to global, capable of doing so. It is to ask
what the prior ethics of fossil fuel allocation have been and what, given the
imperative to reverse course and build a sustainable society, they must be. It
is to ask what a politics of fossil fuel resistance and abolition would be and
to imagine a deliberately chosen post–fossil fuel world.
All this leads to the conclusion—unthinkable for fossil fuel proponents
and business-as-usual-only-greener proponents—that the only realistic
means of stopping fossil fuel emissions is to keep the fuels in the ground.
The only safe place for fossil fuels is in place, where they lie, where they
are solid or liquid (or, for natural gas, geologically well contained already),
where their chemistry is mostly of complex chains, not simple molecules
like carbon dioxide, that find their way out of the tiniest crevices, that lu-
bricate tectonic plates perpetually under stress, that react readily with water
to acidify the oceans, and that float into high places filtering and reflecting
sunlight, heating beyond livability the habitats below.
And yet the fossil fuel complex is extremely powerful. That power is at
once energetic, economic, and political. Its weakness is ultimately geologic
and ethical.
Fossil Fuel Influence
One measure of the industry’s influence is the fact that 88 percent of the
world’s energy comes from fossil fuels. (See Box 14–1.) Sixty-one percent of
that is produced by national oil companies—created, subsidized, and defend-
164 | State of the World 2013
• Fossil fuels provide 88 percent of the world’s energy.
• Fossil fuel infrastructure occupies an area the size of
Belgium.
• Biofuel infrastructure roughly the size of the United
States and India would be needed if biofuels were to
replace fossil fuels.
• To meet industry and agency projections of increased
energy demands, $38 trillion in oil and gas infrastruc-
ture is needed by 2035.
• It takes 7.3–10 calories of energy input to produce 1
calorie of food energy.
• Direct fuel subsidies to agriculture in the United States
total $2.4 billion.
• Proven fossil fuel reserves, owned by private compa-
nies, state companies, and governments, exceed the
planet’s remaining carbon budget (in order to keep
within a 2 degree Celsius temperature increase) by a
factor of five.
• Occupationally related fatalities among workers in the
oil and gas extraction process are higher than deaths
for workers from all other U.S. industries combined.
Source: See endnote 2.
Box 14–1. Fossil Fuels by the Numbers
ed by national governments. Another is that the pe-
troleum industry is the world’s largest, capitalized
at $2.3 trillion and accounting for 14.2 percent of
all commodity trade. What’s more, it is by far the
most capital-intensive industry—$3.2 million is
invested for every person employed. By compari-
son, the textile industry is capitalized at $13,000 per
worker, the computer industry at $100,000, and the
chemical industry at $200,000. And the petroleum
industry is among the most profitable. In 2008, for
example, ExxonMobil made $11.68 billion in sec-
ond-quarter profits, amounting to profits of some
$1,400 per second, and it ranked forty-fifth on a
list of the top 100 economic entities in the world,
a list that includes national governments. In 2010,
ExxonMobil jumped to thirty-fifth on the list, just
behind Royal Dutch Shell.2
Yet another indication of the influence of the
fossil fuel complex is the flow of tax dollars to and
from the industry. Worldwide, governments sub-
sidize the fossil fuel industry to the tune of some
$300–500 billion per year. In the United States in
2008, the petroleum industry paid $23 billion in
royalties to the U.S. Treasury. In Saudi Arabia, the
world’s largest oil producer, oil and gas account for
90 percent of the gross domestic product while em-
ploying only 1.6 percent of the active labor force.3
Perhaps the industry’s greatest source of influence is its ability to ad-
vance a vision, one of abundant and cheap energy, of powering and defend-
ing nations, of feeding and sheltering billions of people. It is a vision with
appeal to nearly every sector of a modern industrial society—manufactur-
ers, investors, military and political leaders, consumers. But its appeal has
begun to erode.
For one, under the rubric of the “resource curse” (broadly construed),
the social and economic costs have become well established. “The irony of
oil wealth,” writes political scientist Michael Ross in The Oil Curse, is that
“the greater a country’s need for additional income—because it is poor
and has a weak economy—the more likely its oil wealth will be misused or
squandered. . . . Since the oil nationalizations of the 1970s, the oil-producing
countries have had less democracy, fewer opportunities for women, more
frequent civil wars, and more volatile economic growth than the rest of the
world, especially in the developing world.” In addition, Ross finds, “by 2005,
Keep Them in the Ground: Ending the Fossil Fuel Era | 165
at least half of the OPEC countries were poorer than they had been thirty
years earlier.”4
From a national security perspective, former CIA director Jim Woolsey
says: “It was obvious that oil was dominant in a lot of places that generated
trouble. There’s almost nothing that doesn’t get better if you move away
from dependence on oil.” Even industry insiders have taken stock and are
trying to imagine a different world. “The resources are there,” writes John
Hofmeister, former president of the Shell Oil Company in the United States.
“The question is: do we want to continue to use these fossil fuels at cur-
rent—or increasing—rates until they are eventually exhausted? The answer,
unequivocably, is no. The economic, social, and environmental costs of such
an approach are becoming ever clearer and ever higher.” Or, as the German
Advisory Council on Global Change put it, “The ‘fossil-nuclear metabolism’
of the industrialized society has no future. The longer we cling to it, the
higher the prices will be for future generations.”5
In short, for all the power of the fossil fuel players, their deliberate construc-
tion of fossil fuels’ net beneficence and inevitable use is beginning to crumble.
A Politics of Urgent Transition
To limit extraction, not just manage emissions, requires a particular kind
of politics. Its thrust is accelerating the transition out of fossil fuels, con-
fronting extremely powerful actors, and creating a norm of the good life, life
without endless expansion and extraction.
The politics of this transition is ultimately moral, and so the ultimate
strategy is delegitimization. This does not mean a vilification of the fossil
fuel industry. The industry has a century and more of vilification, starting
with charges against Rockefeller’s Standard Oil (the “Octopus”) and con-
tinuing through to today (Hofmeister entitled his book Why We Hate the Oil
Companies). Nor does this mean simply a repudiation of the industry’s anti-
democratic, anti-environmental tactics. Rather, delegitimization means the
reconceptualizing and revaluing of fossil fuels—or, to be precise, of humans’
relationship with fossil fuels. It means a shift in understanding of fossil fuels
from constructive substances to destructive substances, from necessity to
indulgence or even addiction, from a “good” to a “bad,” from lifeblood (of
modern society) to poison (of a potentially sustainable society).6
In other words, fossil fuels will make a moral transition in parallel to the
material transition. Much as slavery went from universal institution to uni-
versal abomination and as tobacco went from medicinal and cool to lethal
and disgusting, the delegitimization of fossil fuels will flip the valence of these
otherwise wondrous, free-for-the-taking complex hydrocarbons. And rather
than pin blame on “big bad oil (and coal) companies” or, even worse, on “all
of us” because everyone uses fossil fuels, delegitimization simply recognizes
166 | State of the World 2013
that a substance once deemed net beneficial can become net detrimental. As
in abolition and the delegitimization of smoking, what it takes is some com-
pelling examples (begin with climate disruption and smog, add acid rain and
oil slicks, include carbon monoxide and scores of other air pollutants), inci-
sive critics, effective communication, and—for the moral entrepreneurs—a
whole lot of persistence and willingness to be vilified.7
Delegitimization of fossil fuels would start with the simple observation
that there are some things humans cannot handle. And for these things, hu-
mans can decide not to use them, just as they have with respect to ozone-
depleting substances, lead in paint and gasoline, drift nets, land mines, rhino
horns, and someday, perhaps, nuclear power plants and nuclear weapons.
Fortunately, some bold and clever people, North and South, are already
saying no to fossil fuels and other mined materials. Their experiments, in-
deed their courage, suggest that such delegitimization has begun. This is
particularly true among otherwise marginalized peoples. Their politics is
not parochial protectionism, not localism. It is simultaneously protecting
livelihood and the planet. Every new act of local resistance contributes to a
new normative belief, one that says that the game is illegitimate, that it ben-
efits a powerful few and their clients while fobbing the costs off on others in
space and time. While such local acts of resistance are quickly dismissed as
NIMBY (Not in My Back Yard) by defenders of the fossil fuel order, from the
perspective of global threat and globalization from below, they are part of a
larger project of delegitimization.
And so, what the climate scientists and others started yet cannot finish
with their top-down, expert-led, apolitical, managerialist schemes and tech-
nological fixes is being augmented and accelerated by moral commitments
in small pockets all over the world. But clearly fossil-fuel-dependent societ-
ies cannot stop cold. They can, however, start stopping now. One ethical
justification for continued fossil-fuel-consumption is to facilitate a future
without fossil fuels. Others are self-preservation and self-defense. What is
more, because the transition away from current high-energy patterns will
require considerable energy, those societies and communities deliberately
living on little energy will have an advantage. Local action matters most in
part because a top-down, centralized phaseout of fossil fuels by those with
the most to lose is highly unlikely.8
Finally, delegitimizing a substance (or a process like exploring and drill-
ing), as opposed to condemning an actor or all of humanity, puts the focus
on the offending substance or, more specifically, on its use. Fossil fuels are
perfectly “natural”; traditional uses of petroleum (rock oil) for pitch, light-
ing, and medicinal purposes were, for all we can tell, only harmful locally if
at all. In a strategy of delegitimization, the burden shifts from the contest of
interest groups (environmentalists versus industrialists, for example) to a
Keep Them in the Ground: Ending the Fossil Fuel Era | 167
contest over the politics of the good life. Industrialists have enacted one vi-
sion of the good life. Its efficacy in the twentieth century can be debated, but
the politics of delegitimization are about now and the future, including the
distant future. It is an affirmative politics, about creating a different vision
of the good life given the biophysical trends under way.
Early Efforts to Keep Fossil Fuels in the Ground
On the face of it, keep them in the ground, for all its environmental and
ethical justifications, is just an idea. The world is happily (some might say
madly) pumping oil, devouring coal, and capturing natural gas—all at re-
cord levels. Everyone wants in the game for reasons of profit and power (or
both), everyone from private energy companies to petrostates to investors.
The juggernaut is rolling across the landscape; it cannot be stopped.
Except in some places, including some of the unlikeliest of places—ma-
jor oil-producing countries, for instance—where key actors have begun
stopping this monstrous vehicle. None of these exceptions are successful in
the sense of a complete shutdown of fossil fuel extraction. None are large-
scale. But all are significant in that these actors have had the temerity to
challenge an established order that is local, national, and international as
well as hugely powerful. What is more, these efforts are occurring largely
peacefully and through democratic means. And perhaps most significant,
they are doing so at a time when the world as a whole sees no crisis, no ex-
istential threat, just the odd pollutant to clean up, emissions to be managed,
and efficiencies to be realized.
In the global South, for example, coalitions of indigenous peoples, non-
governmental organizations, and government agencies in Ecuador and Bo-
livia have rewritten their constitutions to enshrine the right of nature and
define a new model of sustainable development, one that excludes fossil
fuels. In Ecuador, it is called sumak kawsay in Quichua, buen vivir in Span-
ish, and the good life in English. The leaders there recognize that petroleum
production will eventually decline, that there have been long-term costs to
Ecuador, and that costs to the planet are becoming increasingly dangerous.9
As a first step, the Yasuní-ITT Initiative proposes keeping 20 percent of
Ecuador’s known oil reserves in the ground. It calls for coresponsibility with
the rest of the world in avoiding emissions that the nearly 900 million barrels
of oil in the ITT block could produce. The international community would
pay for avoided carbon emissions to protect one of the most biodiverse spots
on Earth and to limit in a small way global emissions. It would also protect
the rights of at least two indigenous groups that live there in voluntary isola-
tion. The $350 million per year that Ecuador seeks for 13 years (half of what
they estimate the reserves would earn from oil extraction) would be placed
in a U.N. Development Programme Trust Fund with a board of directors
168 | State of the World 2013
The machinery of fracking deployed at a site in Texas.
that includes Ecuadorans as well as members of the global community. If
successful, it would be one of the largest global environmental trust funds of
its kind. And it would be created not by burning fossil fuels, but by keeping
them in the ground.10
Costa Rica, a small Caribbean country with known oil reserves offshore,
enacted a moratorium in 2002 on oil extraction, citing ecological and so-
cial damage. In his 2002 inaugural address, President Abel Pacheco declared
“Costa Rica will become an environmental leader and not an oil or mining
enclave.” He went on to say, “Costa Rica’s real oil and real gold are its waters
and the oxygen produced by its forests.” Despite a brief encounter with the
oil industry in the 1980s and recent considerations of natural gas explora-
tion, Costa Rica has maintained its stance against this industry in favor of
ecotourism and alternative energy sources and has achieved high human
development indicators.11
In the global North, however, fossil fuels once left in the ground as too
expensive to retrieve are being revisited. In the United States, federally
funded research in the 1980s led
to major innovations in imaging
and mapping gas-rich shale deep
beneath the surface. Blasting the
shale with high pressure fracking
fluids and drilling horizontally in
multiple directions with powerful
new diamond-studded drill bits
add up to what became known as
“slick-water, high-volume hori-
zontal hydraulic fracturing,” com-
monly referred to as hydrofracking
or just fracking.12
As a result, massive amounts
of shale gas can be reached prof-
itably. These shale gas “plays,” as
the industry refers to them, are
spreading rapidly in the traditional coal and oil states: Pennsylvania, Texas,
and West Virginia. But when landsmen began knocking on doors in rural
New York State enticing homeowners to lease their property for access to
the vast Marcellus Shale beneath them, a keep-it-in-the-ground movement
came to life. Landowners, environmental activists, artists, and indigenous
peoples organized and protested, putting pressure on state and local offi-
cials. In 2010, New York Governor David Patterson ordered a moratorium
on hydrofracking permits until the state completed an environmental and
regulatory review. As of this writing, the latest state proposals would ban
Ti
m
L
ew
is
Keep Them in the Ground: Ending the Fossil Fuel Era | 169
hydrofracking in the watersheds from which New York City and Syracuse
get their unfiltered municipal supplies; surface drilling would be prohib-
ited on state-owned land, including parks, and on forest areas and wildlife
management areas.13
In the process, the state Department of Environmental Conservation re-
ceived more than 13,000 public comments overwhelmingly in opposition to
drilling in the remaining areas. Not leaving the decision up to the state, many
local municipalities have approved or are considering zoning ordinances and
outright bans. These are likely to be challenged in state courts. Concerns fo-
cus mostly on the threat to water supplies and aquifers from a process that in-
volves the injection of large volumes of water, industrial fracking chemicals,
and sand under high pressure. Water and contaminants are involved in every
step of the process: transporting water to the drill site, mixing the chemicals,
blasting the shale, recovering the fluids that come back with the gas, and,
finally, transporting, treating, and disposing of the wastewater.14
Among the most vocal and powerful voices in the hydrofracking upris-
ing have been those of the indigenous peoples of New York State. Repre-
sentatives of the traditional leadership of the Haudenosaunee (the Iro-
quois) have pointed out that large-scale industrial drilling would likely
disturb burial grounds and other sites of historical and spiritual impor-
tance. They have called on the U.S. government to uphold their water and
land rights as guaranteed in multiple treaties between the United States
and native nations. They remind the state and its citizens that while the gas
industry’s concern only spans the period of time when the well produces
gas, it is everyone’s responsibility to protect the land and the water for
future generations.15
The outcome of the anti-fracking movement in New York State remains
inconclusive. Fracking is on hold for now, but the pressures to exploit the re-
source are great. And conventional environmental arguments do not seem to
be enough. What may turn out to be the most significant outcome is a pub-
lic increasingly open to the possibility of keeping fossil fuels in the ground,
an idea largely attributable to the new and powerful influence of Haudeno-
saunee leaders and the introduction of indigenous perspectives and values
into a debate that would otherwise be narrowly technical and economic.
Farther south, long-standing resistance to destructive coal mining prac-
tices in Appalachia appear to be taking a new turn, shifting in places from
improving practices and cleaning up waste to ending coal extraction en-
tirely. Around the world there are citizen-led actions to keep destructive
substances in the ground and stop destructive practices, from uranium in
Australia and gold in El Salvador to gold and diamonds in Guyana and oil in
the Norwegian Arctic. These examples, though small in the larger scheme of
global energy production and consumption, signal a rippling of resistance
170 | State of the World 2013
around the globe against extractivist policies and, simultaneously, support
for a good life without fossil fuels.16
Envisioning a Post–Fossil Fuel Era
Imagining deliberately keeping fossil fuels in the ground, much less the end
of the fossil fuel era, is difficult. No matter how much environmental sci-
ence is absorbed, how much geologic and ecological perspective is attained,
how much ethical commitment is mustered, it is hard to escape industrial
progressivism. It just seems like all this modernity will continue, albeit with
adjustments—an efficiency here, some greening up there.
In fact, this pervasive impression—that the fossil fuel era has been
around for a long, long time and will be for a long, long time to come, in-
deed that it must be—this impression has been deliberately constructed by
the industry and its industrial and governmental enablers. Physical reality,
however, speaks otherwise. Unfortunately, for fossil fuel proponents any-
way, there is just too much knowledge piled up to believe in the indefinite
perpetuation of the fossil fuel era, and not just scientific knowledge but
political and strategic knowledge.
So a primary task for those who believe that the fossil fuel era will not
continue, and yet will not end soon enough to avoid catastrophic outcomes,
is to imagine that end. To facilitate such imagining, arguably a necessary
precursor to designing policies and behavior change strategies, we offer two
observations as an envisioning exercise.17
First, the fossil-fuel era, which began in the 1890s, when fossil fuels sur-
passed wood as the dominant energy source, is only about six generations
old. Many of us alive now have personally known people who lived before
the fossil-fuel era. It was not that long ago. The fossil fuel era is not that
permanent, nor is its continuation that inevitable. Given that the initial
stage of an energy source’s use is one where benefits are highlighted and
costs unknown or shaded (displaced in time and space), we can expect
that fossil fuels have the same quality, only on a far grander scale than
anything before. Coal’s depredations—from miners’ bodies to asthmat-
ics’ lungs, from decimated mountains in Appalachia to dug-out deserts in
Mongolia —are well known. Coal’s early exit is virtually a no-brainer. No
wonder the industry’s anti-climate-change activism has been so vehement.
Oil, arguably the most consequential energy source of all time, is widely
deemed essential (and thus the rush for alternative liquid fuels), but it too
will eventually fade out.18
The costs of fossil fuels, from traffic casualties to climate disruption, will
eventually catch up. The fossil-fuel era will come to an end well before con-
ventional analysis and decisionmaking would indicate. And just as global
fossil- fuel production will decline as all wells and oil fields do, the industry
Keep Them in the Ground: Ending the Fossil Fuel Era | 171
will decline, too. Just because no one in the industry or anyone dependent
on it (virtually everyone) wants to talk about this does not make it other-
wise. Fossil fuel production and the fossil fuel industries will most assuredly
decline.
Second, one place to start the imagining is, ironically enough, the fossil
fuel industry itself. Preliminary evidence suggests that serious people in the
oil, gas, and coal industries along with the automobile and petrochemical
industries know this game cannot go on. “Energy executives know that the
existing supply capacity from traditional sources is about tapped out,” writes
former Shell president John Hofmeister. They know the easy stuff is effec-
tively gone. Now, they are learning, it is also changing the climate, melting
the very tundra their trucks depend on, blowing apart rigs they thought
were secure. What they say publicly is different, of course. Their jobs, their
way of life, their personal and professional identity, their future is on the
line. They seem to pray that a miracle technology will come along to keep
the game going a little while longer. This difficulty is perfectly understand-
able. And yet people in equally entrenched positions (witness slavery and
smoking) have made huge shifts in position.19
In short, a deliberate policy, state-led or not, of keeping fossil fuels in
the ground is at once preposterous and perfectly sensible. Stranger things
have happened. How it would happen, at what rate, with what local effects,
is still anyone’s guess. That fossil fuels will be in the ground and stay there
when the fossil fuel era ends is beyond doubt. The only question is whether
enough will stay to stabilize climate, reverse degrading trends, and avert so-
cial calamity. Bringing about an urgent transition begins with a certain kind
of politics, one of delegitimizing fossil fuels and humans’ deeply problem-
atic relationship to them. This is a politics that recognizes that once fossil
fuels are out of the ground, their by-products will permeate our bodies, the
oceans, and the atmosphere and cause catastrophic loss. Those politics and
the policies and economies that follow constitute a necessary first step in
choosing to end the fossil-fuel era.
Most discussions of the remarkable trajectory of human development in
the past few centuries label the phenomenon the Industrial Revolution. This
term is apt enough, although it emphasizes the industrious nature of clever
humans. An equally important factor—if not more so—has been the abun-
dant supply of cheap surplus energy in the form of fossil fuels. Coal fueled
the early stages of the Industrial Revolution, opening the door to accelerated
energy-resource discovery and exploitation. Indeed, the first major applica-
tion of coal was to power steam engines used to pump water out of coal
mines in order to gain access to more coal. Perhaps the Coal Revolution
would more accurately represent the transformational change marked by
the nineteenth century.1
Fossil fuel stocks are known to be finite, and by most accounts their ex-
traction rates will peak this century. Thus in the long view it is a near cer-
tainty that the current age will be known to history as the Fossil Fuel Age. It is
the time when humans discovered Earth’s battery—solar-charged over mil-
lions of years—and depleted it fast enough to effectively constitute a short
circuit.
During this epoch, our unprecedented capacity to process materials,
manufacture goods, create a “built environment,” and revolutionize agri-
cultural productivity has translated into a world of spectacular accomplish-
ments, advanced scientific knowledge, technology that an earlier generation
might call magic, sustained economic growth, and a surging population of 7
billion industrially fed human beings. These feats would not have been pos-
sible without the bounty of fossil fuels.
In this light, our present state can be seen as a reflection of historically
available energy. If depicted in schematic fashion over the course of a civi-
lization-scale timeline, the general history and future of fossil fuel use will
very likely appear as a sharp spike. (See Figure 15–1.) Humanity now sits
near the apex of the brief fossil fuel energy explosion and prepares to en-
T. W. Murphy, Jr., is an associate
professor of physics at the Uni-
versity of California/San Diego.
www.sustainabilitypossible.org
c h a p t e r 1 5
Beyond Fossil Fuels:
Assessing Energy Alternatives
T. W. Murphy, Jr.
Worldwatch Institute, State of the World 2013: Is Sustainability Still Possible?,
DOI 10.5822/ 978-1-61091-458-1_15, © 2013 by Worldwatch Institute
172
Beyond Fossil Fuels: Assessing Energy Alternatives | 173
ter an untested regime of unprec-
edented scale: the loss of a resource
that has been unquestionably vital
to growth and development.2
Bracketing the possible future
paths are the optimistic scenario
that fossil fuels are merely a kick-
start to an ever-growing, ever-im-
proving technological society and
the pessimistic view that society
will fail to find suitable replace-
ments for fossil fuels and will ex-
perience decline to pre-industrial
population levels and ways of life.
The optimistic view is clearly more
appealing, rests on a track record
spanning generations, and is closer
to mainstream opinion, while the
unpalatable pessimistic perspective seems alarmist and fatalistic. Yet com-
plete dismissal of the pessimistic possibility carries hubristic overtones. It
must, after all, be recognized that most of the empirical evidence in support
of the optimistic scenario emerged in the context of abundant surplus energy
provided by fossil fuels.
In short, recent history has been written in fossil fuels. When produc-
tion of these fuels declines, the prevailing narrative of growth-based hu-
man endeavors may require significant adjustment. Any scientist will af-
firm that indefinite growth in any physical measure is impossible. Energy
use in the world has grown by approximately 3 percent per year for the
past few centuries. At this rate, the current 16 terawatts (TW) of global
power demand would balloon to equal the entire solar output in about
1,000 years and match all 100 billion stars in our galaxy inside of 2,000
years. Well before this—within 400 years—enough direct heat would be
generated on Earth to bring the surface temperature to that of boiling wa-
ter. Similarly alarming statements can be made about population, resource
use, or anything that has seen sustained growth over the past few centuries.
Obviously, the “normal” world of growth is a temporary anomaly destined
to self-terminate by natural means.3
While some current economic activities use little energy or physical re-
sources, no activity can claim zero use. And energy-intensive activities (such
as agriculture, transport, and thermal management) will establish a floor be-
low which the economy cannot sink. So an end to energy or resource growth
ultimately means an end to economic growth as traditionally defined.4
En
er
gy
S
ca
le
Figure 15–1. The Transient Phenomenon of Fossil Fuels
0
0.2
0.4
0.6
0.8
1.0
Year
muscle and �rewood ?
present
-6000 -4000 -2000 0 2000 4000 6000 8000 10000
174 | State of the World 2013
Substitution and the Drumbeat of Improvement
For indoor lighting applications, whale oil replaced beeswax; kerosene de-
rived from coal replaced whale oil; petroleum replaced kerosene; and now we
use electricity derived from coal, natural gas, hydropower, nuclear, biomass,
and a smattering of renewable sources. The lesson seems clear: new, superior
sources come to bear, rendering the prior solutions obsolete. Why should
there be any deviation in this recurring storyline as fossil fuels give way in the
future? Considering solar, wind, nuclear, geothermal, tidal, wave, and biofuel
sources, it appears that the menu of substitutes is full to bursting.
It is worth pointing out, however, that some concepts and technologies
find no superior substitute over time; examples include the wheel, metal
blades, window glass, and rope. Naturally, refinements accumulate, but the
basic concepts are unrivaled and dominate for millennia. And sometimes
once-prevalent technologies become unavailable to society without ad-
equate substitutes, such as the recent loss of commercial supersonic transat-
lantic flight or of U.S. human space launch capability. Perhaps these rever-
sals are temporary setbacks, but the familiar narrative of a constant march
toward superior substitutions and “faster, better, cheaper” practices is not an
immutable law of nature.
The Alternative Energy Matrix
In exploring potential replacements for fossil energy, it soon becomes appar-
ent that fossil fuels are unparalleled in many respects. Even though viewed as
a source of energy from the ground, fossil fuels are perhaps more aptly de-
scribed as nearly perfect energy storage media, at energy densities that are or-
ders of magnitude higher than anything achieved thus far in the best battery
technology today. The storage is nearly perfect because it is reasonably safe,
not especially corrosive, easy to transport (via pipelines, often), lightweight
yet dense enough to work in airplanes, and indefinitely storable—indeed, for
millions of years—without loss of energy. No alternative storage technique
can boast all the same benefits, be it batteries, flywheels, hydrogen, or ethanol.
In order to make comparisons, it is helpful to create a matrix of proper-
ties of energy sources so that the relative strengths and weaknesses of each
are obvious at a glance. (See Figures 15–2 and 15–3.) The matrix is present-
ed as a Figure based on 10 different criteria. White, gray, and black can be
loosely interpreted as satisfactory, marginal, and deficient, respectively. Gray
boxes are often accompanied by brief reasons for their classification—other
extremes often being obvious. While some criteria are quantitative, many
are subjective. The following 10 properties are useful for this comparison.
Abundance. Not all ideas, however clever or practical, can scale to meet
the needs of modern society. Hydroelectric power cannot expand beyond
Beyond Fossil Fuels: Assessing Energy Alternatives | 175
about 5 percent of current global demand, while the solar potential reaching
Earth’s surface is easily calculated to exceed this benchmark by a factor of
about 5,000. Abundant sources are coded white, while niche ideas like hy-
droelectricity that cannot conceivably fulfill one quarter of global demand
are colored black. Intermediate players that can satisfy a substantial fraction
of demand are coded gray.5
Difficulty. This field tries to capture the degree to which a resource brings
with it large technical challenges. How many PhDs does it take to run the
plant? How intensive is it to maintain an operational state? This one might
translate into economic terms: difficult is another term for expensive.
Intermittency. This is colored white if the source is rock-steady or avail-
able whenever it is needed. If the availability is beyond our control, then it
gets a gray at least. The possibility of substantial underproduction for a few
days earns black.
Demonstrated. To be white, a resource has to be commercially available
today and providing useful energy. Proof of concept on paper, or prototypes
that exhibit some of the technology, do not count as demonstrated.
Electricity. Can the technology produce electricity? For most sources, the
answer is yes. Sometimes it would make little sense to try. For other sources,
it is impractical.
Heat. Can the resource produce direct heat? This is colored gray if only
via electric means.
Transport. Does the technology relieve the looming decline in petroleum
production? Anything that makes electricity can power an electric car, earn-
ing a gray score. Liquid fuels are white. Bear in mind that a large-scale mi-
gration to electric cars is not guaranteed to happen, as the cars may remain
too expensive to be widely adopted.
Acceptance. Is public opinion (judging by U.S. attitudes) favorable to this
Figure 15–2. Energy Source Properties: Fossil Fuels
Petroleum
Natural Gas
Score
Coal via electric(and trains?)
8
8
7
for now
for now
for now
via electric
buses, trucks for heat
elec/transport
satisfactory marginal
de
mo
ns
tra
ted
int
erm
itte
nc
y
ab
un
da
nc
e
di�
cu
lty
ele
ctr
ici
ty
he
at
tra
ns
po
rt
ac
ce
pt
an
ce
ba
ck
ya
rd?
e�
cie
nc
y
176 | State of the World 2013
method? Will there likely be resistance, whether justified or not?
Backyard. Is this something that can be used domestically, in someone’s
backyard or small property, managed by the individual? Distributed power
adds to system resilience.
Efficiency. Over 50 percent earns white. Below about 10 percent gets
black. It is not the most important of criteria, as the property of abun-
dance implicitly incorporates efficiency expectations, but we will always
view low efficiency negatively.
Figure 15–3. Energy Source Properties: Alternatives to Fossil Fuels
Solar PV
Solar
Thermal
Solar
Heating
Hydro-
electric
Biofuel/
Algae
Geothermal/
Electricity
Wind
Arti�cial
Photosynth.
Tidal
Conventional
Fission
Uranium
Breeder
Thorium
Breeder
Geothermal/
Depletion
Geothermal
Heating
Biofuel/
Crops
Score
5
5
4
4
4
4
3
3
3
2
2
2
2
1
1
hotspots
catalysts
food
proliferation
active
development
cellulosic
deep drill
high-tech
high-tech military
rarely?
rarely?
R&D e�ort
mis-spent
mis-spent
mis-spent
via electric
via electric
via electric
via electric via electric
via electric
via electric not universal micro-hydro
small scale?
?
via electric
via electric noise, birds,
eyesore
daily/monthly
variations via electric
via electric
via electric
via electric
waste/fear
waste/fear
deep wells
deep wells
impractical
impractical
small-scalefood/land
competition
ethanol, etc.
high-tech
gunk/disease
seasonal �ow
some storage
some R&D
some storage
deep drill
seasonalannual
harvest
satisfactory marginal de�cient
de
mo
ns
tra
ted
int
erm
itte
nc
y
ab
un
da
nc
e
di†
cu
lty
ele
ctr
ici
ty
he
at
tra
ns
po
rt
ac
ce
pt
an
ce
ba
ck
ya
rd?
e†
cie
nc
y
Beyond Fossil Fuels: Assessing Energy Alternatives | 177
Environmental impact has no column in this matrix, although the “ac-
ceptance” measure captures some of this. Climate change is an obvious neg-
ative for fossil fuels, but not so much as to curtail global demand, in practice.
None of the alternatives presented here contributes directly to carbon diox-
ide emissions, earning an added advantage for all entries.
Each energy source can be assigned a crude numerical score, adding one
point for each white box, no points for gray boxes, and deducting a point for
each black box. Certainly this is an imperfect scoring scheme, giving each
criterion equal weight, but it provides some means of comparing and rank-
ing sources.
The conventional fossil fuels each score 7–8 out of 10 possible points by
this scheme, displayed on the right side of Figure 15–2. Natural gas must
be divided into heating versus electricity production for a few of the scor-
ing categories.
The overall impression conveyed by this graphic is that fossil fuels per-
form rather well in almost all criteria. Because fossil fuels account for 81
percent of global energy use, they are each classified as having intermediate
abundance. But even this is not a permanent condition—providing signifi-
cant motivation for exploring alternatives in the first place. Getting energy
out of fossil fuels is trivially easy. Being free of intermittency problems, fully
demonstrated, and versatile enough to provide heat, electricity, and trans-
portation fuel, fossil fuels have been embraced by society and are frequently
used directly in homes. Efficiency for anything but direct heat is middling,
typically clocking 15–25 percent for automotive engines and 30–40 percent
for power plants.6
The commonly discussed alternative energy approaches display a wider
range of ratings. Immediately, some overall trends are clear in Figure 15–3.
Very few options are both abundant and easy. Solar photovoltaics (PV) and
solar thermal are the exceptions. A similar exclusion principle often holds
for abundant and demonstrated/available. This uncommon combination
plays a large role in the popularity of solar power.
Intermittency mainly plagues solar and wind resources, with mild incon-
venience appearing for many of the natural sources.
Electricity is easy to produce, resulting in many options. Since the easiest
and cheapest will likely be picked first, the less convenient forms of electric-
ity production are less likely to be exploited (farther down the list, to the
extent that the ordering is correlated with economic advantage).
Transportation needs are hard to satisfy. Together with the fact that oil
production will peak before natural gas or coal, transportation may appear as
the foremost problem to address. Electric cars are an obvious—albeit expen-
sive—solution, but the technology has a number of drawbacks relative to fos-
sil fuels and does not lend itself to air travel or heavy shipping by land or sea.
178 | State of the World 2013
Few of the options face serious barriers to acceptance, especially when
energy scarcity is at stake. Some energy sources are available for individual
implementation, allowing distributed power generation as opposed to cen-
tralized resources. For example, a passive solar home with PV panels, wind
power, and some method to produce liquid fuels on-site would satisfy most
domestic energy needs in a self-sufficient manner.
Cost is not directly represented in the matrix, although the difficulty rat-
ing may serve as an imperfect proxy. In general, the alternative methods
have difficulty competing with cheap fossil fuels. It is not yet clear whether
the requisite prosperity needed to afford a more expensive energy future at
today’s scale will be forthcoming.
The Tally for Individual Alternative Sources
A single chapter cannot adequately detail the myriad complex consider-
ations that went into the matrix in Figure 15–3. Many of the quantitative
and qualitative aspects for each were developed at the Do the Math website.
The key qualities of each resource in relation to the matrix criteria are dis-
cussed in this section, focusing especially on less obvious characteristics.7
Solar PV. Covering just 0.5 percent of Earth’s land area with PV panels
that are 15 percent efficient satisfies global annual energy demand, qualifying
solar PV as abundant. PV panels are being produced globally at 27 gigawatts
(GW) peak capacity per year (translating to about 5 GW of average power
added per year), demonstrating a low degree of difficulty. Most people do not
object to solar PV on rooftops or over parking areas, or even in open spaces
(especially deserts). Solar panels are well suited to individual operation and
maintenance. Intermittency is the Achilles’ heel of solar PV, requiring storage
solutions if adopted on a large scale. To illustrate the difficulty of storage,
a lead-acid battery big enough to provide the United States with adequate
backup power would require more lead than is estimated to be accessible in
the world and would cost approximately $60 trillion at today’s price of lead.
Lithium or nickel-based batteries fare no better on cost or abundance. The
small number of suitable locales limits the potential of pumped storage.8
Solar Thermal. Achieving comparable efficiency to PV but using more
land area, the process of generating electricity from concentrated solar
thermal energy has no problem qualifying as abundant—although some-
what more regionally constrained. It is relatively low-tech: shiny curved
mirrors, tracking on (often) one axis, heat oil or a similar fluid to drive a
standard heat engine. Intermittency can be mitigated by storing thermal
energy, perhaps even for a few days. A number of plants are already in
operation, producing cost-competitive electricity. Public acceptance is no
worse than for PV, but the technology generally must be implemented in
large, centralized facilities.
Beyond Fossil Fuels: Assessing Energy Alternatives | 179
Solar Heating. On a smaller scale, heat collected directly from the sun can
provide domestic hot water and home heating. In the latter case, this can be
as simple as a south-facing window. Capturing and using solar heat effec-
tively is not particularly difficult, coming down to plumbing, insulation, and
ventilation control. Technically, solar heating potential might be abundant,
but since it is usually restricted to building footprints (roof, windows), it
gets a gray rating. Solar heating does not lend itself to electricity generation
or transport, but it has no difficulty being accepted and almost by definition
is a backyard-ready technology.
Hydroelectric. Despite impressive efficiency, hydroelectric potential is al-
ready well developed in the world and is destined to remain a small player
on the scale of today’s energy use. It has seasonal intermittency (a typical
hydroelectric plant delivers only 40 percent of its design capacity), does not
directly provide heat or transport, and can only rarely be implemented per-
sonally, at home. Acceptance is fairly high, although silting and associated
dangers—together with habitat destruction and the forced displacement of
people—do cause some opposition to expansion.
Biofuels from Algae. Because algae capture solar energy—even at less than
5 percent efficiency—the potential energy scale is enormous. Challenges in-
clude keeping the plumbing clean, possible infection (for example, a genetic
arms race with evolving viruses), contamination by other species, and so on.
At present, no algal sample that secretes the desired fuels has been identified
or engineered. No one knows whether genetic engineering will succeed at
creating a suitable organism. Otherwise, the ability to provide transporta-
tion fuel is the big draw. Heat may also be efficiently produced, but electric-
ity production would represent a misallocation of precious liquid fuel.
Geothermal Electricity. This option makes sense primarily at rare geo-
logical hotspots. It will not scale to be a significant part of our entire energy
mix. Aside from this, it is relatively easy, steady, and well demonstrated in
many locations. It can provide electricity, and obviously direct heat—al-
though usually far from locations demanding heat.
Wind. Wind is neither super-abundant nor scarce, being one of those
options that can meet a considerable fraction of present needs under large-
scale development. Implementation is relatively straightforward, reasonably
efficient, and demonstrated the world over in large wind farms. The big-
gest downside is intermittency. It is not unusual to have little or no regional
input for several days in a row. Objections to wind tend to be more serious
than for many other alternatives. Windmills are noisy and tend to be located
in prominent places (ridgetops, coastlines) where their high degree of vis-
ibility alters scenery. Wind remains viable for small-scale personal use.9
Artificial Photosynthesis. Combining the abundance of direct solar with
the self-storing flexibility of liquid fuel, artificial photosynthesis is a compel-
180 | State of the World 2013
ling future possibility. The ability to store the resulting liquid fuel for many
months means that intermittency is eliminated to the extent that annual pro-
duction meets demand. A panel in sunlight dripping liquid fuel could sat-
isfy both heating and transportation needs. Electricity can also be produced,
but given an abundance of ways to make electricity, the liquid fuels would be
misallocated if used in this way. Unfortunately, an adequate form of artificial
photosynthesis has yet to be demonstrated in the laboratory, although the U.S.
Department of Energy initiated a large program in 2010 toward this goal.10
Tidal Power. Restricted to se-
lect coastal locations, tidal power
will never be a large contributor
on the global scale. The resource is
intermittent on daily and monthly
scales but in a wholly predictable
manner. Extracting tidal energy is
not terribly hard—it shares tech-
nology with similarly efficient hy-
droelectric installations—and has
been demonstrated in a number of
locations around the world.
Conventional Fission. Using
conventional uranium reactors
and conventional mining practices,
nuclear fission does not have the
legs for a marathon. On the other
hand, it is certainly well demon-
strated and has no problems with intermittency—except that it cannot eas-
ily accommodate intermittency in the face of variable load. Compared with
other options, nuclear power qualifies as a high-tech approach—meaning
that design, construction, operation, and emergency mitigation require more
advanced training and sophistication than the average energy producer.
Acceptance is mixed. Germany and Japan plan to phase out their nuclear
programs by 2022 and the 2030s, respectively, despite being serious about
carbon reduction. Public unease also contributed to a halt in licensing new
reactors in the United States from 1978 to 2012. Some opposition stems
from unwarranted—yet no less real—fear, sustained in part by the tech-
nical complexity of the subject. But some opposition relates to political
difficulty surrounding the onerous waste problem that no country has yet
solved to satisfaction.11
Uranium Breeder. Extending nuclear fission to use plutonium synthe-
sized from U-238, which is 140 times more abundant than U-235, gives
uranium fission the legs to run for at least centuries if not a few millennia,
Dam of the tidal power plant on the estuary of the Rance River, Brittany,
France. It has been in operation since 1966.
D
an
i 7
C3
Beyond Fossil Fuels: Assessing Energy Alternatives | 181
ameliorating abundance issues. Breeding has been practiced in military re-
actors, and indeed some significant fraction of the power in conventional
uranium reactors comes from incidental synthesis of plutonium (Pu-239)
from U-238. But no commercial power plant has been built to deliberately
tap the bulk of uranium for power production. Public acceptance of breed-
ers will face even higher hurdles because plutonium is more easily separated
into bomb material than is U-235, and the trans-uranic radioactive waste
from this option is worse than for the conventional reactor.12
Thorium Breeder. Thorium is more abundant than uranium and only
has one natural isotope, qualifying it as an abundant resource. Like all reac-
tors, thorium reactors fall into the high-tech camp and include new chal-
lenges (such as liquid sodium) that conventional reactors have not faced. A
few small-scale demonstrations have been carried out, but nothing in the
commercial realm; bringing thorium reactors online at scale is probably a
few decades away. Public reaction will likely be similar to that for conven-
tional nuclear: not a show stopper, but some resistance on similar grounds.
It is not clear whether the novelty of thorium will be greeted with suspi-
cion or enthusiasm. Although thorium also represents a breeding technol-
ogy (making fissile U-233 from Th-232), the proliferation aspect is severely
diminished for thorium due to a highly radioactive U-232 by-product and
virtually no easily separable plutonium.
Geothermal Heating Allowing Depletion. A vast store of thermal ener-
gy sits in Earth’s crust, permeating the rock and moving slowly outward.
Without regard to sustainable practices, boreholes could be drilled a few
kilometers down to extract thermal energy out of the rock faster than the
geophysical replacement rate, effectively mining heat as a one-time resource.
In the absence of water flow to distribute heat, dry rock will deplete its heat
within 5–10 meters of the borehole in a matter of a few years, requiring
another hole 10 meters away from the previous, in repeated fashion. The re-
current large-scale drilling operation across the land qualifies this technique
as moderately difficult.
The temperatures are marginal for running heat engines to make elec-
tricity with any respectable efficiency (especially given the existence of many
easier options for electricity), but at least the thermal resource will not suffer
intermittency problems during the time that a given hole is still useful. Kilo-
meter-scale drilling hurdles have prevented this technique from being dem-
onstrated at geologically normal (inactive) sites. Public acceptance may be
less than lukewarm given the scale of drilling involved, dealing with tailings
and possibly groundwater contamination issues on a sizable scale. While a
backyard might accommodate a borehole, it would be far more practical to
use the heat for clusters of buildings rather than for just one—given the ef-
fort and lifetime associated with each hole.
182 | State of the World 2013
Geothermal Heating, Steady State. Sustainable extraction of geothermal
heat—replenished by radioactive decay within Earth—offers far less total
potential, coming to about 10 TW of flow if summed across all land. And to
get to temperatures hot enough to be useful for heating purposes, boreholes
at least 1 kilometer deep would be required. It is tremendously challeng-
ing to cover any significant fraction of land area with thermal collectors 1
kilometer deep. As a result, a gray score for the abundance factor may be
generous. To gather enough steady-flow heat to provide for a normal U.S.
home’s heating demand, the collection network would have to span a square
200 meters on a side at depth, which is likely unachievable. (Note that ordi-
nary geothermal heat pumps are not accessing an energy resource; they are
simply using a large thermal mass against which to regulate temperature.)
Biofuels from Crops. While corn ethanol may not even be net energy-
positive, sugarcane and vegetable oils as sources of biofuel fare better. But
these sources compete with food production and arable land availability. So
biofuels from crops can only graduate from “niche” to moderate scale in the
context of plant waste or cellulosic conversion. The abundance and demon-
stration fields are thus split: food crop energy is demonstrated but severely
constrained in scale. Cellulosic matter becomes a potentially larger-scale
source but is undemonstrated (perhaps this should even be black). Growing
and harvesting annual crops on a relevant scale constitutes a massive, per-
petual task and thus scores gray in difficulty.
If exploiting fossil fuels is akin to spending a considerable inheritance,
growing and harvesting our energy supply on an annual basis is like getting
a manual-labor job: a most difficult transition. The main benefit of biofuels
from crops is the liquid fuel aspect. Public acceptance hinges on competi-
tion with food or even land in general. Because plants are only about 1–2
percent efficient at harvesting solar energy, this option requires the com-
mandeering of massive tracts of land.13
A few other sources not discussed here—ocean thermal, ocean currents,
wave energy, and two flavors of fusion—all score 1 point. Notably, the ex-
treme technological challenge of mastering fusion just to provide another
avenue for electricity production puts this technique at a disadvantage in
the matrix.14
The Fossil Fuel Gap
The subjective nature of this exercise certainly allows numerous possibilities
for modifying the box rankings in one direction or the other. The matrices
embody some biases, but no attempt by anyone would be free from bias. The
result, in this case, is dramatic. Even allowing some manipulation, the sub-
stantial gap between the fossil fuels and their renewable alternatives would
require excessive “cooking” to close.
Beyond Fossil Fuels: Assessing Energy Alternatives | 183
The lesson is that a transition away from fossil fuels does not appear at
this time to involve superior substitutes, as has been characteristic of our en-
ergy history. Fossil fuels represent a generous one-time gift from the earth.
From our current vantage point, it is not clear that energy—vital to our eco-
nomic activity—will be as cheap, convenient, and abundant as it has been
during our meteoric ascent to the present.
Adding to the hardship is the fact that many alternative energy technolo-
gies—solar, wind, nuclear power, hydroelectric, and so on—require sub-
stantial up-front energy investments. If society waits until energy scarcity
forces large-scale deployment of such alternatives, it risks falling into an En-
ergy Trap in which aggressive use of energy to develop a new energy infra-
structure leaves less available to society in general. (See Chapter 7.) If there
is to be a transition to a sustainable energy regime, it’s best to begin it now.15
Phillip Saieg is an accredited
professional under the Leader-
ship in Energy and Environ-
mental Design program of the
U.S. Green Building Council
and an account executive for
McKinstry, a U.S.-based energy
services company.
www.sustainabilitypossible.org
The vast majority of carbon emissions into Earth’s atmosphere are energy-
related, stemming from the combustion of fossil fuels. Curtailing these
emissions is crucial to mitigating climate change. The supply-side option for
reducing fossil-fuel combustion is renewable energy, and significant efforts
are being made in that direction. (See Chapters 8 and 15.) However, there
are currently only weak market incentives to develop renewable energy at a
scale relative to coal and natural gas. The U.S. Energy Information Adminis-
tration estimates that the average levelized costs (without accounting for cli-
mate change and other externalities) of producing electricity in the United
States from natural gas generation plants entering service in 2017 will be
$66.10 per megawatt-hour, while the equivalent costs for utility-scale wind
power will be $96. So although it is critical to increase the use of renew-
able sources of energy, the current cost gap between renewables and fossil
fuel generation, along with supply integration issues, is impeding large-scale
adoption of renewables.1
But there is a quicker and more financially feasible way to lessen the
amount of carbon being added to the atmosphere. Focusing on the demand
side of the energy equation—increasing energy efficiency—can dramati-
cally reduce the relative percentage of emissions created by energy genera-
tion, relieve the high demand for increased energy production, and ulti-
mately reduce carbon emissions.
In the United States, the transportation and industrial sectors each use
about one quarter of all the energy consumed, while buildings consume
nearly half in the course of heating, cooling, ventilating, and lighting their
spaces. Worldwide, buildings account for nearly 16 percent of all energy
consumption. And with little of the building stock being built new—from 2
percent of U.S. commercial floor space to as much as 10 percent in India—
most opportunities to improve efficiency over the next several decades will
be in the existing building stock.2
c h a p t e r 1 6
Energy Efficiency in the
Built Environment
Phillip Saieg
Worldwatch Institute, State of the World 2013: Is Sustainability Still Possible?,
DOI 10.5822/ 978-1-61091-458-1_16, © 2013 by Worldwatch Institute
184
Energy Efficiency in the Built Environment | 185
This lesson has begun to sink in: many countries, including a number
in the developing world, are taking building efficiency seriously. India and
China, for example, have begun paying much closer attention to natural gas
and electricity consumption as these begin to play a larger role in their grow-
ing built environment. Several countries in the Middle East, including Alge-
ria, Egypt, Tunisia, and the United Arab Emirates, have launched efficiency
programs. These initiatives, such as energy-conservation building codes and
high-performance building standards, are responses to the asymmetrical
growth of energy consumption and population growth. In industrial coun-
tries such as the United States, energy consumption rises at an annual rate of
1.3 percent while population grows 0.8 percent; in India, energy consump-
tion is exploding by 4.3 percent a year while population grows 1.3 percent.3
Energy Efficiency as a Financial Opportunity
Efficiency is an investment opportunity as well as an environmental one.
In July 2009, the international consulting firm McKinsey & Company did
a comprehensive study of the U.S. building stock and found that if off-the-
shelf energy efficiency measures were put in place across the sector, total
U.S. energy consumption would decline by 23 percent, yielding more than
$1.2 trillion in savings for an investment of $520 billion. These measures
included retrofitting existing buildings with more-efficient lighting and up-
dated heating and cooling equipment, as well as insulating walls and roofs,
upgrading windows, and optimizing building system controls. Separately,
McKinsey also published an analysis and ranking of the most cost-effective
strategies for reducing carbon emissions. For example, the report concluded
that for a given amount of money, installing building insulation would yield
greater net savings than solar photovoltaic panels.4
McKinsey’s analysis confirmed that energy efficiency strategies routinely
yield better emission reduction results than supply-side solutions like solar
or wind energy because energy efficiency strategies offer larger carbon sav-
ings at lower costs. Energy efficiency, in fact, often wins out as a high-yield
financial investment strategy when compared with more traditional invest-
ments like stocks or bonds. According to the average of 100 years of U.S.
market data, the stock market will return about 10 percent on any given
investment (although any given investment in the stock market can result
in huge gains or massive losses, of course). But according to the American
Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy, the average financial return on
investment for efficiency is more like 20 percent. When these energy ef-
ficiency projects are guaranteed using a methodology called performance
contracting, they become extremely low-risk, high-yield investments—and
as one result, the energy performance contracting business has now grown
to over a $5-billion-per-year industry.5
186 | State of the World 2013
Though McKinsey and other analysts have identified a vast opportunity
for the reduction of carbon emissions and economic development, the idea
of addressing buildings as “green buildings” or “energy-efficient buildings” is
relatively new to the traditional real estate market. There is, however, a clear
business case for renovating buildings to meet high efficiency standards,
such as those set by the Energy Star program of the U.S. Environmental Pro-
tection Agency (EPA) and by the Leadership in Energy and Environmental
Design (LEED) program of the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC). An
Energy Star Leader building is one with an energy efficiency score calculated
by EPA to be at least 75, meaning that the building is in the seventy-fifth
percentile for efficient buildings. A LEED-certified building has been evalu-
ated under USGBC’s nationally accepted
third-party assessment program and its
construction and operations have been
confirmed to be high-performance and
sustainable. Despite the recent recession,
the number of green buildings in the
United States has grown significantly.
This trend is predicted to continue and
to shift even more toward retrofit and
renovation projects.6
Businesses that invest in a sustain-
able building and have it certified under
either the Energy Star Program or the
LEED program are typically differenti-
ated from the market norm by premi-
ums in property value, rental rates, and
occupancy rates. They are also more likely to mitigate risks to owners and
tenants, such as rising utility costs, new regulations and standards, and a
negative reputation. In 2008 the Urban Land Institute had this to say about
green buildings: “Green will be measured by the business community, regu-
lators, savvy consumers. . . . stay on top of green or eat everyone’s dust.
There will be differentiation over the long run, adapt or get crushed.” Five
years later, the Institute noted that “major tenants willingly pay high rents
in return for more efficient design layouts and lower operating costs in
LEED rated, green projects. . . . Green buildings with high ratings under the
[LEED] program and energy-efficient systems leapfrog the competition.”7
The numbers bear out these claims. On average, a 10 percent reduction
in energy use in certified buildings results in an increase of 1.1–1.2 percent
in market value. The aggregate value of the U.S. commercial green real estate
market is expected to grow by 18 percent annually, from $35.6 billion in
2010 to $81.8 billion by 2015. And with 185 million square meters of floor
LEED Certified Gold condos in a renovated and retrofitted building in
Hoboken, New Jersey.
W
al
te
r B
ur
ns
Energy Efficiency in the Built Environment | 187
space in LEED-certified buildings and another 650 million square meters
registered to become certified, sustainability investments are seen to create
even larger market differentiation.8
Reorienting the Commercial Real Estate Market
The commercial real estate market is beginning to take notice of these
evolutionary developments toward sustainable buildings. One milestone
reached in 2010 was a concerted effort by the Appraisal Foundation—
which is responsible for publishing standards, appraiser qualifications, and
guidance regarding valuation methods and techniques—to begin to ac-
count for the increased value imparted to a building by its energy efficiency
and sustainability features. The foundation and the U.S. Department of En-
ergy signed a memorandum of understanding to promote consistent and
fair appraisal standards and practices with respect to energy-efficient and
sustainable buildings.9
A second development is the emergence of asset rating. Many building
operational rating systems are in use today, such as the EPA’s Energy Star
Portfolio Manager, which is used to rate building energy efficiency in per-
centile terms compared with other similar buildings. These focus on on-
going energy usage with the intent of improving operations. Asset rating,
however, focuses on the energy performance of a building’s component
parts, enabling direct comparisons of performance among similar build-
ings regardless of hours of operation, tenant behavior, how well the systems
are operated and maintained, and other factors that can have significant
impacts on energy consumption. Asset rating of a building’s systems (such
as lighting, heating and cooling, and insulation) in terms of their energy
efficiency offers a new way to objectively value property, creating value for
high-performance systems.10
These developments have helped to unlock energy efficiency in com-
mercial buildings. Building owners, in response to seeing value beyond
the simple payback from spending less on energy, have started changing
the way they evaluate building performance upgrades. Traditionally own-
ers have performed straightforward return on investment (ROI) calcula-
tions to show how energy efficiency measures can repay an investment,
and this has been the tool of choice for evaluating whether to upgrade a
building’s efficiency.
ROI calculations are a key part of the evaluation process and often help
set priorities for upgrades, but they do not give the whole picture. If an
ROI calculation yields a payback period longer than an owner plans to hold
on to the building, the incentive for the upgrade disappears. Commercial
buildings typically change hands every two to four years, which makes the
acceptable payback period fairly short. The owner in these cases usually
188 | State of the World 2013
chooses to implement only efficiency measures with short payback times,
thus excluding many options that might yield deeper savings over the life
of the building.
Since green building has caught on, however, and tenant demand for sus-
tainable buildings has increased, many commercial building owners have
broadened their evaluation tools and are using a net present value (NPV)
method that takes into account not just payback but total asset value (the
sum of the incoming and outgoing cash flows) to help them make efficiency
upgrade decisions. Because NPV can be realized before and in the sale of
a building, owners are now willing to make strategic efficiency upgrades
whose payback times extend beyond their terms of ownership.
Efficiency Policy
In addition to the rise of market demand and the realized financial returns
from energy-efficient buildings, a supportive policy framework has grown
around the green building movement. In addition to U.S. Department of
Energy investments of hundreds of millions of dollars in energy efficiency
projects, President Obama’s Better Buildings Initiative is partnering with the
public and private sectors to invest $4 billion in energy efficiency. And many
state and city governments have begun passing energy efficiency legislation.11
According to the Institute for Market Transformation, many local ju-
risdictions—including Austin, Texas; Washington, DC; New York City;
Portland, Oregon; San Francisco; Seattle; and the states of California and
Washington—now have disclosure policies requiring owners of com-
mercial buildings of a certain size (usually over 5,000 square feet) to re-
port the buildings’ annual energy consumption. Thirty-two countries in
Europe as well as China and Australia have also adopted disclosure poli-
cies. In New York City, commercial buildings over 10,000 square feet are
required to undergo an efficiency auditing and evaluation process called
retro- commissioning every 10 years to ensure that their owners learn about
opportunities for efficiency improvements.12
While it is clear that great environmental benefits can result from these
policy changes, the justification for most of the policy programs and leg-
islation has been rooted in promoting energy efficiency as a valid tool
to drive economic growth. President Obama’s Better Buildings Initiative
“seeks to tap into job-creation potential with a suite of policies designed
to encourage the pursuit of energy efficiency.” The administration claims
that the initiative has led to the creation of 114,000 jobs. Many local gov-
ernments have also been using environmental policy as a tool for boosting
economic growth, citing job creation and the value of efficiency as an in-
novative approach to help balance the books in a struggling economy. A
good number of them have undertaken efficiency strategies to reach their
Energy Efficiency in the Built Environment | 189
climate goals as well: at least 141 U.S. cities have registered Climate Action
Plans and more than 1,000 have signed on to the U.S. Conference of May-
ors’ Climate Protection Agreement.13
Many nations have also instituted green building codes and standards.
Between Australia’s Green Star program, Canada’s Green Globes, China’s
Three Star Program, and Britain’s BREEAM program, to name just a few,
almost every nation has begun requiring some level
of sustainable building be incorporated into the
their built environment in the last 10 years. Even
Sudan has acknowledged this need by reducing fees
and customs on liquid petroleum gas stoves in or-
der to promote use of this energy source instead of
inefficient biomass, which causes deforestation.14
The untapped energy savings waiting to be
harvested from existing building stock are vast.
And while certain barriers still block this harvest,
it is clear from the private and political support
for sustainable buildings that an energy-efficient
future is good for everyone. While realizing eco-
nomic savings and improving the world’s well-
being through a sustainable built environment,
the problems of excessive energy consumption
and greenhouse gas emissions can be addressed. As
Ludwig Wittgenstein once wrote, “The problems
of life are insoluble on the surface and can only
be solved in depth.” Focusing on energy efficiency
and creating sustainable buildings is essential to
mitigate environmental risk, create long-standing
jobs, sustain local governments, and help design a
future that leverages waste to prosperity.15
One Angel Square in Manchester, England, is planned to
be a BREEAM Outstanding building.
EG
F
oc
us
Danielle Nierenberg is the for-
mer director of the Nourishing
the Planet program at World-
watch Institute. This chapter is
based on Eating Planet 2012 by
the Barilla Center for Food &
Nutrition.
www.sustainabilitypossible.org
In Ahmedabad, India, some women farmers and food processors are chang-
ing the way Indians eat. These women belong to the Self-Employed Wom-
en’s Association (SEWA), a trade union that brings together more than 1
million poor women workers, 54 percent of whom are small and marginal
farmers. In India, 93 percent of women working outside the home do not
belong to a union, making them nearly invisible—they do not have access to
credit, land, or financial services, including bank accounts. But when SEWA
involves women in food production and processing, it is helping them im-
prove their livelihoods by becoming more self-sufficient.1
SEWA members sort, package, and market rice under their own label.
At a SEWA-run farm outside the city, women are growing organic rice
and vegetables and producing organic compost on what was once consid-
ered unproductive and “marginal” land. “We now earn over 15,000 rupees
[$350] per season, an amount we had never dreamed of earning in a life-
time,” says Surajben Shankasbhai Rathwa, who has been a member since
2003. These women earn more and eat better than before, and they are
providing an important community service by producing healthy, afford-
able, and sustainably grown food to local consumers, who usually cannot
afford high-quality food.2
But the women in SEWA are not only interested in what is going on in
their own communities—they are interested in what farmers are doing to
combat climate change, conserve water, and build soils thousands of miles
away, in places like sub-Saharan Africa. During a meeting in early 2011, the
women of SEWA made it clear that they wanted to learn from their coun-
terparts elsewhere who face the same challenges—erratic weather events,
soil degradation, high food prices, poverty, and malnutrition—throughout
India, Africa, and other parts of the developing world. And while SEWA’s
training farms and agricultural credit services will not change the global
food system on their own, they are an important step toward enabling agri-
c h a p t e r 1 7
Agriculture:
Growing Food—and Solutions
Danielle Nierenberg
Worldwatch Institute, State of the World 2013: Is Sustainability Still Possible?,
DOI 10.5822/ 978-1-61091-458-1_17, © 2013 by Worldwatch Institute
190
Agriculture: Growing Food—and Solutions | 191
culture not only to feed the world but also to nourish livelihoods, environ-
mental sustainability, and vibrant rural and urban economies.3
Agriculture is at a turning point. More than 1 billion people in the world
remain hungry and 2 billion suffer micronutrient deficiencies. (See Figure
17–1.) Over the last three decades the western food system has been built to
promote the overconsumption of a few consolidated commodities—includ-
ing rice, wheat, and maize—and
has neglected nutrient-rich indig-
enous foods that tend to resist heat,
drought, and disease. One result is
that 1.5 billion people in the world
are obese or overweight and thus at
higher risk of diabetes, cardiovas-
cular disease, and other maladies.
Moreover, vast amounts of food
are wasted in both rich and poor
countries, agriculture accounts for
one third of global greenhouse gas
(GHG) emissions, food-related
diseases are on the rise, and the
environmental impacts of agricul-
ture—including deforestation, wa-
ter scarcity, and GHG emissions—
are increasing.4
The global food system needs a
strategy and vision to nourish peo-
ple and the planet by finding ways to make food production and consump-
tion more socially just and economically and environmentally sustainable.
Food for All
Hunger and malnourishment continue to be a cruel reality for many of the
world’s poor. More than 239 million people in sub-Saharan Africa are con-
sidered undernourished by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization
(FAO). Asia has the greatest number of undernourished people, with 578
million out of the world’s 2010 total of 925 million. In Latin America and
the Caribbean, where hunger receded dramatically throughout the 1990s,
the number is 53 million.5
Food prices also continue to rise. Since 2007, FAO’s Food Price Index has
recorded a 70 percent jump in international food prices. (See Figure 17–2.)
World Bank data show that food prices increased 15 percent for many de-
veloping countries between October 2010 and January 2011 alone, which
pushed an estimated 44 million people into poverty. In sub-Saharan Africa
19
69
–7
1
19
79
–8
1
19
90
–9
2
19
95
–9
7
20
00
–0
2
20
04
–0
6
20
08
20
09
20
10
20
11
M
ill
io
n
Pe
op
le
Source: FAO
Figure 17–1. Number of Undernourished People in the
World, 1969–2011
0
200
400
600
800
1000
1200
Es
tim
at
ed
878 853 845 825 857
873
915
1020
925
1030
192 | State of the World 2013
and South Asia, many
farmers and consumers
are earning just $1–2 a
day, making any increase
in food prices especially
painful. Instead of being
able to buy nutritious
beans, eggs, meat, or veg-
etables, many households
can afford only nutrient-
poor staple crops such as
rice or cassava.6
Governments, develop-
ment agencies, nongov-
ernmental organizations
(NGOs), and funders
tend to invest in increas-
ing production and improving yields rather than in more-neglected parts of
the food system that have the potential to improve livelihoods, decrease mal-
nutrition, and protect the environment. What is needed is more investment
to prevent waste from field to fork and a stronger focus on food aid and local
school nutrition programs.7
Food waste can total an astonishing 30 percent of yearly harvests. In
poorer countries, crop storage remains woefully inadequate, wasting crops
in the places that need them the most. Farmers generally do not have access
to proper grain stores, drying equipment, fruit crates, refrigeration, or other
post-harvest storage and processing technologies.8
Even wealthy nations with climate-controlled storage units, refrigeration,
drying equipment, chemicals that inhibit fungi and molds, and plant breeds
designed to extend shelf life still squander vast amounts of food, throwing
away cosmetically imperfect produce, disposing of edible fish at sea, overor-
dering stock at grocery and “big box” stores, and purchasing too much food
for home consumption. Much of it ends up in landfills instead of in stomachs.
In 1974, the first World Food Conference called for a 50 percent reduction
in post-harvest losses over the following decade. Nearly 40 years later that
goal is still not met, and waste prevention efforts remain vastly underfunded.
Few donors invest in helping farmers and food processors find better ways to
store and manage crops post-harvest, and wealthy consumers remain unin-
formed about the environmental impact of their (over)buying habits.9
But reducing this waste can be simple, inexpensive, and effective. Con-
sider, for example, food contamination by aflatoxin, a toxic fungus that is
caused almost exclusively by the consumption of food that has become
In
de
x
Va
lu
e
Source: FAO
Figure 17–2. Food Price Indices, 1990–2012
1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 2006 2008 2010 2012
50
0
100
150
200
250
300
350
400
Cereal Price
Index
Dairy Price Index
Sugar Price IndexMeat Price Index
Food Price Index
Oils Price Index
Agriculture: Growing Food—and Solutions | 193
moldy due to poor storage. The International Institute of Tropical Agricul-
ture is working with farmers to apply a non-toxic, locally occurring strain of
the fungus prior to harvest. The new strain, trademarked as Aflasafe, safely
outcompetes and virtually eliminates the toxic strain, making it an effective
bio-control with the potential to save farmers millions of dollars per year
and simultaneously protect human health.10
There are also novel and income-generating ways of transforming food
so that it does not go to waste. Solar-powered driers and dehydrators are
helping farmers around the world preserve abundant harvests of mangoes,
papayas, and other fruits, providing important vitamins and nutrients to
people all year long.
Some consumers are also changing their eating and buying habits to re-
duce waste. In the United Kingdom, the campaign Love Food, Hate Waste
educates citizens about food waste. The group’s work has promoted the re-
cycling of over 1 billion plastic bottles a year and has helped divert 670,000
tons of food from landfills in the last decade, saving consumers over $970
million annually.11
Food for Sustainable Growth
Twenty years ago, organic agriculture, conservation farming, and other agro-
ecological practices were considered backward and inadequate ways to feed
the world. Today, agriculture is emerging as a solution to the planet’s press-
ing environmental problems—and agroecological approaches are seen as the
way forward in a world of declining fossil fuel resources and increasing hun-
ger and poverty. Several major research reports have demonstrated that food
production can help address climate change, unemployment, urbanization,
desertification, water pollution, and other environmental challenges.12
The Green Revolution technologies of the past, although effective at in-
creasing yields in the short term, tended to focus narrowly on yields and
very little on biological interaction. Nearly 2 billion hectares and 2.6 billion
people have been affected by significant land degradation resulting from
large-scale agricultural practices associated with the Green Revolution.
Today, 70 percent of freshwater withdrawals are for agricultural irrigation,
causing salinization of water in industrial and developing countries alike.
The overuse and misuse of artificial fertilizers and pesticides has produced
toxic runoff that has created coastal dead zones and reduced biodiversity.13
Although the Green Revolution is considered a “success,” its benefits are
unevenly spread. The most striking results in decreasing poverty and in-
creasing crop yields were seen in South Asia, while people in sub-Saharan
Africa have remained poor and undernourished. Many of the poorest of the
poor “have gained little or nothing,” according to the International Assess-
ment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development
194 | State of the World 2013
(IAASTD), a landmark report on global agricultural knowledge released in
2008. Dr. Robert Watson, director of IAASTD, said that “we are putting food
that appears cheap on our tables; but it is food that is not always healthy and
that costs us dearly in terms of water, soil, and the biological diversity on
which all our futures depend.”14
A return to agroecology, which is a sustainable and environmentally
friendly approach to food production, does not mean a return to old-fash-
ioned or outdated practices. On the contrary, such approaches are highly
complex, relying on the extensive knowledge of farmers and an understand-
ing of local ecosystems. Agroecology mimics nature and integrates crops
and livestock with the environment. For example, crops such as maize,
wheat, sorghum, millet, and vegetables are being grown around the world
alongside Acacia, Sesbania, Gliricidia, Tephrosia, and Faidherbia trees. These
agro-forested trees provide shade, improve water availability, prevent soil
erosion, and add nitrogen—a natural fertilizer—to soils. Integrating trees
with crops can double or even triple yields over those obtained when crops
are grown without a canopy.
Farmers in Japan are also finding ways to add nutrients to crops with-
out expensive artificial fertilizers or toxic pesticides. By using ducks instead
of pesticides for pest control in rice paddies, for instance, farmers have in-
creased their incomes and provided additional protein for their families.
The ducks eat weeds, weed seeds, insects, and other pests, and their drop-
pings provide nutrients for the rice plants. In Bangladesh, the International
Rice Research Institute reports that these systems have resulted in 20 percent
higher crop yields and that farmers using this method have seen their net
incomes rise by 80 percent.15
Agroecological practices even help farmers cope with natural disasters. A
2001 study compared “conventional” and “sustainable” farms on 880 similar
plots of land after Hurricane Mitch devastated Honduras in 1999. The re-
searchers found that the farms engaged in agroecological or sustainable land
management practices had higher resistance to the storm.16
Food for Health
Hunger and obesity are both tied to inadequate nutrition and poor agricul-
tural infrastructure, and investments in agriculture and hunger relief have
often failed to deliver nutritionally. Focusing on agricultural yield and calor-
ic intake has interfered with the actual delivery of vital nutrients, especially
in fetuses and children under age three, yet this is what funding agencies,
donors, and governments still tend to do. Over the last 20 years, food output
in sub-Saharan Africa and Asia has become more concentrated in raw com-
modities, including maize, wheat, and rice, and less focused on nutritious
indigenous foods, like millet, sorghum, and vegetables.17
Agriculture: Growing Food—and Solutions | 195
Vegetables are a luxury for many of the world’s poor, as many farmers who
once grew vegetables have had to focus their attention on staple crops. But
vegetable production is the most sustainable and affordable way to alleviate
micronutrient deficiencies among the poor. Micronutrient deficiencies lead
to poor mental and physical development, blindness, and anemia, especially
among children, and they degrade performance in work and in school.18
Many low-income and middle-income communities face the double
burden of under- and overnutrition. Obesity and malnutrition are the
most obvious symptoms of our broken global food system: some 2.5 bil-
lion people worldwide suffer from one or the other. While poor nations re-
ceive a great deal of attention for high malnutrition rates, researchers and
policymakers have paid less attention to the prevalence of
noncommunicable diseases (NCDs), such as cardiovascu-
lar and respiratory diseases as well as type 2 diabetes, that
result from unhealthy and inadequate diets. Sixty-three
percent of global deaths are caused by NCDs, and this rate
is expected to rise.19
Efforts to make agriculture healthier are being made
in laboratories and at numerous conferences but also at
the grassroots level in kitchens and backyards all over the
world. One successful model is The Food Trust in north
Philadelphia in the United States. The Trust runs commu-
nity-based nutrition and food systems programs that have
helped reduce the number of obese children there by half.
A more broadly based U.S. program is Food Corps, one of
the newest parts of the AmeriCorps program. Food Corps
is working to address the country’s childhood obesity epi-
demic by focusing on nutrition education, school gardens,
and farm-to-school programs. Food Corps service mem-
bers partner with local organizations to support commu-
nity initiatives that are in touch with local needs, while also
bringing in new energy and ideas. American children on
average receive only 3.4 hours of nutrition education each year, but students
in schools working with Food Corps will receive at least 10 hours.20
Surprisingly, the lack of nutritious food extends into many hospitals.
Even rich-country hospitals can fail on this score: the Texas Children’s Hos-
pital in Houston, for instance, is home to a McDonald’s restaurant. Hospi-
tals in California, Ohio, Minnesota, and several other states also house fast-
food restaurants. Health Care without Harm (HCWH), an international
health coalition, is working to leverage the purchasing power of hospitals
and health care systems to support food that is more nutritious and envi-
ronmentally friendly. HCWH member Catholic Healthcare West, a 41-hos-
Tomatoes growing at the World Vegetable Center
in Arusha, Tanzania.
Be
rn
ar
d
Po
lla
ck
196 | State of the World 2013
pital system in Arizona, Nevada, and California, recently announced a part-
nership with Murray’s Chicken, a New York producer, to supply its hospitals
with chicken raised without antibiotics or arsenic feed additives. In South
Africa, HIV/AIDS patients at the Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital receive
training in permaculture, irrigation, water conservation, food, nutrition,
and indigenous medicinal plants. The patients are able to cultivate and har-
vest a garden at the hospital and are encouraged to bring home nutritious
vegetables, fruits, and herbs.21
Food for Culture
The disconnection between young people and the global food system is
growing. Most young people do not grow up wanting to be farmers. And
consumers all over the world have forgotten basic cooking skills because
of an overreliance on processed foods. Agricultural diversity is declining:
most diets in rich countries consist of just six foods, including maize, wheat,
rice, and potatoes. Agriculture is looked down upon as a career and is often
viewed as work for the poor or people who have no other options. Farmers
also lack access to markets, making it hard for them to earn an income from
their work.
In villages outside of Kampala, Uganda, however, something unusual is
happening among young people. For the first time, many of them are ex-
cited about being involved in agriculture—and instead of moving to the city
after they finish primary school, many are choosing to stay in their commu-
nities to become involved in raising food.22
Betty Nabukalu, a 16-year-old student at Kisoga Secondary School, man-
ages her school’s garden. She explained how a project called Developing
Innovations in School Cultivation has taught students “new” methods of
planting vegetables. Before, she says, “we used to just plant seeds,” but now
she and the other students know how to fertilize with manure and compost
and how to save seeds after harvest. She says they have learned not only
that they can produce food but that they can also earn money from its sale.
Thanks to their school food program, students no longer see agriculture as
an option of last resort but as something that they can enjoy, is intellectually
stimulating, and will provide a good income.23
Successful programs that turn farming regions into vibrant places where
young people want to live and work have led to smarter land use, increased
production, and stronger interest in agriculture among the next generation.
Another way to help young people become more excited about agriculture
is by incorporating information and communications technology into the
process of farming.24
One obstacle faced by farmers worldwide is the lack of agricultural exten-
sion services. In sub-Saharan Africa, extension agents who used to provide
Agriculture: Growing Food—and Solutions | 197
information to farmers about weather, new seed varieties, or irrigation tech-
nologies have been replaced by agro-dealers who sell artificial fertilizer or
pesticides to farmers, often with very little education or training about how
to use those inputs.25
But in Ghana, farmers are benefitting from better-trained extension of-
ficers. At the Department of Agricultural Economics and Extension at Cape
Coast University in southern Ghana, learning takes place in classrooms,
fields, and farms. Extension officers are working with professors to find con-
text-specific ways to improve food production in their particular communi-
ties. “One beauty of the program,” says Dr. Ernest Okorley of the School of
Agriculture there, “is the on-the-ground research and experimentation. . . .
It allows the environment to teach what should be done.”26
Growing a Better Food System
It is clear that we need a better recipe for ensuring that agriculture contrib-
utes to health, environmental sustainability, income generation, and food
security. The ingredients will vary by country and region, but there are sev-
eral key components that will lead to healthier food systems everywhere.
Investing in Agroecological Food Systems. Although many authoritative
reports point to the need for more investment in agroecological technolo-
gies and practices that alleviate hunger and poverty, little attention is given
to ensuring that farmers know about these. In October 2011, philanthropist-
farmer Howard G. Buffett called on the agricultural development commu-
nity to “get loud and get busy” to ensure that sustainable crop production
is “back on the table” at the annual climate change meetings, at the 2012
United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development in Rio, and with
every major agricultural donor and government in the world.27
In March 2012, the Landscapes for People, Food, and Nature (LPFN)
initiative brought together farmers, policymakers, food companies, conser-
vation agencies, and grassroots organizations in Nairobi in one of several
meetings to develop a long-term strategy to scale up and support agro-
ecological solutions. LPFN is documenting integrated farming landscapes
around the world to strengthen policy, investment, capacity building, and
research in support of sustainable land management. This sort of research
can encourage policymakers to restore investment in agriculture, which has
fallen precipitously from $8 billion in 1984 to $3.5 billion in 2005.28
Initiatives like Feed the Future and the Global Agriculture and Food Se-
curity Program (GAFSP) could have a huge impact on malnutrition, ac-
cess to markets, and farmer incomes—if they were fully funded. Feed the
Future is the U.S. global hunger and food security initiative; GAFSP is a
multinational program formed to assist in the monitoring and evaluation
of the $1.2 billion in pledges made by the Group of 20 industrial nations in
198 | State of the World 2013
2009. Unfortunately, these programs have received very little of the funding
pledged by donor countries, private businesses, and NGOs.29
Recognizing Agriculture’s Multiple Benefits. Farmers are business peo-
ple, educators, and stewards of the land. Finding ways to compensate these
women and men for their multiple roles will become increasingly important
as agricultural challenges increase.
Women farmers, for example, make up as much as 80 percent of the ag-
ricultural labor force in some countries but are often denied basic benefits
like land tenure, education, and access to banks. Organizations, policymak-
ers, and community members should recognize women’s rights and involve
women in decisionmaking processes.30
Innovative organizations are also compensating farmers for the ecosys-
tem services their lands provide. And the Rainforest Alliance is working with
millions of farmers around the world to ensure that sustainably grown crops
get a premium price from consumers in wealthy nations so that the benefits
of agroecological practices are recognized. Other projects involve paying
farmers for sequestering carbon in their soils.31
Cultivating Better Livelihoods. Building a better food system does not
mean producing more food—the world can already feed 9–11 billion people
with the food grown today. It means addressing poverty. More than 2 billion
people live on less than $2 per day, global unemployment is at a record high,
and poor households in the developing world spend 70 percent of their in-
come on food.32
Financial speculation on the price of food has contributed to volatility
in agricultural markets, with grave impacts on the livelihoods of small-scale
farmers, many of whom still lack access to the most basic aspects of domes-
tic support, including land, insurance, bargaining power, and credit (despite
the expansion of microfinance and other ways of providing financial sup-
port; see Box 17–1). Food prices were nearly 20 percent higher in 2011 than
in 2010 due to such speculation. Price volatility hurts these farmers, who
need stable markets and a fair price for their yields. Clamping down on food
price speculation—especially prices for maize, wheat, and rice, the three
most heavily traded food commodities, which supply the bulk of dietary
calories for 2 billion poor people—would be a major step forward for both
farmers and the hungry.33
Additionally, farmers need access to markets where they can get a fair
price. Institutions such as agricultural cooperatives can help farmers oper-
ate more efficiently and earn more money than they can as individuals. By
helping farmers come together to grow, distribute, and sell food, coopera-
tives function as businesses and social groups, enhancing communities’ eco-
nomic powers as well as their social service networks.34
Farmers also need better access to information about prices and mar-
Agriculture: Growing Food—and Solutions | 199
Since Mohammad Yunus launched the Grameen
Bank in Bangladesh in 1976, microcredit has
become a celebrated tool to help relieve poverty
and foster entrepreneurism among the poor.
Initially conceived as a purely charitable tool for
alleviating poverty, microcredit has become micro-
finance and now includes loans, insurance, and sav-
ings products. Currently there are an estimated 500
million microsavings accounts around the world.
As demand for these services grew, many providers
aimed to make microfinance profitable, allowing it
to attract investor capital and thus achieve greater
scale. The microfinance industry has exploded to
include over 1,000 institutions serving an estimated
85 million clients.
After an initial burst of wild enthusiasm, there
is now a growing debate about the effectiveness
of these credit mechanisms as tools for ending
poverty. This is especially true where the focus on
scalability has caused lending institutions to neglect
impoverished rural populations. The farmers who
can take out loans sometimes borrow for costly
agricultural inputs and then become trapped in a
vicious cycle of crop failure and debt. Particularly
troubling are the reports of up to 200,000 farmer sui-
cides in India, where farmers have borrowed to buy
expensive genetically modified organisms, chemical
fertilizers, and pesticides.
But there is another way to help poor farmers
gain access to financial services: village savings and
loan associations (VSLAs), which were pioneered
by CARE in West Africa. VSLAs typically have 20–30
members who meet weekly to pool their savings
and create a loan fund. With the help and training
of a facilitator, the members draft bylaws and elect
leaders. At the beginning of the investment cycle,
each member deposits an agreed-upon amount.
Then the group meets weekly, and individual mem-
bers make further deposits as determined by the
group’s bylaws. After 12 weeks, each member may
take out a loan for up to three times the amount he
or she has saved.
Groups typically have many more savers than
borrowers, which ensures that there are adequate
funds for those who wish to borrow. The invest-
ment cycle is short, usually 12 months. At the end,
members receive back their shares plus a portion of
any accrued interest or capital gains from fines and
fundraising. The group can then choose whether to
initiate a second VSLA cycle.
VSLAs have dramatically improved members’
lives and communities. Successful businesses create
new jobs, and the interest raised by the bank stays in
the local community. The groups also often establish
their own charitable funds to help members meet
various needs, such as education fees for their chil-
dren, medical expenses, or emergencies.
The benefits of VSLAs go far beyond economics,
however. Weekly meetings strengthen communi-
ties and provide opportunities for personal growth,
education, and the development of various talents
and business skills. Those who succeed in businesses
also reach out to help others, so the entire commu-
nity benefits. In recent impact evaluations of Plant
With Purpose’s Tanzania VSLA groups, it was found
that each group member shared his or her agricul-
tural training with on average more than 20 others.
Plant With Purpose—a nonprofit based in
California that works to transform lives in rural
areas where poverty is caused by deforestation—is
using VSLAs as a vital part of an integrated strategy
to address environmental and economic needs.
The weekly meetings provide a platform to teach
farmers skills that increase agricultural productivity,
help gain access to markets, promote crop diver-
sification, reduce deforestation, and help adapt to
the challenges of climate change. By offering such
training, VSLAs can provide an entirely new skill set
of agroecological methods, empowering farmers to
make a living in ways that also restore and protect
fragile environments.
—Doug Satre
Plant With Purpose, California
Source: See endnote 33.
Box 17–1. promoting Sustainable agriculture through Village Banking
200 | State of the World 2013
kets. Information and communication technologies, such as mobile phones,
are enabling farmers to obtain real-time data about market prices, which
is helping them make better-informed decisions about crop production.
Services such as FrontlineSMS allow farmers not only to get real-time food
price data but also to connect with one another and with potential consum-
ers, increasing their market size.35
The Emergence of Agriculture as a Solution
Governments need to do more to recognize the inherent right of every hu-
man being to safe, affordable, and healthy food and back up that right with
appropriate policies. Countries such as Ghana and Brazil have already re-
duced the number of people suffering from hunger through effective gov-
ernment action, such as national school feeding programs and increased
support for agricultural extension services.36
The projects highlighted in this chapter are exciting because they ex-
emplify how agriculture is emerging as a solution to global problems by
reducing public health costs, making communities everywhere more liv-
able, decreasing poverty, creating jobs for young people, and even reducing
climate change.
Some innovative programs and individuals are working to ensure that
everyone has access to nutritious, healthy, sustainable, and justly grown
food. From SEWA in India and villages in rural Uganda to research insti-
tutes and governments all over the world, there is a growing realization of
the positive impact that agriculture can have on livelihoods, nutrition, and
the environment. And these are exactly the sort of innovations that should
attract the support of governments, the private sector, and the international
funding and donor communities.
Indigenous peoples are the caretakers of many of the last biodiverse places
on Earth. Even though they only constitute 5 percent of world population
and occupy 20 percent of the earth’s surface, they live in 80 percent of the
world’s biological diversity hotspots. They are therefore critical to ecosystem
health and should be recognized as major stakeholders and leaders in the
global sustainability movement.1
Through millennium-tested traditional ecological knowledge, land-
based lifeways, and a holistic, ethical relationship to the earth, indigenous
peoples have a lot of practice in sustainable living. These cultures, with their
diverse knowledge systems and integrated life-enhancing practices, can pro-
vide relevant and timely examples of how to live sustainably within local
ecosystems. They can also provide principles and lessons for the industrial
world to relearn how to become native to place.
Indigenous peoples everywhere are critical protectors of biodiversity,
more often referred to by native peoples as homelands, territories, sacred
lands, or simply “all our relations.” One of the most significant ways indige-
nous peoples have practiced and demonstrated a sustainable relationship to
native lands and waters is through the tending, harvesting, hunting, grow-
ing, and cultivating of native foods. Living requires eating, eating means tak-
ing life, and taking life requires (or at least implies) a philosophy, a process,
and a coherent system or “cosmovision” for acquiring an adequate amount
of food and nutrition to sustain people and thrive as a culture.
Acquiring food from the earth is both an art and a science. Native food-
ways traditions are complex, diverse, and beautiful systems that connect
nature and culture and that provide both physical survival and cultural
meaning to a people. Indigenous foods and lifeways are an ideal example
of the profound interface of biological and cultural diversity—or what Yu-
chi professor and author Dan Wildcat refers to as the nature-culture nexus.
Embedded within native food traditions are diverse knowledge systems and
Melissa K. Nelson (Turtle
Mountain Chippewa) is an
associate professor of American
Indian studies at San Francisco
State University and president
of the Cultural Conservancy.
www.sustainabilitypossible.org
c h a p t e r 1 8
Protecting the Sanctity of
Native Foods
Melissa K. Nelson
Worldwatch Institute, State of the World 2013: Is Sustainability Still Possible?,
DOI 10.5822/ 978-1-61091-458-1_18, © 2013 by Worldwatch Institute
201
202 | State of the World 2013
native sciences, languages and distinct cultural heritages, and unique em-
bodied life-affirming practices. They are connected to soils and songs, seeds
and stories, ancestors and memory, taste and rain, dance and medicine, and
nourishment and place.2
According to many native traditions, to live well is the goal of life. And to
live well means not only sustaining foods and a lifestyle but actually regen-
erating the ecological systems people depend on and enhancing their hap-
piness and spirit. So there is an emphasis not only on sustaining basic needs
over time but on actually regenerating the resources, or “relatives,” that pro-
vide the raw materials for food, shelter, clothing, and medicine. In this sense,
indigenous livelihoods are about surviving and thriving in a place where
all beings in the circle of life thrive together. This philosophy and practice
of thriving in place is best demonstrated in the many complex foodways of
indigenous peoples.
Sacred Foods of the Americas and the Pacific
Native Americans are the originators and caretakers of many staple foods
globally. Many of these foods are considered sacred and have profound
teachings and practices associated with them. Corn (Zea mays), for example,
is one of the staple indigenous foods of the Americas and has become an
important food crop globally. Through numerous creation stories, corn is
known as “Corn Mother” in many Native American cultures. It is considered
a sacred relative and a source of life. Rituals, myths, ceremonies, offerings,
dances, and songs all praise the value and sacredness of this native cultivated
plant. Whether in the heart of Oaxaca in Mexico, the Rio Grande River val-
ley of New Mexico, the Saint Lawrence river valley of the Haudenosaunee,
the Yucatan Peninsula of the Maya, the Canadian Plains of the Cree, or the
Andean highlands of the Quechua and Aymara, you can find indigenous
peoples cultivating, praising, and eating corn.
Corn has been tragically compromised by genetic engineering, and na-
tive farmers are working hard to preserve the heirloom varieties and protect
them from genetic contamination and further industrial commodification.
As the late Seneca scholar and farmer John Mohawk has said, trouble comes
when people start growing food for money rather than for nutrition. He
also shared the prophecy that warned of a negative shift in the world when
sacred corn was fed to machines rather than to people. And this is happen-
ing now, as 40 percent of the corn grown in the United States is converted to
ethanol for machines.3
For Hawaiians, the origin food taro (Colocasia esculenta) or kalo is the
major staple food of the Pacific. Hawaiians know this food as an elder
brother in their origin stories, and they value him as a sacred ancestor. He
represents a type of mytho-geneology common among native peoples glob-
ally. Kalo too has been threatened, as scientists at the University of Hawaii
attempt to patent it and genetically alter it. In 2002, three taro varieties were
patented, and in 2003, three Hawaiian varieties were genetically modified
without any public debate or consultation with Native Hawaiian farmers,
who have worked with this plant for thousands of years. Hawaiian farmers
and activists as well as other concerned citizens protested, wrote letters, and
educated the public about this ethical violation of the sacred kalo plant and
of Hawaiian lifeways.4
In 2006, the University of Ha-
waii withdrew its patents on the
three varieties and agreed to stop
genetically modifying Hawaiian
forms of taro. Researchers con-
tinue to experiment with modify-
ing a Chinese form of taro, how-
ever. According to the nonprofit
group Hawai‘i SEED, “Native Ha-
waiians, taro farmers and Hawaii
SEED continue to fight back by
supporting legislation that places
a moratorium on the cultivation
and experimentation of GMO [ge-
netically modified organism] taro
in the lab and field.” In 2008, Na-
tive Hawaiians and allies drafted
legislation that banned GMO taro and corn from the Big Island of Hawaii.
Bill 361 legally protects taro and coffee from genetic engineering on the Big
Island. Due to strong public support, the Hawai‘i County Council unani-
mously passed this bill, although the mayor later vetoed it. Protecting indig-
enous foods that are considered ancestors and practicing the traditional Ha-
waiian philosophy of aloha ‘aina, “to love that which nourishes you,” is still
a major struggle and challenge for Hawaiians and native peoples globally.5
In the heart of North America, members of the Anishinaabeg/Ojibwe/
Chippewa nation are concerned about the sanctity of their food manoomin,
or wild rice (Zizania aquatica). This food was given to the Ojibwe by the
Creator in a sacred story of migration and helped the ancestors locate their
homelands on the Great Lakes. Winona LaDuke and her nonprofit organi-
zation, the White Earth Land Recovery Project & Native Harvest program,
are actively protecting this sacred staple food and have secured laws in Min-
nesota to oversee any research proposed on manoomin. This is the only na-
tive rice in North America and is a significant food source for many Native
American nations in the Great Lakes of the United States and Canada. It is
Protecting the Sanctity of Native Foods | 203
Harvested taro root that has been boiled in preparation for being cleaned and
mashed into poi.
M
el
iss
a
K.
N
el
so
n
204 | State of the World 2013
Freshly hand-harvested wild rice steaming over the coals of an open fire to
decrease its moisture content.
M
el
iss
a
K.
N
el
so
n
highly nutritious, delicious, and has made it into the mainstream food in-
dustry as a unique rice dish.6
Most of the commercially available “wild” rice is cultivated, paddy rice,
not a true wild rice any more. Industrial agriculture has been cultivating wild
rice in nonnative habitats like inland northern California. Cultivating wild
rice threatens the native ecosystems in the Great Lakes and other landscapes,
where it requires a lot of water to grow well. This ex-situ cultivation prac-
tice undermines the integrity of
the wild rice and its true value as
a hand-harvested wild rice and an
economic asset to the Ojibwe wild
rice gatherers who depend on its
sale as part of their seasonal liveli-
hood. As LaDuke has pointed out,
“Our manoomin grows nowhere
else in the world, and our people,
the Anishinaabeg from these Great
Lakes reservations, intend to keep
this tradition alive, vital and nur-
turing our souls and our bellies.”7
These sacred, totem foods—
corn, taro, wild rice—have been
passed on for generations and
traded with other tribes and com-
munities for human and econom-
ic well-being for centuries and millennia. They are often seen as intimate
relatives. It is tragic that they are now being threatened with life patent-
ing and genetic modification, as Claire Cummings clearly outlines in Un-
certain Peril. Protecting the foodways of native peoples requires protecting
and restoring the sanctity of native seeds and resisting the industrial com-
modification of these invaluable food sources. We see positive examples of
this happening, as just described in Hawaii and Minnesota. Internationally,
indigenous farmers in the province of Cuzco, Peru, have been successful in
banning GMO potatoes, another global staple food at its center of origin.
The larger context of these important bans and laws is the question of who
owns and controls these native lands and waters—and their indigenous
foods—in the first place.8
Environmental Context of Native Foods
Protecting native foods is about territory—land and water rights. It is im-
portant to assess the conditions of the native habitats that are the source of
these local foods and determine who owns and controls them. Because Na-
Protecting the Sanctity of Native Foods | 205
tive Americans control only 4 percent of U.S. land, they are not likely to have
control or access to much of the land that provides their indigenous foods.9
Most lands, rivers, and lakes in the United States are under private own-
ership, in public parklands, or in other federal lands, such as those under
the jurisdiction of the Bureau of Land Management or the U.S. military.
Creating access agreements and cooperative management plans for the na-
tive biodiversity of these lands is an important strategy that many tribes and
traditional practitioners are using to reconnect with their ancestral harvest-
ing sites. Federal agencies often benefit as well from the indigenous resource
management practices of native peoples, whose land care practices, such as
small-scale controlled burning, often enhance biodiversity. Ecological resto-
ration is often incorporated into these practices, helping to clean up toxic
landscapes and restore ecosystem health.10
There is also a growing native land trust movement in the United States
as more and more tribes buy back their ancestral lands for both traditional
and contemporary uses. As Slow Food founder and president Carlo Petrini
noted in May 2012, “It would be senseless to defend biodiversity without
also defending the cultural diversity of peoples and their right to govern
their own territories. The right of peoples to have control over their land, to
grow food, to hunt, fish and gather according to their own needs and deci-
sions, is inalienable.”11
Another key factor in assessing access to native lands and waters for tra-
ditional food harvesting is environmental quality. An assessment needs to
take place to ensure that the foods grown in a specific place have not been
contaminated by pesticides, industrial runoff, or other types of pollution.
Many native food plants, like watercress and piñon pine, are seen as “weeds”
and useless shrubs by government agencies and nonnatives, and they are
unfortunately destroyed with herbicides and pesticides. Toxic exposure is
thus a very real threat to traditional food gatherers when they do not own
the land where they gather.
In addition, many animal food sources bioaccumulate toxins. So when
native people eat their traditional meats—whether it is fresh fish or deer,
moose, ducks, seal, or caribou—they can be exposed to high levels of such
toxins as mercury, lead, polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), and other per-
sistent organic pollutants. This exposure has become so extreme that often
mothers’ breast milk is considered toxic due to the high levels of industrial
chemicals in it. As Mohawk midwife and environmental health researcher
Katsi Cook says, “women are the first environment,” so whatever happens to
the environment will happen to women’s bodies.12
The Arctic peoples of the far north are experiencing this health crisis in a
major way because their traditional diet consists primarily of high-protein,
high-fat meat foods. Inuit women’s breast milk has 5–10 times the level of
206 | State of the World 2013
PCBs as the breast milk of women in southern Canada. Even with these
risks, Arctic people are still hungry for their ancestral foods instead of the
imported western diet. As Canadian writer Lisa Charleyboy has noted, “for
at least some Inuit, the value of eating the foods of their ancestors is worth
the cost. ‘Contaminants do not affect our souls,’ [Inuit activist Ingmar]
Egede said. ‘Avoiding our foods from fear does.’”13
Without healthy seeds, lands, and waters, native foods will continue to
be compromised, damaged, and made scarce, and native health will suffer.
Native peoples are seeking to ban GMO foods with legislation and to estab-
lish GMO-free zones in local communities, create access and cooperative
management agreements with agencies and private landowners, develop
ecological restoration plans to clean up contaminated sites, and engage in
and purchase back land through native lands trusts. Native peoples and food
activists are also exploring unique partnerships and programs to safeguard
these foods. The growing need for global food security and food justice has
inspired many food groups to partner with native communities and orga-
nizations to educate the general public about the true value of native foods
and their significance for biodiversity conservation and cultural heritage
and health.
New Partnership for Food Security
One major example of new partnerships is Native American and indigenous
participation in the international Slow Food movement. Slow Food Interna-
tional and Slow Food USA are interconnected grassroots membership orga-
nizations that promote good, clean, fair food for all. There are over 100,000
members globally. Two of their programs are the Ark of Taste and the Pre-
sidia. According to the Slow Food USA website, “the Ark is an international
catalog of foods that are threatened by industrial standardization, the regu-
lations of large-scale distribution and environmental damage. The US Ark
of Taste is a catalogue of over 200 delicious foods in danger of extinction. By
promoting and eating Ark products we help ensure they remain in produc-
tion and on our plates.”14
One way Slow Food protects the Ark of Taste foods is through the
Presidia program. A Presidium in this context is a “garrison” or fort that
aims to protect endangered foods. Local projects work to improve the in-
frastructure of artisan food production. The Presidia aim to guarantee a
viable future for traditional foods by stabilizing production techniques, es-
tablishing stringent production standards, and promoting local consump-
tion of endangered foods.15
Many important Native American foods and beverages are in the US
Ark of Taste and are part of the Presidia program, including Anishinaabeg
manoomin, Navajo-Churro sheep, Arikara yellow bean, greenthread tea,
Protecting the Sanctity of Native Foods | 207
O’odham pink bean, Tuscarora white corn, Hopi mottled lima beans, tradi-
tional Hawaiian poi (kalo) and sea salt, and the Ozette potato. Slow Food is
highlighting the significance of these foods because they are at risk biologi-
cally and as culinary traditions, are sustainably produced, have great cultural
or historical significance, and are produced in limited quantities. The main
factor also for Slow Food is that they have outstanding taste, even though
taste itself is often culturally conditioned and will vary greatly. Some Na-
tive American organizations, such as the White Earth Land Recovery Project
(with Anishinaabeg manoomin) and Diné bé Iiná (with the Navajo-Churro
sheep), are working directly with Slow Food to gain support and recognition
for their food traditions through that network.16
Cultural Heritage and Traditional Ecological Knowledge
A crucial aspect of protecting native foodways is recognizing and honoring
the ecological knowledge of elders and traditional food gatherers, because na-
tive foods cannot be protected without their hands-on knowledge—how to
grow, nurture, harvest, process, cook, and
feast on them. This requires intergenera-
tional knowledge transmission. It is the
elders who retain an understanding of
living off the land before stores and com-
modity foods dominated native diets. It is
the elders who know how to gather and
prepare tule bulbs as foods, as the Paiute
do. Or how to gather and process the Cali-
fornia acorns, as the Pomo do. Or how to
hunt and prepare a moose for a feast, as
the Cree do. Or how to take an heirloom
tepary bean and grow it in a beautiful des-
ert garden, as the Tohono O’odham do.
The keys to cultural health include
strong, healthy bodies for all and also
healthy elders who feel valued and ap-
preciated. In healthy communities, elders
and youth still have a deep relationship and a system of knowledge sharing,
often through storytelling, the arts, and hands-on practices like farming.
When young people are able to learn the traditions from their elders, their
identities are reinforced and invigorated, their sense of pride in their heri-
tage increases, and their overall wellness improves significantly.
Elders, knowledge holders, and traditional practitioners often teach
through stories and demonstrations. Through them they impart the im-
portance of the “original instructions”—a tribe or community’s enduring
Navajo chef Walter Whitewater giving a hands-on lesson to Native
children about Native American foods and cooking.
Lo
is
El
le
n
Fr
an
k
208 | State of the World 2013
values, insights, and worldviews about life-enhancing practices that take
care of the gifts of life, of food, of water, of all the relations that make life
possible. Intergenerational knowledge transmission and these philosophical
and ethical teachings can be seen as parts of the intangible cultural heritage
of native foodways.
Combating Health Disparities and Improving Native
Wellness
Native foodways are tied to sustainable living in very practical environmen-
tal ways and through the revival of cultural memory and heritage. Most di-
rectly, native foodways are critical channels for maintaining physical health
and solving contemporary health problems such as diabetes and obesity.
This topic is beginning to be incorporated into tribal and higher educa-
tion curricula. As native chef and culinary anthropologist Lois Ellen Frank
has noted, “Young, educated Native American activists, such as students at
the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) in Santa Fe, New Mexico, are
beginning to foster a dialogue about how to decolonize their diets and their
bodies by recovering their ancestors’ gardens and foodways.” IAIA has in-
corporated an “indigenous concept of Native American food” into its re-
quired science class for all students as part of the four-year degree program,
regardless of the student’s major.17
Western doctors are also taking note of how returning to indigenous
diets can significantly improve health. The Physicians’ Committee for Re-
sponsible Medicine has worked with native chefs Lois Ellen Frank (Kiowa)
and Walter Whitewater (Navajo) in sponsoring cooking classes at IAIA and
the Pueblo Indian Cultural Center, focusing on plant-based ancestral foods
of the Southwest. After just eight weeks, native students and participants of
these classes lost weight, lowered blood sugar levels, in some instances were
able to decrease their diabetes medication while working with medical pro-
fessionals, and felt much healthier.18
This significant correlation between eating native foods, decreasing dia-
betes, and improving overall wellness has been clearly demonstrated by
the Tohono O’odham Community Action organization and its significant
work to combat the diabetes epidemic in its tribal community. With Tohono
O’odham, Seri, Yaqui, and other tribal and nonnative participants, this rela-
tionship was passionately demonstrated in the Desert Walk for Biodiversity,
Heritage and Health co-organized and documented by Gary Paul Nabhan
in 2000. During this intertribal, multicultural pilgrimage, nearly 200 peo-
ple walked 240 miles while sustaining themselves only on desert foods and
medicines—as well as on songs, stories, and prayers to feed the soul. Again,
people lost weight, lowered their blood sugar and cholesterol levels, and felt
renewed and reconnected to their ancestral lands and diets. 19
Protecting the Sanctity of Native Foods | 209
Native Food Alive and Well
Today indigenous food sovereignty is being reasserted, enacted, and ex-
plored in many diverse ways in Native America. Ojibwe and other native
professors and students are working on “decolonizing your taste buds” pro-
grams in Native Studies classes and in reservation cultural centers. Miwok
and Lakota youth are growing intertribal urban gardens in cities like Oak-
land and Detroit. Western Shoshone environmental directors are building
soil and storing water with permaculture rain gardens in the Great Basin
desert. Wailaki gatherers harvest kelp, dulse seaweed, and red abalone on
the northern California coast for their elders and for ceremonies. Pueblo
farmers continue to shape and eat from their desert landscapes with dry-
land farming methods. Native chefs teach indigenous nutrition and Native
American cuisine in tribal colleges and culinary schools.20
The native foods movement is alive and well in Turtle Island (as North
America is known by some Native Americans) and throughout the world.
This movement continues to grow and thrive in a modern context. Native
elders, young people, leaders, students, and tribal members are protecting
the sanctity of native foods for cultural health and environmental justice,
despite continued industrial efforts to marginalize, commodify, and devalue
these original foods.
Indigenous peoples are asserting food sovereignty as an indigenous right
and responsibility and a human right for all peoples and future generations.
They are “re-indigenizing” bodies and minds and lands and communities
through native foodways. Native foods are sacred and irreplaceable. They
are markers of diversity and are often keystone species for the health of an
ecosystem and the health of a people. Indigenous knowledge and foodways
are viable and potentially essential alternatives to modernity that remind us
all that we can become native to place and serve as regenerative elements in
our local foodsheds and ecosystems.21
Rebecca Adamson is a Chero-
kee and the founder of First
Peoples Worldwide. Danielle
Nierenberg is the former direc-
tor of the Nourishing the Planet
program at Worldwatch Insti-
tute. Olivia Arnow is a senior at
Vassar College.
www.sustainabilitypossible.org
For most of the last century, the Maasai faced the threat of eviction by the
Kenyan government and outside corporations eager to profit from Maasai
lands. These semi-nomadic pastoralists have lived for centuries on areas that
are now part of Kenya and Tanzania. But they have often been denied many
basic human rights, including food security, safe drinking water, and ad-
equate sanitation.1
In August 2010, things changed for the Maasai. A new Kenyan consti-
tution was passed. It recognized the traditions, customs, languages, and
rights of Kenya’s indigenous peoples and acknowledged the legitimacy of
hunter-gatherer, pastoral, and nomadic ways of life. These policy changes
would not have come to pass without the support and strength of indig-
enous grassroots organizations. Mary Simat, executive director of Maasai
Women for Education and Economic Development, embarked on a major
initiative, with funding from First Peoples Worldwide, to familiarize Maasai
villagers with the new constitution, issuing Maasai-language copies of it and
conducting workshops in communities.2
The changes to the constitution are having immediate impacts. Land re-
form initiatives authorize land use according to the Maasai’s own customs;
by entrusting revenues to county and local authorities, the land reform poli-
cies create a channel for regular funding for local priorities. In addition, the
Maasai are now recognized, for the first time, as important stewards of the
land whose environmental knowledge and practices—including rotational
livestock grazing and the fostering of beneficial wildlife habitats—can help
build resilience to climate change, improve water conservation, and protect
biodiversity. And this shows policymakers and communities the importance
of acknowledging the longstanding relationships of indigenous peoples to
their lands and their commitment to sustainability. These sorts of victories
by indigenous peoples are becoming more common in Asia, Latin America,
and North America as well as Africa.
c h a p t e r 1 9
Valuing Indigenous Peoples
Rebecca Adamson, Danielle Nierenberg, and Olivia Arnow
Worldwatch Institute, State of the World 2013: Is Sustainability Still Possible?,
DOI 10.5822/ 978-1-61091-458-1_19, © 2013 by Worldwatch Institute
210
Valuing Indigenous Peoples | 211
Indigenous peoples inhab-
it more than 85 percent of the
earth’s protected areas. Their
territories span most of the last
remaining biodiversity-rich con-
servation priority areas, and they
maintain traditional land claims
on 18–24 percent of Earth’s land
surface. But reports from the In-
ternational Funders for Indig-
enous Peoples suggest that only
about 1 percent of the billions of
dollars spent each year on philan-
thropy goes to indigenous peoples
and the ecosystem services they
support, including biodiversity
protection. The wealth of natural
resources preserved within indigenous territories presents an enormous
opportunity to expand conservation strategies on a scale that will help al-
leviate hunger and poverty while also conserving and protecting Earth’s
natural resources.3
Forced Evictions
Despite the important role indigenous peoples play in protecting natural
resources, their contributions are often overlooked. Even at its best, conven-
tional or science-based conservation can ignore or marginalize the steward-
ship of indigenous peoples. And at its worst, western approaches to conser-
vation can lead to their violent eviction.4
Evictions in the name of nature conservation or preservation are not a
new phenomenon. In North America, the Miwok and Awahneeshi people
were removed from Yosemite Valley to preserve land for the national park
in 1906. Although they used the woods, waters, and plains of Yosemite, they
were not considered a part of this wilderness and were evicted or killed.5
Governments still use conservation to forcibly relocate and intimidate
ethnic groups, including in Central Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Rather
than protesting these actions or withdrawing support, conservation groups
have ignored them. The Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), for example,
does conservation work in Myanmar—work criticized by human rights ad-
vocates. By 2000, Myanmar had designated over 15,000 square kilometers of
protected areas in 31 national parks and wildlife sanctuaries. When evidence
surfaced that the government was killing and evicting ethnic minorities in
the interest of “conservation,” WWF and other groups closed down their
Young Maasai herder approaches a mixed herd of cattle and goats.
An
dr
ea
s L
ed
er
er
212 | State of the World 2013
programs there. WCS, however, continues to manage conservation pro-
grams in Myanmar.6
Forced evictions devalue not only the importance of indigenous commu-
nities but also the traditional ecological and agricultural knowledge these
groups possess. It is true that rapid urbanization and the expanding global
population over the coming decades will inevitably lead to a scaling up or
overhaul of many traditional methods of food production, such as foraging
and wild fishing. But evicting people from their native lands and relocating
them to urban slums without training, education, or adequate compensa-
tion is not a sustainable solution to the problem of feeding the world. Clear-
ing forests and evicting families to grow sugarcane or maize does not neces-
sarily lead to less malnutrition or better incomes for indigenous farmers.
Farm families evicted from their land are often forced to rely on imported
and processed foods, rather than being able to grow their own nutritious
foods, keep livestock, and rely on their local communities for their food and
other needs.
By removing indigenous groups from their lands or recklessly exploit-
ing natural resources such as minerals and forests, corporations and gov-
ernments are effectively erasing thousands of years of practiced traditional
ecological knowledge—the cumulative body of experience an indigenous
group has collected over generations, encompassing knowledge, practices,
and beliefs about their customary lands. (See Table 19–1.)7
In 2007 and 2008, food price spikes plunged millions of people into
poverty and food insecurity, derailing years of international development
work and aid. The World Bank estimates that at least 44 million people
were driven into poverty as a result of higher food prices. Helping indig-
enous communities maintain their traditional knowledge and ways of life
can avoid the expenditure of billions of dollars in emergency aid, as well as
protect the natural environment that indigenous peoples have cultivated
for many generations.8
Fighting Back
Indigenous communities all over the world are fighting for the right to free,
prior, and informed consent (FPIC) whenever an action may affect their
lands, values, or rights. FPIC states that anyone who wishes to use custom-
ary land belonging to indigenous communities must enter into open, non-
coercive negotiations with them. Private corporations, national govern-
ments, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and even entire industries
have begun enforcing the principle of FPIC for indigenous communities.9
The United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples,
endorsed in 2007, provides an international legal framework and court of
public opinion that can be used to slow down commercial development.
Valuing Indigenous Peoples | 213
table 19–1. Indigenous peoples’ resources: What’s at Stake?
Indigenous Group and
Endangered Resource
Why Endangered
Why Resource is Valuable
Mangyan Peoples of the
Philippines—Forests of
Occidental Mindoro
Large mining corporations are
threatening to destroy ancestral
lands to profit from gold, natural
gas, and minerals worth millions
of dollars.
Deforestation threatens the livelihoods of
forest-dwelling indigenous communities in
the Mindoro region. Without the food and
shelter resources traditionally provided by
the forest, indigenous communities will be
forced to rely on unpredictable markets for
their income. Traditional knowledge about
agriculture, which is critical to the food
security of the communities, may be lost if
there is no land to plant indigenous crops.
Ogiek Peoples of
Kenya—Mau forest
complex
Since 2009, the Kenyan govern-
ment has evicted thousands of
Ogiek people from their ancestral
forest, ostensibly to reforest the
area. But over the last two de-
cades the government has sold
parcels of the forest for agricultural
development, both degrading the
forest and forcibly evicting Ogiek
tribespeople, who have sustainably
managed the forest for centuries.
The forest stores and channels rain that is
essential for irrigation and hydroelectric
power, and it also absorbs and stores
carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. The
storage of rainwater, as well as the cooler
temperatures resulting from forest cover,
previously kept malaria outbreaks at bay—
but the incidence of malaria is on the rise
now that the forest is being degraded and
cleared.
Imraguen in
Mauritania—Mullet fish
In 2006, Mauritania sold fishing
rights to the European Union in
exchange for a reduction in public
debts. Fishing fleets from western
countries often obtain the fishing
rights, employ local fishers, and
freeze the catch to be sent else-
where for processing, mainly
to North Africa and Europe.
Traditional knowledge of catching and pre-
paring mullet is being lost, resulting in the
disappearance of a significant element of
Imraguen cultural identity. The waters off
Mauritania are among the few left in the
world that are still well stocked with fish—
demonstrating the ability of the Imraguen
to manage their fisheries sustainably over
long periods of time. At a time when large-
scale and industrial fishing practices have
depleted many global fish stocks, pre-
serving and scaling up Imraguen fishing
practices can help reverse overfishing and
restore sustainable fish populations.
Aboriginal communities
of northern Australia—
Burn-control strategies/
fire management
techniques
Throughout the twentieth cen-
tury, forced removals kicked many
aboriginal communities off their
lands. Fierce dry-season blazes have
destroyed biodiversity and emitted
tons of greenhouse gases into the
atmosphere.
Aboriginal fire management techniques
have been crucial in helping manage habi-
tats and food resources across northern
Australia for millennia. If these strategies
are not followed, Australia’s biodiversity
will be seriously threatened.
Source: See endnote 7.
214 | State of the World 2013
Corporations like BP, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, and Suncor have all an-
nounced policies on indigenous peoples recently, and a shareholder meeting
of Newmont Mining Corporation voted 96.4 percent in favor of reducing
company conflicts with indigenous peoples.10
In the northern Pacific island of Sakhalin, over the past 15 years the liveli-
hoods of the Evenk, Nivkh, Nanai, and Uilta peoples have been threatened
by companies eager to extract oil. The pipelines, processing facilities, and
other industrial sites have degraded the island’s biodiversity and decreased
food production. In response, Shell International has made efforts to main-
tain a decent quality of life for the indigenous communities, in keeping with
the U.N. Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights that were ad-
opted in June 2011.11
Shell repainted its ships when the Inuit elders told them that red disrupts
sea mammal behavior. The company implemented a Sakhalin Indigenous
Minorities Development Plan and engages with Sakhalin’s indigenous
groups to address community grievances, improve health care and educa-
tion facilities, and preserve and study traditional languages. There are also
efforts under way to establish indigenous peoples consultancy services for
companies working on native lands, giving indigenous peoples the ability to
influence corporate policy and engage in a business relationship with com-
panies that would normally be adversaries.12
Protecting People and the Planet
Respecting indigenous peoples and their practices is a potentially invaluable
resource in combating climate change. The Accra Caucus on Forests and Cli-
mate Change, a network of NGOs representing about 100 civil society and in-
digenous peoples’ organizations from 38 countries, determined that the key to
reducing deforestation is to respect the rights and realities of indigenous peo-
ples and forest-dwelling communities. Its 2010 report, Realizing Rights, Pro-
tecting Forests: An Alternative Vision for Reducing Deforestation, features case
studies from Brazil, Cameroon, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Ecuador,
Indonesia, Nepal, Papua New Guinea, and Tanzania and concludes that a hu-
man rights-based approach should be applied to all policy and development
planning, including for agriculture, forests, and the Reducing Emissions from
Deforestation and Forest Degradation initiatives of the United Nations.13
Well-planned and targeted grants can help indigenous communities pre-
serve their livelihoods. First Peoples Worldwide has developed a progressive
and innovative funding model that promotes indigenous-led projects that
establish indigenous control of indigenous assets. The Keepers of the Earth
Program issues grants of $250 to $20,000 for projects in land conservation,
climate change, and food security, and it strives to protect indigenous rights
to subsistence hunting and gathering, access to sacred sites, and customary
Valuing Indigenous Peoples | 215
cultural practices while simultaneously protecting biodiversity and sustain-
able economic production.14
Although traditional grants can help alleviate immediate or short-term
problems, they can sometimes ignore the values and longer-term needs of
the communities receiving the support. A value central to indigenous com-
munities is egalitarian and inclusive development—development that does
not benefit some at the expense of
others. This was explicitly demon-
strated when First Peoples held a
roundtable meeting in Kenya in
May 2009 to discuss funding avail-
able for community stewardship
projects throughout Africa. As
part of this meeting, the group was
offered funding from the Keepers
of the Earth Fund, and the partici-
pants worked together to decide
how to allocate the funding.15
The deliberations lasted nearly
an hour, with ideas ranging from
giving money to the one commu-
nity that needed it the most to di-
viding it in equal or unequal parts
or using it to facilitate regional
plans. Representatives of the Mbendjele community in the Democratic Re-
public of Congo were so adamant about sharing the funds equally that the
Mursi representatives from Ethiopia, who thought they needed the funds the
most, conceded. The decision was so simple in the end: the Mursi respected
the Mbendjele and their beliefs enough to follow their lead to split the funds
equally because access to funding was so limited. While many foundations
view this kind of funding as the least strategic form of development, indig-
enous communities measure the success of a development project by its ho-
listic, inclusive results, and they are more willing to work with foundations
if they feel these and other values are being heard.16
Many other groups are also working to protect indigenous peoples and
their assets. The Cultural Conservancy, an organization dedicated to em-
powering indigenous cultures in the direct application of their traditional
knowledge and practices on ancestral lands, works on a variety of projects
to help indigenous communities protect and revitalize native lands and
cultures. One of its projects, the Native Circle of Food Program, provides
educational workshops and creates urban and rural native gardens, in ad-
dition to promoting seed saving, coalition building, and public education
A Mangyan village on Mindoro Island, Philippines, where mining interests are
threatening to deforest ancestral Mangyan lands.
D
yl
an
W
al
te
rs
216 | State of the World 2013
projects to restore Native American traditional ecological and nutritional
knowledge. Through its work, the Cultural Conservancy hopes to restore
biodiversity within North America’s food supply and to protect and en-
hance biological diversity in general.17
By providing the necessary framework—and taking a hands-off ap-
proach—these organizations and many others allow indigenous groups to
take charge of projects that protect their assets. With this kind of support,
indigenous peoples can work toward maintaining their economic and cul-
tural self-determination in the twenty-first century, all while protecting the
environment and preserving cultural identity.
Maintaining indigenous self-determination needs to become a collabor-
ative effort among governments, policymakers, NGOs, private corporations,
and indigenous groups themselves. The actors will vary from one country
or region to another, but there are some key components that will not only
help indigenous economic development but also increase food security, pro-
tect biodiversity, and create resilience to climate change.
Policies that Protect Indigenous Peoples. Giving recognition to indig-
enous groups, respecting their differences, and allowing them all to flourish
in a truly democratic spirit can help prevent conflict. In 2010, the Republic
of Congo granted indigenous peoples there (10 percent of the total popula-
tion) access by law to education and health services. This law is the first of
its kind on the African continent and marks a significant step in recognizing
and protecting the rights of marginalized indigenous peoples worldwide.
The law also mandates punishments and fines for anyone who uses indig-
enous persons as slaves.18
Policies like free, prior, and informed consent can help ensure open, non-
coercive negotiations between indigenous groups and those interested in us-
ing land belonging to indigenous communities. According to Article 10 of
the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, “Indig-
enous Peoples shall not be forcibly removed from their lands or territories.
No relocation shall take place without the free, prior and informed consent
of the indigenous peoples concerned and after agreement on just and fair
compensation and, where possible, with the option of return.”19
Corporate Engagement with Indigenous Peoples. While corporate pres-
ence in indigenous communities may be inevitable, corporations can work
with indigenous groups to ensure mutually beneficial outcomes. Businesses
and corporations involved in the use and extraction of natural resources on
indigenous peoples’ lands should consider their relations with indigenous
communities a crucial part of their business practices.
Indigenous peoples are pivotal in changing corporate behavior. Indig-
enous groups, with the support of NGOs and other organizations, are voic-
ing their opinions on land development and encouraging communities to
Valuing Indigenous Peoples | 217
set and enforce environmental standards. Corporations can reciprocate by
partnering with indigenous peoples in project planning, design, and deci-
sionmaking. Mutual benefits can be achieved, such as when corporations
build local mapping centers and indigenous groups include local land uses
on the maps. This gives companies the information they need for their op-
erations and the indigenous groups the information they need for environ-
mental monitoring, agriculture, hunting, fishing, and other practices.
Unique Grantmaking and Funding Strategies. NGOs and other organi-
zations need to develop funding models that support and suit indigenous
needs. Foundations and aid agencies in the United States often lack specific
strategies for working with indigenous peoples, but if these funding initia-
tives can tap into the capacities and resources of the communities they are
serving, their work could be far more effective.
By adhering to the cultural values of indigenous communities and
adopting more holistic approaches that engage these communities effec-
tively, foundations and aid agencies will be able to ensure that the projects
they fund provide the greatest benefit to all. Through small grants, public
forums, private discussions, and the transfer of research and information
relevant to indigenous peoples, outside groups can change international
public opinion, mobilize relevant groups to secure policy reform, and shift
the focus of indigenous economic development from income maintenance
to a full use and appreciation of indigenous assets and knowledge.
In 1968—during the first manned voyage to orbit the moon—Astronaut
William Anders took the famous photograph known as Earthrise, which
graphically depicts Earth as a small oasis in a dark, cold, hostile space. En-
vironmentalists used Earthrise to spread their message of the need to care
for our fragile planet, and it played a pivotal role in catalyzing the great
environmental campaign successes of the 1970s in the United States, such
as Earth Day, the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts, and the creation of the
Environmental Protection Agency.1
There is another more subtle message embedded in the Earthrise pho-
tograph. It was taken by a species able to travel beyond Earth by building
a human-friendly, short-term, artificial environmental system. In both the
spaceships we build and Spaceship Earth on which we live, our survival is
at stake.
Finding a new set of myths and stories that remind us frequently of our
dependence on planet Earth and our role as stewards is essential in this An-
thropocene epoch, when humanity is having a severe impact on the bio-
sphere—enough even to disrupt life itself. Many religions are trying to do
just that, reminding their adherents of the lessons from their stories about
stewardship, protecting the earth. The Judaic concept of a covenant or le-
gal agreement between God and humanity can be extended to all creation.
Christianity’s focus on sacrament and incarnation can be interpreted as a
lens through which one can see the entire natural world as sacred. The Is-
lamic vice-regency concept teaches that the natural world is not owned by
humans but rather given to them in trust, implying a responsibility to pre-
serve all of creation. But modern science, too, has much to contribute to
people’s understanding of our beginning and our future.2
One story that is now known globally and understood by billions of
people is the story of humanity’s evolution—what E. O. Wilson, the Pulit-
zer Prize–winning Harvard entomologist, calls “probably the best myth we
Dwight E. Collins chairs the
MBA Program at the Presidio
Graduate School in San Fran-
cisco and is president of the
Collins Educational Founda-
tion. Russell M. Genet is an
astronomer and a Research
Scholar in Residence at Califor-
nia Polytechnic Institute in San
Luis Obispo. David Christian
is a professor of history at
Macquarie University in Sydney,
Australia, and primary founder
of the academic discipline of
Big History.
www.sustainabilitypossible.org
c h a p t e r 2 0
Crafting a New Narrative to
Support Sustainability
Dwight E. Collins, Russell M. Genet, and David Christian
Worldwatch Institute, State of the World 2013: Is Sustainability Still Possible?,
DOI 10.5822/ 978-1-61091-458-1_20, © 2013 by Worldwatch Institute
218
Crafting a New Narrative to Support Sustainability | 219
will ever have.” This story starts 13 billion
years ago with the Big Bang and contin-
ues into the future beyond Homo sapiens
and toward new species into which even
humans may evolve. But it also includes
much more beyond humans and planet
Earth, the “billions and billions” of stars
and planets where processes similar to
those here on Earth are likely taking
place. What is exciting is that there are
now efforts around the world to draw on
this evolutionary story—which has been
incorporated into an academic discipline
often called Big History—to help human-
ity set a course to a sustainable future.3
Teaching Big History
Courses on Big History are now being
taught in some 50 colleges and univer-
sities around the world—from Harvard University and the University of
Amsterdam to the American University in Cairo and the International State
University in Moscow. Big History courses offer semester-long or year-long
accounts of the history of the cosmos, of life and civilization on planet
Earth, and of humanity’s place within the universe. These courses, by their
very nature, are interdisciplinary, multiscalar, and both global and cosmic in
their perspective. Often they take as their central theme the idea of increas-
ing complexity.4
These courses typically begin by explaining what Big History is, often
comparing it to traditional origin stories. They then launch into a narrative
that begins with the Big Bang, explaining the key ideas of Big Bang cosmol-
ogy in language that nonscientists can grasp. The creation of stars is the next
chapter in the story. With the appearance of stars, a universe that was previ-
ously both homogenous and quite simple suddenly acquired new chemical
elements and energy flows of increased intensity. The narrative then moves
on to the dispersal of these new chemical elements from dying stars, a story
that helps explain the appearance of chemically complex objects such as
planets. Describing the creation of these new chemical elements sets up the
story of planets in general and our own solar system in particular, preparing
students for the history of Earth and its life.
The emergence of life seems to have been made possible by these chemi-
cally complex environments with a liquid solvent (water) and gentle energy
flows that allowed the evolution of increasingly sophisticated molecules. The
N
AS
A
220 | State of the World 2013
story of life and its evolution on Earth leads to the appearance of our own
species some 200,000 years ago. Many Big History courses identify our spe-
cies as distinct because of our capacity for “collective learning”—the ability
to share ideas so efficiently that the information learned by individuals be-
gins to accumulate in the collective memory from generation to generation.
This creates a level of technological creativity that no other species has been
able to match in the almost 4 billion years that life has existed on Earth.5
The final parts of the story describe the results of this collective learning.
As humans learned to ever more successfully exploit their environments,
they evolved ever larger, complex, populous, and energy-hungry societies.
Today, in the Anthropocene epoch, for better or worse humans have ac-
quired the power to transform the biosphere. It is natural, therefore, that Big
History courses end by considering where the story is headed—the story of
humans and the biosphere, and also the story of the planet, the solar system,
and even the Universe as a whole.6
There are different schools of thought when teaching Big History. Some
focus more on Earth and its origins; others, on life in the universe. But what-
ever way you slice it, Big History gets to some of the biggest questions of
time, space, and our survival.7
For example, Big History raises the question of whether the history of
our own species is unique. Is it possible that there have been many examples
of other species beyond Earth capable of collective learning and able as a
result to accumulate new technologies over many generations? Assuming
such species exist, we can make some plausible generalizations about the
likely shape of their histories. And these generalizations can help place our
own predicament into a larger context.
It seems likely that other collective-learning species might pass through
similar stages in their histories as their knowledge base and technological
resources accumulate. One line of discussion hypothesizes three stages. In
Stage 1, childhood, these species accumulate a growing body of knowledge
about their environment. This gives them increasing power to extract re-
sources from their environment and support ever larger and more complex
communities. Barring extreme events such as asteroid strikes, they eventu-
ally reach Stage 2, adolescence. In this stage, they have accumulated so much
power over their environment that they can now transform their planet,
although it is not yet clear if they have the wisdom needed to use their power
well. This potential mismatch of power and wisdom may create a bottle-
neck, difficult to pass through, and this may explain why we have not heard
from other such species although we have been listening for over half a cen-
tury. Is it possible that all such species are like galactic fireflies, only briefly
flashing on and off, here and there? Perhaps our species has reached this
adolescent phase.8
Crafting a New Narrative to Support Sustainability | 221
The primary impediment to making it through our bottleneck is the run-
away success of our species. Like other species capable of collective learning,
we presumably have not only the ability to fill our own niche but also, be-
cause we keep accumulating new technologies, the ability to fill and overex-
ploit almost every niche on Earth. Through our cultural evolution, we have
developed powerful machines, tapped fossil fuels, and are now rapidly trans-
forming the biosphere. So far, other species have lacked the power or fore-
sight to restrain us. Our cultural evolution has been too fast for their genetic
evolution to counter.
Thanks to our capacity for collective learning, there is a potential path-
way through the bottleneck. We can become the first species on Earth to
develop the effective planet-wide evolutionary foresight we will need if we
are to avoid the dangers of ecological overreach and death as a civilization.
Effective planet-wide action based
on foresight is the key to a flour-
ishing future. Science provides the
foresight, while long-view narratives
such as Big History can energize the
public will, enabling politicians to
make wise, long-term choices.9
In summary, from a cosmic per-
spective, sustainability can be seen as
the requirement for civilizations of
species capable of collective learning
to safely negotiate their bottlenecks,
to pass through their adolescent
stages to Stage 3: planet-wide coop-
erative maturity leading to a flour-
ishing future. The cosmic perspective
presented by this Big History narra-
tive places the question of sustain-
ability into a nonconfrontational context. It also provides a foundation of
meaning upon which we can unite and align our ethics of exploration and
environmental stewardship in pursuit of a common goal: negotiating a way
through our cosmic bottleneck to reach Stage 3 of our history.
Can Big History Courses Change Attitudes?
The Big History Project, founded by Bill Gates and David Christian, is bring-
ing this curriculum into high schools by building what will eventually be a
free online syllabus in Big History. A two-year pilot offering of the course
began in 2011 at individual high schools in the United States. In 2012, schools
from Australia, the Netherlands, Scotland, and South Korea joined the pilot.
The Rocinha Favela in Rio de Janeiro is one of the largest shantytowns in
South America, with over 200,000 inhabitants.
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222 | State of the World 2013
Eventually, using feedback from these pilot high schools, the syllabus will be
revised. In late 2013, it will be made freely available to high schools as well as
individual learners. Systematic feedback from high schools will also provide
valuable data about the capacity of such courses to change the way students
think about issues such as sustainability. The eventual goal of this project is
to see Big History taught in a majority of high schools throughout the world.
Already Big History is catching on in high schools, colleges—with some, like
Dominican University of California, even requiring all undergraduates to
take this course—and even science museums.10
Adults may react in different ways when exposed to the Big History ac-
count. For some, it may generate an awareness that they should change their
behavior. But they may need more support for change because, for example,
they are caught up in the paradigm of well-being defined by the material
things that surround them. Others may react by initiating a change in person-
al values and priorities for what has meaning out of a heightened awareness
of their interconnectedness with all life. Still others may need to connect the
contents of the account to their spiritual identity in order to change behavior.
They may look to practices like Religious Naturalism, an approach to spiri-
tuality with a focus on the religious attributes of the universe and nature.11
In any case, a great deal of anecdotal evidence from many Big History
courses taught at the college level over the last 20 years suggests the powerful
ability of these programs to transform a student’s perspectives with respect
to the major global challenges of the Anthropocene epoch. Big History has
the capacity to expand our vision of humanity and its trajectory just as the
Earthrise picture changed how the first astronauts and cosmonauts viewed
their home planet. Here, for instance, is the reaction of one student to a Big
History course taught in the United States:
When I was first asked to consider my role in the universe four months
ago . . . I do not think I fully realized there was even a living commu-
nity around me, never mind an Earth full of other humans and an
entire universe beyond. . . . But after this long, incredible voyage of
exploration . . . I have a newfound sense of what the universe is. I have
learned . . . that we are all part of the Global Future, and I can make a
difference in my life as well as the lives of others. . . . My role is now to
change my ways and respect this beautiful planet that granted us life,
and to get others to join me.12
This anecdotal evidence suggests that students learning the new narra-
tive can change their “reality map,” resulting in more-sustainable behavior.
This hypothesis can be tested in a rigorous systematic way using before-
and-after surveys.
Since 2009, staff from the Alliance for Climate Education (ACE) have
been giving presentations on climate science to high school assemblies
Crafting a New Narrative to Support Sustainability | 223
across the United States. Their presentations incorporate animation, music,
and documentary footage of students taking on climate-related projects in
their schools. In three years, ACE has engaged over 1.3 million students and
won numerous awards for their innovative presentation style. Before-and-
after ACE surveys have measured students’ knowledge, attitude, behaviors,
and intentions related to climate and energy. The results suggest that stu-
dents have the potential to shift their attitudes and behavior in response to
a creatively crafted message about climate science. Before an ACE assembly,
37 percent of 1,388 students surveyed passed a test on climate science; after
the assembly, the pass rate rose to 56 percent. And the share of students
categorized as concerned or alarmed about climate change rose 43 percent.
The key seems to be presenting compelling information in an engaging for-
mat that incorporates a sense of hope and empowerment. A course in Big
History, given that it is taught over several months, is likely to have an even
greater impact on attitudes and behaviors than a one-time high school as-
sembly engagement.13
The Future of Big History
As Spaceship Earth speeds toward the brick wall of its own planetary fi-
niteness, Big History has great potential as a teaching vehicle to change the
attitudes of its passengers about sustainability. However, a more critical
need is to educate its pilots—our leaders in business and government—in
Big History.
Graduate schools of management could, for instance, offer a one-semes-
ter Big History course at the beginning of their Masters of Business Admin-
istration and Public Administration (MBA/MPA) curricula. Knowledge of
Big History grounds us in how to live as good citizens of Earth. Hence, this
strategy could strengthen MBA/MPA programs by teaching students how
to weave Earth citizenship values into the leadership cultures of public and
private institutions.
A small number of graduate programs have already made substantial
headway in this direction. One is the 10-year-old San Francisco-based Pre-
sidio Graduate School, which offers a dual MBA/MPA degree in sustain-
able management. This program integrates sustainability values and tools
for conducting business and managing public institutions throughout every
course in its curricula. Addressing the sustainability dimension of business-
es and public policies requires students to learn how to think at a global level
with a sense of the broadest impacts of decisions. The primary discipline
used by the school to teach this skill is “systems thinking,” developed and
popularized by Jay Forrester, Donella and Dennis Meadows, and others at
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the 1970s. It was used in con-
nection with the discipline of system dynamics invented by Forrester and
224 | State of the World 2013
found in this team’s famous work for the Club of Rome, Limits to Growth.
Systems thinking is mathematics- and logic-based, with a focus on concepts
like feedback loops and leverage points within a system.14
The discipline of Big History offers a complementary approach to teach-
ing a student to think globally. The student assimilates a breadth of knowl-
edge that by its very nature requires him or her to think from a global/cos-
mic perspective. Big History and systems thinking are two very different
approaches to achieving similar learning outcomes. A course in Big Histo-
ry—with its broad opportunity for use of both cognitive and affective learn-
ing modalities—could augment a student’s knowledge of systems thinking,
providing the student with an even stronger sense of the interconnectedness
of all things in space and time.
It remains to be seen whether or not we Earthlings will safely negoti-
ate Spaceship Earth’s bottleneck and advance from our civilization’s reck-
less adolescence to a state of sustainable and flourishing maturity. Anec-
dotal evidence indicates that teaching people Big History can help on this
journey. These courses educate students toward sustainable behavior by
enabling them to understand the sustainability challenge in the broadest
context and by deepening their understanding of what it means to be a
good citizen of Earth. They teach us how to think in terms of multiple
time scales and across disciplines. Offering such courses in our high schools
and institutions of higher learning can provide the education that both
the passengers and the pilots of Spaceship Earth need to steer a safe course
through our bottleneck.
The Big History narrative gives new meaning to our journey to a state of
true sustainability and flourishing. It anchors the journey’s starting point,
and its unified perspective serves as a constant reminder of why we are on
the journey and why we should not divert from its path. This cosmic narra-
tive was eloquently expressed by Carl Sagan when he ended the thirteenth
and final episode of Cosmos—“Who Speaks for Earth?”— with these words:
“Our loyalties are to the species and to the planet. We speak for Earth. Our
obligation to survive and flourish is owed not just to ourselves but also to
that Cosmos, ancient and vast, from which we spring!”15
Kathleen Dean Moore is
Distinguished Professor of
Philosophy, School of History,
Philosophy, and Religion, at Or-
egon State University. Michael
P. Nelson is Ruth H. Spaniol
Chair of Natural Resources,
professor of environmental
ethics and philosophy, and lead
principal investigator of the H. J.
Andrews Long-Term Ecological
Research Program at Oregon
State University.
www.sustainabilitypossible.org
In the summer of 2012, some 10 percent of the earth’s land baked under
intense heat, a tenfold increase from baseline years. Ninety-seven percent
of the surface of the Greenland ice sheet warmed enough to show signs of
thawing. The temperature in the state of Kansas broke 115 degrees—an all-
time record. And the U.S. Drought Monitor reported that 62.3 percent of the
United States was suffering from moderate to extreme drought. Hot, dry
weather also scorched Moscow, which was cloaked in haze from wildfires.
All but 24 percent of the Arctic Ocean was ice-free that summer, the lowest
point since measurements began at 50 percent in the late 1970s.1
Startling changes, to be sure. But along with the increases in tempera-
ture has come an important expansion in the world’s understanding of the
environmental emergencies that beset the planet. The waves of climate and
other environmental change are scientific issues. They are also technological
and economic issues. What is new and significant is an increasing awareness
that environmental emergencies, especially those caused by rapid climate
change, are fundamentally moral issues that call for a moral response.
The call for a response based on justice, compassion, and respect for hu-
man rights comes from scientists as well as activists and moral and religious
leaders. Averting climate change, NASA scientist James Hansen says, “is a
great moral issue” that he compares to the fight against slavery; it is an “injus-
tice of one generation to others.” Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu writes,
“Climate change is a moral challenge, not simply an economic or technologi-
cal problem. We are called to honor our duties of justice. . . . We are called
to honor our duties of compassion.” Environmental issues are human rights
issues, former Inuit Circumpolar Council Chair Sheila Watt-Cloutier writes:
“We are defending our right to culture. . . . We are defending our right to be
cold.” And the Dalai Lama says that a “clean environment is a human right like
any other. It is therefore part of our responsibility toward others to ensure that
the world we pass on is as healthy, if not healthier, than when we found it.”2
c h a p t e r 2 1
Moving Toward a
Global Moral Consensus on
Environmental Action
Kathleen Dean Moore and Michael P. Nelson
Worldwatch Institute, State of the World 2013: Is Sustainability Still Possible?,
DOI 10.5822/ 978-1-61091-458-1_21, © 2013 by Worldwatch Institute
225
226 | State of the World 2013
The emerging global consensus about the moral implications of envi-
ronmental crises is an important development, given the underlying logic
of policymaking. That logic is expressed in the form of the practical moral
syllogism: Any argument that reaches a conclusion about what we ought to
do must have two premises. The first premise is factual, based on empirical,
usually scientific, evidence—This is the way the world is, and this is the way
the world will be if it continues on this path. But facts alone do not tell us what
we ought to do. For that, we need a second premise. The second premise is
normative, based on our best judgment of what is right and good, what is of
value, what is just, what is worthy of us as moral beings—This is the way the
world ought to be. From these two premises together, but from neither alone,
we can devise policies that empower our values and embody our visions of
the world as it ought to be.
This logic helps explain some of the impasses blocking action to avert the
emergencies. It helps explain a strategy of climate change deniers, for exam-
ple. Given the logic of the practical moral syllogism, individuals who would
reject climate action and the changes it would require can either deny the
science that supports action or deny collected human wisdom about how
the world ought to be. Unsurprisingly, they choose to attack the science. It
is far easier to pick a fight about, say, whether dramatically increasing levels
of carbon dioxide will help or hurt humankind than to quarrel about, say,
whether we have a moral obligation to protect children from harm.3
The logic also helps explain the frustration of scientists, who see an as-
tonishing decoupling of scientific consensus and public belief, as well as, in
some cases, an inverse correlation between the amount people know about
climate change and the political will to act. Indeed, scientists have heroically
expanded knowledge and explained it to the public on the assumption that
if people only knew, if they only knew, then they would act. This, unfortu-
nately, is a fallacy. Better to say, if people only knew the facts about the harm-
ful effects of climate change on the human prospect, and if they affirmed
basic principles of justice and compassion, then they would act. It is from
the partnership between science and ethics that policies are born. For this
reason, university departmentalization and the myriad isolations of exper-
tise, science/religion divides, and other forces that weaken the connection
between the realm of the first premise (generally science and technology)
and the realm of the second premise (literature, art, religion, indigenous
wisdom, ethics, history) have made it harder to devise effective policies.
Shared Moral Principles That Require Action
Hidden behind the well-publicized disagreements about climate change is a
body of shared wisdom about fundamental moral principles of human and
political action. Just as the world’s scientists are achieving a hard-won global
Moving Toward a Global Moral Consensus on Environmental Action | 227
consensus about the facts, it is possible to move toward a global consensus
about basic principles of morality. This section looks at just a few of the
principles fundamental to a global moral response to climate change and
other environmental crises.
Everyone has the right to life, liberty, and security of person. This basic
moral principle, from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, is echoed
in constitutions around the world. If there is a fundamental, globally shared
moral vision, this is it. If we accept what scientists tell us about the effects
of environmental assaults, and if we accept this definition of human rights,
it follows that the carbon-spewing nations are embarking on the greatest
violation of human rights the world has ever seen. The consequences of
global warming and widespread environmental degradation—flooding
people from their homes, exposing them to new disease vectors, disrupting
food supplies, contaminating or exhausting freshwater sources, uprooting
the material bases of traditional cultures—are a systematic denial of human
rights. By whom? By the wealthy nations and the wealthiest subpopulations
of all nations, who cannot or will not stop releasing more than their fair
share of carbon into the atmosphere. For what? For the continuing con-
sumption of material goods and the accumulation of wealth. “An environ-
mental human rights movement is the vision under which I labor,” writes
biologist Sandra Steingraber, “from which I am not free to desist, and which
may, if we all work together, become a self-fulfilling prophecy.”4
Justice, and intergenerational justice in particular, requires an equita-
ble distribution of benefits and burdens. Climate change is not only a viola-
tion of rights; it is a violation of the principles of justice. The people who are
suffering and will suffer the most severe harms from climate change (at least
in the short term, until it engulfs us all) are unlikely ever to see the putative
benefits of the profligate use of fossil fuels and natural resources. Moreover,
they are the people least responsible for causing the harm. The people who
are causing the harm are off-loading its consequences onto those least able
to speak in their own defense. Who are the voiceless? They are future people,
who do not exist and so cannot defend themselves against the profound
destabilization of the world. They are plants and animals and ecosystems,
destroyed wholesale to support the lifestyles of the present. They are mar-
ginalized people everywhere—economically marginalized and geographi-
cally marginalized, in sub-Saharan Africa, in the circumpolar regions, in
low-lying islands, in areas of flood or drought or disease or famine. And
they are children. That is a violation of distributive justice.
Humans have an absolute obligation to protect children from harm. The
suffering of any child is unjust. Small children can never deserve to suffer,
because they can never do a wrong that might justify suffering in return. But
adults are harming children, even as (especially as) we believe we are acting to
228 | State of the World 2013
provide for them. It is ironic that the amassing of material wealth in the name
of very privileged children will harm them in time. Consider the poison in
the plastic car seat, the disease in the pesticide-treated fruit, the coal company
in the college investment portfolio, the mall where there had been frogs, the
carbon load of a distant summer camp. But the harm that adult decisions
will do to the children who are not as privileged is not just an irony; it is a
violation of our obligation to protect them. The world’s less privileged chil-
dren are the ones who will suffer the most as seas rise, fires scorch cropland,
diseases spread north, and famine returns to lands that had been abundant.
At this point in history, few can claim the excuse of ignorance. Few can claim
they are acting unintentionally. The damage to children’s future is a deliber-
ate theft. “This is not the future I want for my daughters,” President Barack
Obama has said. “It’s not the future any of us want for our children.”5
We have an obligation as moral beings to act with compassion. Of all
the virtues that a human being can possess, the greatest may be compas-
sion. Compassion: to “feel with,” to imagine ourselves in another’s place.
Understanding the joys or sufferings of others, the compassionate person is
joyous or suffers too. Thus the truly compassionate person strives to create
conditions that bring forth joy and to prevent or diminish conditions that
create pain. But the price of the accelerating use of fossil fuels and the waste
of natural thriving will be paid in human and animal suffering. If virtuous
people are compassionate, if compassionate people act to reduce suffering,
and if climate change will cause suffering around the world, then we who
call ourselves virtuous have a moral obligation to avert the effects of the
coming storms.
It is wrong to wreck the world. “A thing is right when it tends to preserve
the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community,” conservationist
and ecologist Aldo Leopold wrote. “It is wrong when it tends otherwise.” By
this principle, the waste and spoilage that cause climate change are wrong.
The timeless unfurling of the universe, or the glory of God, or an unknown
mystery, or all of these together have brought the Earth to a glorious fecun-
dity, resilience, and beauty. To let it all slip away because we are too preoccu-
pied to save it? That is wrong. And when the destruction is done knowingly
and in exchange for something of far lesser value, this is immorality at its
most incomprehensible. A full appreciation of the beauty and wonder of
the world calls us to action. If this is the way the world is—beautiful, aston-
ishing, wondrous, awe-inspiring—then this is how we ought to act in that
world: with respect, with deep caring and fierce protectiveness, and with a
full sense of our obligation to the future, that this world shall remain.6
Moral integrity requires us to make decisions that embody our values. It
is possible to believe the world is trapped between two unacceptable alterna-
tives. One is the moral complacency that comes from blind hope. The other
Moving Toward a Global Moral Consensus on Environmental Action | 229
is the moral abdication that comes from blinding despair. Certainly, there
is good reason for despair. Vermont Law School professor Gus Speth wrote,
“All we have to do to destroy the planet’s climate and ecosystem and leave
a ruined world to our children and grandchildren is to keep doing exactly
what we are doing today.”7
But to think that hope and despair are the only two options is a false di-
chotomy. Between them is a vast and fertile middle ground, which is integri-
ty: a matching between what we believe and what we do. To act justly because
we believe in justice. To act lovingly toward children because we love them.
To refuse to allow corporations to make us into instruments of destruction
because we believe it is wrong to wreck the world. This is moral integrity.
This is a fundamental moral obligation—to act in ways that are consistent
with our beliefs about what is right. And this is a fundamental moral chal-
lenge—to make our lives into works of art that embody our deepest values.
A Competing Moral Value that Blocks Climate Action
Even as consensus grows on the moral necessity of climate action, disagree-
ment grows as to the proper steps to take. A substantial minority of the U.S.
populace, for example, believes that the steps required to combat climate
change are wrong, primarily because they limit personal freedom. It is surely
correct that effective climate action will increase social constraints. It will re-
quire limiting the freedom of commerce, limiting the freedom of consumer
choices, and, in a variety of ways, limiting the freedom of some to benefit
at the expense of others. Climate policy disputes are one manifestation of a
division between those who think the primary purpose of government is to
bring people to common action, so they can do together what none of them
can do alone, and those who think the primary purpose of government is to
protect individual freedom of self-development and self-realization.8
Either way, freedom has value as a means to the ends people seek. That
value raises a paradox of unsurpassed importance: If unfettered freedom
unleashes a climate chaos that threatens to undermine the great systems
that sustain our lives and nations, then what will be left of freedom? What
the world faces is a choice between social constraints democratically chosen
and the fierce, uncontrollable, lethally unleashed constraints of flood, fire,
and the societal chaos that will accompany rapid ecological changes. (See
Box 21–1.)9
From Moral Imperative to Moral Action
Work is advancing on many fronts to harness the power of moral conviction
in efforts to slow climate destabilization and ecological disruption. Moral
arguments about climate change do not have to be abstract and complex;
recent scholarship suggests powerful new frames for moral arguments. Ac-
230 | State of the World 2013
cordingly, the world is now seeing strong, innovative moral climate change
initiatives based on moral rights, conscientious objection, and religious con-
viction, to name a few, and new efforts to reimagine ethics as well as the
institutions that embed moral values.10
Moral Rights. The Earth Charter in 2000 was the first global effort to
expand moral consideration to the earth. It called for “respect for the Earth
and life in all its diversity,” recognizing that “every form of life has value
regardless of its worth to human beings.” Since then, many nations have for-
mally granted moral standing and legal rights to the earth. Ecuador declared
in 2008 that Nature has the “right to exist, persist, maintain and regenerate
its vital cycles, structure, functions and its processes in evolution.” In La Ley
de Derechos de la Madre Tierra (the Law of the Rights of Mother Earth), Bo-
livia defined 11 rights for the environment in 2011, including “the right to
life and to exist; the right to continue vital cycles and processes free from hu-
man alteration; the right to pure water and clean air; the right to balance; the
It is possible that planetary civilization will move
smoothly into the future through prudence and grace,
with all its ethical wisdom intact. But what if we fall hard
into a future marked by chaos, scarcity, and calamity?
What of ethics then?
Moviemakers like to portray a post-apocalyptic
world as post-moral—solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and
short—governed by animal instincts unrestrained by
human decency. It is certainly a possible scenario, and
even a probable one if we fail to act to prevent global
average temperature increases from reaching high-
end projections of 6 degrees Celsius. But of course this
Hobbesian future is not the only scenario. It is possible
that ethics will not disappear but will change. Among
the expected casualties of ecological collapse may be
those parts of western ethics-as-usual that have not
served us well. In a world in which there are few good
consequences to be found, for example, we might see
the end of utilitarianism, which judges the moral-
ity of acts by the desirability of their consequences.
We might see as well the end of egoism or radical
individualism, as ecological collapse forces us finally to
accept that we humans are created and defined by our
relation to cultural and ecological communities—that
we flourish not as isolated utility-maximizers but as
members of communities of interdependent parts.
What will replace the ethics that no longer serve
us well? When we study terrible times (concentration
camps, wars, the forced relocations of Native Ameri-
cans, and many more examples), we most often see
moral behavior based on personal integrity, by which
people choose to do what is right for no other reason
than because it is right. To act justly because we believe
in justice. To act compassionately because we believe
in compassion. “When we are no longer able to change
a situation,” wrote Austrian psychiatrist and Holocaust
survivor Viktor Frankl, “we are challenged to change
ourselves.” This may be the one choice remaining to us
even in the darkest futures we can imagine: “Everything
can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the
human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any
given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way,”
Frankl noted. Making difficult choices, helping others
get through the demanding and grim ecological transi-
tions of the future—these may be true acts of moral
courage. But the fact is, we have the opportunity to be
morally courageous right now, choosing to match our
actions to our beliefs about what is right and good, just
and beautiful, worthy of us as moral beings.
Source: See endnote 9.
Box 21–1. ethics at the end of the World
Moving Toward a Global Moral Consensus on Environmental Action | 231
right not to be polluted; and the right to not have cellular structure modified
or genetically altered.”11
These laws have the important effect of changing the burden of proof,
so that anyone who would do harm to the earth must provide good reasons
why this is justified. But efforts to encode obligations to the earth do not
stop there. For example, a campaign is under way in Britain to make “eco-
cide” an international crime comparable to genocide and likewise action-
able as a fifth “crime against peace” that can be tried by the International
Criminal Court.12
Conscientious Action. The world is seeing an increase in direct action or
civil disobedience that is guided by moral integrity—the refusal to acquiesce
passively in actions believed wrong. For example, 12,000 people surrounded
the White House in November 2011 to push President Obama to keep his
campaign promise to “end the tyranny of oil.” More than 200 were arrested,
including event organizer Bill McKibben, who wrote, “This is, at bottom, a
moral issue.” In Sydney, Australia, a crowd of 10,000 cheered Climate Proj-
ect coordinator Nell Schofield when she decried the government’s lack of
action as “not only embarrassing, . . . [but] morally reprehensible.” Around
the world, thousands have been arrested in demonstrations against fracking,
mountaintop removal, open-pit mines, and other particularly destructive
industrial practices.13
In July 2012, the first-ever nationwide anti-fracking rally in Washington,
D.C., demonstrated the increasing solidarity of secular and religious envi-
ronmental activists. Catherine Woodiwiss of the Center for American Prog-
ress noted that the protests were “couched in sweeping moral language—an
example of the increasingly values-based lens being applied to public dis-
course about climate change and green energy technology.”14
Faith-based Action. A growing number of religious denominations and
leaders continue to move into the world of environmental activism, driven by
a sense of moral responsibility to address human injustice, to relieve human
suffering, and to serve their Creator as stewards of divine creation. In the past
year, religion-based campaigns included a Global Day of Prayer for Creation
Care organized by the Evangelical Environmental Network, with presenta-
tions by evangelical leaders from the United States, Europe, Latin America,
and Africa. Interfaith Moral Action on Climate, a newly formed collaborative
endorsed by 45 groups and scores of religious leaders, sponsored a Cultural
Implications of Climate Change program with talks by leaders from Chris-
tian, Islamic, Jewish, Baha’i, Hindu, and Native American faith traditions. To
traditional religious concerns of social justice and compassion, these initia-
tives bring a powerful commitment to “creation care,” the obligation to pro-
tect divine creation and to honor Nature—a spiritual imperative especially
strong in indigenous religions, Taoism, Confucianism, and Buddhism.15
232 | State of the World 2013
Reimagining Ethics.
Evolutionary science,
ecological science, and
almost all the religious
and spiritual traditions
of the world tell us that
human/nature dualism
and human exceptional-
ism are fundamentally
mistaken; rather, humans
are deeply of the earth,
embedded in emergent
systems that are inter-
connected, interdepen-
dent, finite, and beauti-
ful. Recognizing that a
truly adaptive civilization
will align its ethics with
the ways of the earth, a
number of organizations are articulating or calling for an earth-based eth-
ic to replace anthropocentric utilitarianism, which measures acts by their
usefulness to human ends. An example of such an ethic is the Blue River
Declaration, written by an interdisciplinary seminar convened by the Spring
Creek Project in Oregon’s Cascade Mountains in 2011. The authors con-
cluded: “Humanity is called to imagine an ethic that not only acknowledges,
but emulates, the ways by which life thrives on Earth. How do we act, when
we truly understand that we live in complete dependence on an Earth that is
interconnected, interdependent, finite, and resilient?”16
Reimagining Institutions. An ethic of care for the earth calls into ques-
tion many of the institutions of “business-as-usual,” including the corpora-
tion. Traditional corporations maximize for one and only one value: share-
holder profits. So far, 12 states have passed legislation to create a new kind
of corporation, called the B-corporation—the “B” standing for benefit. B-
corporations integrate social benefit directly into the missions and charters
of their businesses, offering if not a moral shift, at least a moral promise. By
November 2012 there were 650 B-corporations in 60 industries in 18 coun-
tries, with a combined worth of $4.2 billion.17
A Paradigm Shift in Worldviews
Along with these moral responses to climate change comes the call for a
Great Turning, as Joanna Macy puts it, toward a paradigm shift in world-
view, away from the conviction that humans are separate from and supe-
Activists deliver petitions with 160,000 signatures to ban fracking to New York Governor
Cuomo’s office in October 2012.
Ad
am
W
el
z/
CR
ED
O
Moving Toward a Global Moral Consensus on Environmental Action | 233
rior to the rest of creation. Humans are part of this world, fully and deeply
nested into intricate, delicately balanced systems of living and dying that
have created a richness of life greater than the planet has ever seen. In our
common origins and in our common fates, in the interdependence of our
functioning, we and the rest of the natural world are kin. Because we are
part of the earth’s systems, humans are utterly dependent on their resilience
and thriving. How soon we grasp that reality will determine not only our
ecological and social future but our moral future as well.18
In Rio de Janeiro in June 2012, two vast political gatherings deliberated
about the future of sustainability. On the campus of RioCentro, heads of
state, ministerial representatives, and other national delegates sat in con-
ference chambers and roundtable rooms at the United Nations Conference
on Sustainable Development, attempting to negotiate formal agreements on
sustainable development. Across the city, in Flamengo Park, civil society and
citizens’ groups struck a sharp contrast at the People’s Summit—with an
impassioned festival atmosphere of tent talks, demonstrations, and partici-
patory events. Agendas ranged from agroecological farming to alternative
currencies, renewable energy to recycling, and the rights to land, water, re-
productive choice, and alternative ways of living with nature.1
The political strategies and styles on display could not have been more
different. They exemplified contrasting approaches to the fractured poli-
tics of sustainability: global versus grassroots, top-down versus bottom-up,
state-led versus citizen-led, formal versus informal. Cross-cutting these were
distinctions between dominant “reformist” approaches, seeking sustainabil-
ity through tweaks to existing social and economic systems under the cur-
rent rubric of “green economies,” and more-marginal “radical” arguments
that sustainability requires more-fundamental overhauls of social and eco-
nomic systems, whether based on anti-capitalist or socialist principles or on
alternative eco-philosophies.2
Both gatherings made it clear that sustainability is not primarily a techni-
cal challenge. It is fundamentally a matter of politics. What political strate-
gies are needed to break the political logjam? Sustainability is not just one
thing, and there is a need to recognize the multiple sustainability goals and
possible futures given priority by different people and groups and across
scales, as well as the disputes and trade-offs among them. The challenge is
thus to open up the politics of sustainability to recognize and enable nego-
tiation among different possible pathways.
Melissa Leach is a social
anthropologist and Professorial
Fellow at the Institute of Devel-
opment Studies, University of
Sussex, United Kingdom. She
directs the ESRC STEPS (Social,
Technological and Environmen-
tal Pathways to Sustainability)
Centre, an interdisciplinary re-
search and policy engagement
organization with partners in
Africa, Asia, and Latin America.
www.sustainabilitypossible.org
c h a p t e r 2 2
Pathways to Sustainability:
Building Political Strategies
Melissa Leach
Worldwatch Institute, State of the World 2013: Is Sustainability Still Possible?,
DOI 10.5822/ 978-1-61091-458-1_22, © 2013 by Worldwatch Institute
234
Pathways to Sustainability: Building Political Strategies | 235
Pathways and Politics
Pathways of change toward sustainability must steer us toward a safe ecolog-
ical and economic operating space for humanity, as well as toward a social
space that respects basic standards of human dignity, well-being, and rights.
This challenge is inherently political, requiring the recognition and realign-
ment of the political-economic interests, institutions, and power relations
that constrain us to well-worn pathways. Examples of such pathways include
fossil-fueled energy regimes that have developed along with incumbent
political interests, patterns of economic activity, and established technolo-
gies and infrastructures in both older and newly industrializing countries
and the heavily industrialized agriculture and high meat consumption that
threaten biodiversity, land, and freshwater use and that are interlocked with
the political-economic interests of the food industry and the lifestyles and
preferences of many consumers.3
Yet the challenges do not stop there. Even agreeing on the general need
to move toward sustainability leaves us facing a multiplicity of diverse pos-
sible goals and related pathways. In global, national, and local settings, there
are inevitably contested versions of sustainability and “sustainable devel-
opment,” implying different winners and losers. These specificities were
glossed over in the 1987 definition of sustainable development by the World
Commission on Environment and Development, and they are equally
downplayed in current debates around “the future we want.” Seeking “true
sustainability” requires addressing far more precisely who exactly “we” are in
different contexts and whose needs and goals are at stake.4
To consider just one example, take the challenge of combating hunger in
various rural settings across the world. Does sustainable development mean
improving food security through boosting agricultural productivity, using
modern plant breeding and genetic engineering to roll out technical solu-
tions at scale? Or does it mean tackling diverse local food insecurities shaped
by ecological, market, social, and institutional contexts through farmer-par-
ticipatory approaches? Or some other approach not yet developed?
The same abundance of choices arises with respect to energy, water, and
many other sustainability challenges. Of course, these are not clear-cut
either-ors. What might work, or be desirable, will vary from place to place
and for different groups of people. And keeping open a diversity of policy,
technology, and economic options and approaches is itself desirable. Given
the complexities and uncertainties surrounding so many environmental and
economic processes, it makes sense to avoid putting all our eggs in one bas-
ket. Diversity of possible pathways also allows for decisionmakers and users
to select, adapt, and innovate creatively to suit what inevitably are highly di-
verse contexts and values. The point, though, is that not all pathways can be
236 | State of the World 2013
pursued; there are always going to be trade-offs between and controversies
about alternatives. Politics and power are thus critical at this level, too, in
shaping which possible versions of sustainable development are recognized
and how these disputes play out in global, national, and local settings.
This means that the challenge for sustainability politics is not just to at-
tempt a shift or a reorientation from unsustainable pathways to sustain-
able ones, as if this were about redirecting a super-highway. And it is not
just about building support for top-down, singular policy, technological,
and economic approaches to sustainable development of the kind that have
dominated so much debate and attempted action. The challenge is also
to open up understanding and action around sustainability to reveal and
empower alternative pathways that might currently be hidden, including
those that emerge from the experiences, knowledge, and creativity of poorer
women and men, rural and urban dwellers, and citizens and small busi-
nesses in particular places.
How might this be done? There are no simple answers. Four practical
ways forward are offered here: deliberating goals, mobilizing citizens, build-
ing networks, and exploiting openings in political and policy structures. Po-
litical strategies and actions along these lines are already unfolding around
the world and offering valuable lessons, guidelines, and clues for those seek-
ing transformative change. Taken together, these four strategies offer ways
of bridging and connecting top-down and bottom-up as well as reformist
and radical approaches.
Deliberating Goals. Strategies for deliberative governance aim to bring
diverse people and perspectives together into forums for debate, dialogue,
negotiation, and engagement around particular problems. These in turn
draw on ideas of direct and participatory democratic politics, in which
people with a stake in an issue engage directly in forums where it will be
debated or decided rather than just through voting for political candidates
to represent them. Giving voice to alternative perspectives that may point
in sustainable directions is, in itself, a way to counter lock-in to singular,
dominant pathways.5
There are many examples of such deliberative approaches convened by
governments, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), or researchers and
linked with an array of practical tools and methods. Many have a local fo-
cus. Community trade-off assessments have been pioneered in Guyana, for
example, in which local community members assess different sustainable
development options in terms of their own worldviews and aspirations. In
India, citizens’ juries have been used to open up discussion of genetically
modified crops and sustainability among farmers, businesses, and political
leaders. Other examples aim to link local perspectives with national actors
and policies. Thus, for instance, multicriteria mapping (MCM) methods
Pathways to Sustainability: Building Political Strategies | 237
have been used effectively to generate debate about different goals and path-
ways for agricultural development in dryland Kenya in the context of cli-
mate change. (See Box 22–1.) “The pyramid” is a deliberative framework
and approach that has been used to promote participatory dialogue and
target setting in forestry policy at the national level in Brazil and elsewhere.6
Deliberative dialogues have also been attempted at the global scale. For
several years starting in 2003, for instance, the International Assessment of
Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development had over
900 contributors from across the world discussing possible futures for ag-
ricultural development. The process had some success in opening up what
had been a rather black-and-white debate about the merits of high-tech
modern biotechnology and market-based solutions, highlighting the need
for varied social and technical approaches suited to different socioeconomic
and agroecological conditions.7
And in 2012 an innovative attempt was made to enrich the Rio+20 Con-
ference through a process to include civil society perspectives and priorities.
The Rio+20 Dialogues for Sustainable Development, initiated by the gov-
ernment of Brazil and supported by the United Nations, involved a multi-
stage process of online discussion; selection and open online voting on 10
Four out of five people in Kenya rely on agriculture.
There is a virtual “lock-in” to maize—the region’s cultur-
ally and politically valued staple crop—as the dominant
pathway to food security. Amid growing concern with
climate change in Sakai, a semiarid and risk-prone
area, a Kenyan and British research team facilitated a
deliberative process using multicriteria mapping to
identify and explore how farmers might better deal
with the challenges posed by frequent droughts. Farm-
ers identified nine possible pathways, differentiated
according to whether they depended on high or low
levels of external inputs, such as commercially bought
seeds, fertilizers, and irrigation, and the farmers’ respec-
tive focus on maize or on other crops such as sorghum,
cassava, vegetables, or tree fruits. Using the MCM tool,
different groups—including richer and poorer farmers,
crop researchers, policymakers, extension workers, and
executives in commercial seed companies—appraised
these different pathways. The MCM software package
helped stakeholders to identify criteria of their own
choosing; to score each pathway numerically against
all criteria, providing both “optimistic” and “pessimistic”
scores; and to weight the relative importance they
attached to each criterion. The MCM tool then provided
the stakeholders with a graphic representation of their
comparative assessments of all the pathways. This
provided a powerful basis for debate and discussion
about the ways they had scored each pathway and
their underlying reasoning.
The MCM exercise revealed the interests of many
poorer and women farmers, especially, in diversifica-
tion into non-maize crops. But it also revealed farmers’
concerns and uncertainties about their ability to sell dif-
ferent produce, as well as the strong political-economic
interests of agricultural researchers and seed compa-
nies in a continued focus on maize. By making these
interests and ambiguities explicit, the MCM-assisted
deliberation paved the way for better-informed and
more-inclusive dialogue about policy options.
Source: See endnote 6.
Box 22–1. Multicriteria Mapping of agricultural pathways in Dryland Kenya
238 | State of the World 2013
recommendations; a live discussion at Rio Centro that involved further rec-
ommendations from expert panels, public discussion, and a vote; and pre-
sentation of the recommendations to a roundtable of leaders gathered for
the high-level segment of the Rio+20 Conference. Unfortunately, although
more than 63,000 people from 193 countries cast nearly 1.4 million votes,
the ballot was on recommendations that had been watered down through
the Internet-mediated process to an almost meaningless level of general-
ity—and with no compulsion for those leading the intergovernmental dia-
logue to respond.8
Whatever the setting or scale, experience with such approaches to delib-
erating goals suggests a range of lessons and challenges. Politics and power
relations often pervade deliberative processes themselves, making it vital to
attend carefully to who has framed the agenda. Which issues and angles are
included and which are off-limits? Who is represented and who is not? Which
voices dominate the dialogue and which remain marginal? Facilitating delib-
erative dialogues involves negotiating such relations, balancing the needs of
different participants, remaining as open and inclusive as possible, recogniz-
ing conflict and dissent as valid contributions, and encouraging learning.9
There is value in recognizing diversity and making conflicts and trade-offs
explicit rather than acceding to an apparent consensus view that in some cases
might merely represent the interests of the contextually powerful and in oth-
ers may be a lowest common denominator that loses the richness and sharp-
ness of participants’ views. In the Rio Dialogues, for instance, the knowledge
and ideas captured through the online process were both more radical and
more detailed and specific than the handful of final recommendations.
A related challenge concerns whether such deliberation over goals is ac-
tually allowed to shape wider political or policy processes. Despite the inno-
vative opening up of the Rio Dialogues, for example, the intergovernmen-
tal process was not geared up to receive the resulting recommendations. In
some cases governments have convened public participation processes only
to ignore inconvenient outcomes that challenged established policy direc-
tions. Policy processes must be opened up in order to profit from the plural-
ity of views. Involving decisionmakers themselves in deliberative approaches
can help by getting them to engage with other stakeholders.
Mobilizing Citizens. Deliberating goals may play a role in directing and
opening up alternative pathways to sustainability. But especially where po-
litical and economic positions are entrenched and power relations are deep-
ly unequal, this will not be enough. There are many examples of citizens
expressing themselves around sustainability more spontaneously, linked
with action and activism of various kinds. Such active citizen mobilization
suggests further crucial political strategies in directing and opening up path-
ways to sustainability.
Pathways to Sustainability: Building Political Strategies | 239
As many of the Rio People’s Summit events showed, citizen mobiliza-
tion is not always geared to building consensus. It can also involve dissent,
protest, and resistance against state, global, or business interests. Such an-
tagonistic counterpolitics is an important complement to argumentation,
deliberation, and reasoning, and it can be crucial both in getting new issues
and directions onto political agendas and in seeing them through.
For example, water issues in
India have generated many ex-
amples of activism and mobiliza-
tion. Large dams and river-linking
systems have often been under-
taken there by government and
industry, with international back-
ing, as large-scale technological
“solutions” to assumed problems
of water scarcity (and now in re-
sponse to the need for low-carbon
hydroelectric energy systems).
These have long been a focus of
mobilization and protest. Anti-
dam movements such as the Save
the Narmada Movement globally
projected citizens’ concerns about
the loss of forest-based livelihoods
and cultural values threatened by upstream flooding, about whether India’s
Sardar Sarovar Dam would really resolve the downstream water problems
of local farmers and pastoralists, and about the elite industrial and political
interests perceived to drive large dam approaches.10
Linking up with similar movements across the world, the Narmada
mobilization helped to provoke a wave of questioning (for instance, in the
report and guidelines issued by the World Commission on Dams) around
the appropriateness of large-scale engineering technologies compared with
approaches that are better attuned to local ecological and social conditions.
More recently, while the life-and-death struggle for villagers faced with sub-
mergence by the Sardar Sarovar Dam continues, mobilization and protests
around water in India, as elsewhere, have come to focus more on the prob-
lems of large-scale privatization of water resources and “water grabbing”—
another blanket solution to so-called problems of scarcity that threatens to
ride roughshod over the rights and concerns of marginalized people.11
Activism relevant to sustainability can be motivated and held together by
quite diverse concerns that are not always labeled “environmental.” It may
reflect shared struggles for livelihoods and justice, as in the dams example,
Sh
ah
ak
sh
ay
58
The Sardar Sarovar Dam on the Narmada River in India.
240 | State of the World 2013
or struggles for sociocultural autonomy and identity, as in many indigenous
peoples’ movements around the world. Or it may reflect frustration with
the perversities and injustices of dominant political-economic systems, in
which their (un)sustainability is only one concern. The Occupy movement
in many countries following the financial crisis of 2008–09, protesting the
inequity of global and national economic orders, is an example.12
Movements often draw together people of diverse backgrounds and posi-
tions who coalesce around a particular issue and moment. Contemporary
forms of sustainability activism are not directed just at governments and
corporations but also at regional and global arenas and agencies such as the
World Bank and International Monetary Fund and, as the Occupy move-
ment shows, the networks of powerful actors who steer dominant political,
economic, and environmental pathways. Citizen mobilization also involves
a wide range of political styles and tactics—from face-to-face demonstra-
tions, marches, and sit-ins to media campaigns, claims through legal chan-
nels, and the use of online forums and social media. The most successful
mobilizations have often combined tactics in shifting combinations, gearing
them to unfolding political processes.13
While mobilization often starts locally and retains local roots, in this Age
of the Internet it increasingly also links participants in many local sites into
global movements. Some become formalized, such as the international peas-
ant movement La Via Campesina, which links land rights activist groups
across the world and has campaigned successfully for the introduction of
voluntary guidelines to regulate global land deals. Events such as the World
Social Forum or the People’s Summit in Rio offer venues in which local
movements can build their connections and find common ground. Such
“globalization from below” is particularly significant for sustainability is-
sues, which have both global and local manifestations.14
Building Networks. Multiple actors and institutions—governments,
businesses, civil society groupings, and international agencies—have long
been involved in making and implementing sustainability-related policy
and political decisions. Increasingly, state power has diminished and altered
with the rise of public-private partnerships, market actors, and new mecha-
nisms—from financial instruments to green corporate accounting and eco-
system service payments. The disappointing outcomes of Rio’s multilateral
negotiations are intimately linked with these developments. They might be
lamented as a political crisis for sustainability insofar as governments, which
are at least formally accountable downward to their citizens and upward
to agreed global regulations, are losing their power—to be replaced by an
unaccountable world of green wheeling and dealing. But the move to net-
worked governance also opens up new opportunities for political strategies
in resteering and building pathways to sustainability. If it is networks that
Pathways to Sustainability: Building Political Strategies | 241
now steer politics and policy, then sustainability strategies need to first un-
derstand how they operate and then identify and build alternative networks
to influence or counter them.15
For example, interactions among ministries of agriculture, seed compa-
nies, agro-dealers, and NGOs have emerged as central to the shaping of agri-
cultural policies in many African settings. Equally, new networks linking elec-
tricity supply companies with government agencies and consumer groups
have helped steer policy in the energy sectors of many countries. Such net-
works often operate across national borders and across spatial scales; indeed,
multilevel approaches to politics and governance are particularly significant
for environmental problems whose causes and manifestations so often cut
across local and global levels. Multiscale networks have emerged particularly
fast in the climate and energy realm. Climate policy and politics now involve
international institutions; carbon-market arrangements; nongovernmental,
civic, and business groups; national ministries; technical agencies and supply
firms; and formal and informal consumer institutions.16
Where powerful networks are supporting unsustainable pathways, politi-
cal strategies may be geared toward undermining them or influencing them
to bring about change. Likewise, alternative networks may be built up to
counteract dominant ones or support alternative political or policy ideas.
Understanding where the power lies—knowing which actors and institu-
tions are important, understanding the jostling of positions and interests
at global, national, and local levels, and tracing the connections between
them—helps to identify who to target, where, and with what sorts of mes-
sage. Experience points to the importance of informal “shadow networks”
(such as the networks of scientists, activists, and local people who have made
the case for adaptive river basin management in Southeast Asia) and their
coordinated efforts to develop alternatives, build the case for them, and
identify and exploit political opportunities.17
Exploiting Openings. Can alternative ideas and options for pathways to
sustainability, and for generating support and momentum for these through
citizen mobilization and network-building, trigger the required shifts in
political-economic and policy direction? Sometimes current structures and
regimes are too deeply entrenched, too powerful and resilient, for change to
happen just in response to a push from outside. In these circumstances, cri-
sis can create opportunity. Breakages or openings in existing structures can
provide political windows for new ideas and network positions.
Effective leveraging of policy or political change demands an aptitude
for seizing particular policy opportunities as they arise. Such opportunities
may be triggered by acknowledged crises in the management of a particular
issue. To take one example, the Florida Everglades in the United States un-
derwent four transformations in management during the twentieth century
242 | State of the World 2013
as changing conditions triggered successive crises and new management
needs to control unwanted floodwater, sustain the water supply for a grow-
ing population, control the nutrients associated with land-use interactions,
and then begin restoring the ecosystem.18
Opportunities may also be triggered by wider political transitions and
changes, for instance by an election or civil conflict that brings in a new
government. In a number of countries the financial crises since 2008 have
been seen as an opportunity for fundamental challenges to economic or-
ders. Movements and coalitions advocating new approaches to green, ser-
vice, and employment-oriented economies have actively sought to insert
their arguments into this political window. But the opening has been con-
strained by the ability of dominant banking and financial infrastructures
and interests to bounce back and reassert their power. Nor is there any
guarantee that policy reforms and transformations enacted in moments
of opening will necessarily stick. Even legislation can be undone. Atten-
tion therefore also needs to be given to the conditions that make shifts po-
litically durable. This in turn requires strategies and approaches that build
up networks and critical masses of public support once a change has hap-
pened, to ensure that newly established pathways to sustainability continue
to build strength and momentum.
Toward Transformative Change
The political challenge of building pathways to sustainability is urgent. It
involves both realigning current pathways toward a safe and socially just
operating space and opening up sustainability politics to facilitate debate
and negotiation. Without such an opening up, sustainability politics and
policies risk imposing blanket targets and “solutions” that do not fit real,
diverse ecological and social contexts, and over time they will simply fail or
provoke resistance.
State-based and multilateral politics still have key roles to play in negoti-
ating pathways to sustainability, but they need to be reinforced and comple-
mented by the political strategies just described of deliberation, citizen mo-
bilization, network-building, and exploitation of political openings. Each
of these clusters of strategies transcends distinctions between reformist and
radical approaches. Identifying and pursuing alternative pathways to sus-
tainability will involve both approaches in different measures and combina-
tions, depending on the issue and context.
These strategies also connect people and places across local, national,
and global scales, blurring distinctions between global and grassroots ac-
tion. Increasingly, sustainability politics must connect bottom-up with top-
down and be concerned not just with the allocation of material resources,
ecological space, status, and authority but also with who defines the future
Pathways to Sustainability: Building Political Strategies | 243
and what perspectives and experiences matter. Opening up sustainability
is about cultivating a wider breadth of knowledge and experience to define
goals and appropriate ways of reaching them, enabling the diversity that is
required to respect different ecological and social contexts and to keep op-
tions open in the face of the unexpected.
Political contexts also matter. Political histories, cultures, and styles of
decisionmaking vary between nations, regions, and localities and around
particular issues—shaping which political strategies and combinations are
feasible and desirable. A diversity of strategies and styles will therefore be
needed, adapted to issues and settings, from within the repertoire laid out
here of deliberating goals, mobilizing citizens, building networks, and ex-
ploiting openings. With these strategic options, we will be better equipped
to meet the major political challenge of building a future we can all want,
a future that keeps humanity within a safe and just operating space while
striving for inclusive processes that recognize the diverse sustainable futures
that people do not just want but need.
In one of the most iconic ads of the twentieth century, a Native American
(actually, it was an Italian dressed up as a Native American) canoes through
a river strewn with trash. He disembarks and walks along the shore as the
passenger in a car driving past throws a bag of litter out the window. As the
camera zooms in to a single tear rolling down his cheek, the narrator an-
nounces, “People start pollution. People can stop it.”1
This 1971 ad, just a year after the first national Earth Day celebration, had
a huge impact on a generation awakening to environmental concerns. Chil-
dren and young adults watched it over and over, shared the faux-Indian’s
grief, and vowed to make changes in their individual lives to stop pollution.
That response was exactly what the ad’s creators hoped for: individual ac-
tion. For the ad was produced not by a campaign to protect the environment
but by a campaign to protect the garbage-makers themselves.
In 1953, a number of companies involved in making and selling dispos-
able beverage containers created a front group that they maintain to this day,
called Keep America Beautiful (KAB). Since the beginning, KAB has worked
diligently to ensure that waste was seen as a problem solved by improved in-
dividual responsibility, not stricter regulations or bottle bills. It even coined
the term “litterbug” to identify the culprit—individuals. By spreading slo-
gans like “people start pollution, people can stop it,” KAB effectively shifted
attention away from those who design, produce, market, and profit from all
those single-use disposable bottles and cans that were ending up in rivers
and on roadsides. As part of this effort, KAB created the infamous “crying
Indian” ad against litter.2
It worked. Over the last few decades, the theme of the individual’s role
in wrecking the environment, and the individual’s responsibility in fixing
it, has only grown stronger—driven not just by KAB but by hundreds of
businesses, by the government, even by well-meaning individuals and or-
ganizations. Today, lists of “10 simple things you can do to save the envi-
Annie Leonard is the host
and author of the Internet film
and book, The Story of Stuff,
and codirector of The Story of
Stuff Project.
www.sustainabilitypossible.org
c h a p t e r 2 3
Moving from Individual Change
to Societal Change
Annie Leonard
Worldwatch Institute, State of the World 2013: Is Sustainability Still Possible?,
DOI 10.5822/ 978-1-61091-458-1_23, © 2013 by Worldwatch Institute
244
Moving from Individual Change to Societal Change | 245
ronment” abound. The Lazy Environmentalist website will send you regular
emails with tips on greening your shopping and household maintenance,
implying that we really can save the environment without even breaking a
sweat. Recyclebank, which is sponsored by Coca-Cola, rewards individuals
for increasing their use and recycling of single-use beverage containers and
other packaging. Participants who throw more single-use containers into
the recycling bin are rewarded with more points—points that can be used
to go shopping.3
Picking up litter, carrying reusable bags to the store, biking instead of
driving—all these are good things to do and there are many reasons to do
them. They demonstrate our concern to those around us, hopefully pro-
viding inspiration and social proof for friends and neighbors to follow our
lead. Greening our small daily acts brings into alignment our values and our
actions, which feels good. As political science professor Michael Maniates
says, “Small, everyday acts of green consumption are important moments of
‘mindful living’: they serve as daily reminders of our values, and of the larger
struggles before us. But these individual actions are puny when compared
to the challenges before us, and can’t achieve the kind of change we desper-
ately need today.” As explained in The Story of Change, the latest Internet
film by The Story of Stuff Project, these small actions are a fine place to start.
But they are a terrible place to stop.4
The Behavior-Impact Gap
Even if we could convince everyone to make all the adjustments advocated
by the Lazy Environmentalist or the “10 simple things” lists, it simply would
not significantly change our environmental trajectory—which is headed
toward an ecological cliff. Maria Csutora of Corvins University in Buda-
pest has studied the gap between pro-environment attitudes and behaviors
and actual environmental impacts, a problem she calls the Behavior-Impact
Gap, or BIG, problem. (See Figure 23–1.) The BIG problem occurs when
green-oriented behavior change is adopted with the expectation of making
change, but little or no positive environmental impact follows.5
Csutora explains that the “BIG problem means that even when consum-
ers act in an environmentally aware manner, their carbon footprint or eco-
logical footprint may improve only slightly, if at all. Wishful thinking about
prospective gains from pro-environmental behavior is common, which is
actually more a policy-making problem than a consumer behavior prob-
lem.” The result, in Csutora’s words, is that “environmental actions may
serve as green means for relieving our guilty ecological consciences without
actually or genuinely reducing impacts.”6
There are many theories as to why the BIG problem exists. Some scien-
tists attribute the lack of meaningful impact of all these green activities to
246 | State of the World 2013
the rebound effect: our tendency to
increase our use of more-efficient
appliances. The most common ex-
ample of this is the driver who gets
a new hybrid car, doubling his gas
mileage, but then ends up doubling
the miles driven in part because
driving is relatively cheaper, can-
celling out the benefit. Or the ur-
ban dweller who, able to live a car-
free lifestyle, uses the thousands of
dollars she saves each year from not
owning a car to take an exotic far-
off vacation, burning more carbon
in one week than she would have in
an entire year of driving.
Others point out that individu-
als may think they are engaging in
pro-environment behavior, such
as buying shampoo with the terms
“natural” or “organic” on the label, when in reality the products they buy do
not differ in environmental impacts from conventional products. Or people
may decrease one environmentally destructive behavior with good inten-
tions, only to offset the gains by increasing a different and more destructive
activity. An example of this is the individual who decreases meat consump-
tion out of environmental concern, only to then increase consumption of
imported nuts that may have a greater carbon footprint than local meat.
Unfortunately, even if we overcome the rebound effect, if we really do
decrease our driving, stop littering, and refuse plastic carry bags—which
are all good things to do—the broader impacts are still negligible, since
day-to-day individual actions do not contribute the bulk of today’s envi-
ronmental harm.
Take garbage. Many conscientious householders are going to extremes
to reduce their household garbage generation. A number of “Zero Waste”
families have been profiled in the popular press after reducing their annual
household garbage production to a single bag.7
Reducing waste in our daily lives is surely a good thing to do. Recycling
reduces household waste sent to landfills and incinerators and creates jobs.
The catch is that the garbage coming out of U.S. households accounts for
less than 3 percent of the country’s total waste. (See Figure 23–2.) If we
focus the bulk of our attention on reducing waste in our kitchens, we miss
the much larger potential to promote reducing waste in our industries and
Th
e
le
ve
l o
f e
co
lo
gi
ca
l i
m
pa
ct
s
Source: Csutora
Figure 23–1. The Behavior-Impact Gap (BIG) Problem
The observed level of pro-environmental behavior
Observed level
of impacts
Behavior-
Impact-Gap
Expected level
of impacts
Contextual
factors
Interfering
behavior
Moving from Individual Change to Societal Change | 247
businesses—where it is truly needed. And if someone really wants to work
on reducing household waste, civic organizing to get a mandatory curbside
recycling and composting program is a far more effective way to increase re-
cycling and reduce waste than trying to maintain an eco-perfect household.
But this focus on individual behavior is exactly where the companies behind
Keep America Beautiful hoped to channel public concern about waste.8
Framing environmental deterioration as the result of poor individual
choices—littering, leaving the lights on when we leave a room, failing to car-
pool—not only distracts us from identifying and demanding change from
the real drivers of environmental decline. It also removes these issues from
the political realm to the personal, implying that the solution is in our per-
sonal choices rather than in better policies, business practices, and structural
context. Environmental decline is framed as the result of an epidemic of
bad individual choices rather than of an economic, regulatory, and physical
infrastructure that facilitates environmentally destructive activities over en-
vironmentally restorative ones. And the solution, then, is to perfect our own
day-to-day choices rather than build political power to change the context,
making environmentally beneficial actions the new default.
Describing today’s environmental problems and solutions as individual is-
sues also has a disempowering effect, leaving people to feel that their greatest
power lies in perfecting their daily choices. Traditionally, the main strategies
used to influence individual choice on environmental issues have focused
on providing information and persuasion rather than working together to
change the context in which the choices are made. As University of Califor-
Figure 23–2. Source of U.S. Waste
Source: Leonard, based on Makower
248 | State of the World 2013
nia at Santa Cruz sociology professor Andrew Szasz explains, this focus on
changing individual behavior in response to environmental concerns is
a strange, new, mutant form of environmentalism. There is awareness
of hazard, a feeling of vulnerability, of being at risk. That feeling, how-
ever, does not lead to political action aimed at reducing the amounts
or the variety of toxics present in the environment. It leads, instead to
individualized acts of self-protection, to just trying to keep those con-
taminants out of one’s body. And that is not irrational if one feels that
there is nothing to be done, that conditions will not change, cannot be
changed. I think, therefore, that we can describe this as a resigned or
fatalistic expression of environmental consciousness.9
Making Change—Past, Present, and Future
If perfecting our everyday individual choices is not the answer to creating a
sustainable society, what is? Clearly, much needs to change beyond the level
of our individual actions. Society-wide, we need to implement new tech-
nologies, cultural norms, infrastructure, policies, and laws. Many of these
already exist, so the problem is less about inventing new ways to do things
than about building the political power to demand them.
Consider some previous movements for major social change: in the
United States, the civil rights and United Farm Workers of America move-
ments, as well as national-level environmental victories of the 1970s, and
internationally the South African anti-apartheid movement and the Indian
Independence Movement. In each case organizers did appeal to the public to
change their daily actions. Throughout the civil rights movement, support-
ers were asked to patronize black-owned businesses and avoid shopping at
segregated ones. Millions heeded Cesar Chavez’s call to boycott California
grapes in protest of farmworker conditions. During the 1970s, in the wake of
Silent Spring and the first Earth Day, people were asked to choose pesticide-
free produce and to save newspapers for recycling. Around the world, op-
ponents of South Africa’s apartheid system boycotted companies invested
in that racist regime. And most people have heard of Mahatma Gandhi’s
famous pleas to buy Indian-made swadeshi goods rather than imported
British ones.
But the organizers in each of these movements did not stop with pleas
for individuals to make different shopping choices. They did not argue that
individual people cause segregation or British colonialism and that different
individual behaviors can stop these wrongs. They shared a compelling vi-
sion of how things could be better, they worked together as engaged citizens,
and they changed the rules of the game. The calls for changes in individual
behavior were tactical elements within broader political campaigns—cam-
paigns that engaged people as citizens working together, using the range
Moving from Individual Change to Societal Change | 249
of tools available to them, including protesting, lobbying, legal action, eco-
nomic sanctions, creating alternatives, and civil disobedience.
Integrated into broader political campaigns, calls to alter a person’s in-
dividual choices can be used to educate and recruit supporters and to dem-
onstrate commitment—all good tactical steps toward real victories. But too
many of today’s “green living” advocates are missing the broader political
strategies that would enable the small acts to be more than just symbolic,
feel-good activities.
A vigorous debate is currently under way about whether greening our
daily individual acts leads people to the kind of deeper civic engagement
that makes meaningful change or instead lulls them into a false sense of
security and accomplishment. In other words, are these individual acts “on-
ramps” to greater engagement, or are they “dead ends”?10
This debate has existed as long as campaigners have been extolling in-
dividuals to get involved in working for change. In the early nineteenth-
century abolitionist movement, for example, “Free Produce” activists called
on people to go out of their way to avoid purchasing goods made with slave
labor. While the Free Produce approach was initially welcome in the broader
campaign to end slavery, a growing number of abolitionists began question-
ing it as ineffective and distracting from the political work, which promised
greater results. Abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison argued that Free Pro-
duce advocates were “so occupied by abstinence as to neglect THE GREAT
MEANS of abolishing slavery.”11
In his history of consumer activism in America, Buying Power, Lawrence
Glickman explains that Garrison felt the Free Produce movement was a
dead end because shoppers had “‘a pretext to do nothing more for the slave
because they do so much’ in the exhausting efforts to find non-slave-made
goods and the uncomfortable job of wearing and eating them. In other
words, even if it were possible to divest oneself of all slave-made goods, the
quest for what one free produce advocate called ‘clean hands’ diverted en-
ergy from the antislavery struggle by shifting the focus to what amounted to
a selfish obsession with personal morality.”12
Academics and activists on both sides of this debate have amassed stud-
ies documenting that small acts hasten or distract from greater engagement.
It seems that the most honest answer is that it depends. Some people start
with separating waste for recycling and move on to campaign for their lo-
cal government to implement curbside recycling programs and to pressure
companies to make products more recyclable. Others start recycling, and
then stop worrying about waste—even increase the waste they produce—
comforted by the fact that they can now put more in the recycling bin and
are even rewarded for doing so if they live in a community partnering with
Recyclebank. Rather than get stuck in this on-ramp versus dead-end debate,
250 | State of the World 2013
people concerned about transitioning to a sustainable society need to clearly
and consistently link calls for individual action to bigger visions and bolder
campaigns to ensure the individual first steps become on-ramps to making
meaningful change.13
Making Broader Change
While making change in our kitchens may be easy, figuring out how to make
change in larger communities and in broader societies is less so. The ques-
tion ultimately revolves around what it takes to bring about change. Look-
ing back over case studies where change has happened, it seems that change
almost always involves at least three things.
First, there is a big idea of how things could be better. To move people
beyond the easy green actions, we need to put forward an inspiring, mor-
ally compelling, powerful, and inviting vision comparable to that in trans-
formative social movements of the past—compelling enough that people
are eager to work long and hard to achieve it, because that is what it is go-
ing to take. Fortunately, we have that: Let’s build a new economy that puts
people and the planet first. Let’s aim for nothing less than healthy, happy
communities and a clean and thriving environment. Let’s ensure that eco-
nomic activity serves the goals of public health and well-being, environ-
mental sustainability, and social justice rather than undermining them in
the name of growth and profit.
Second, there needs to be a commitment to move beyond individual ac-
tions. Once we have a compelling vision, we need to join with others to
build the power necessary to make it real. Building a mass movement strong
enough to achieve the level of change needed is an inherently collective en-
deavor. To do this, we’ve got to reach beyond the traditional environmental
community to create what Vermont Law School professor Gus Speth calls a
“Progressive Fusion”:
Coming together is imperative because all progressive causes face the
same reality. We live and work in a system of political economy that
cares profoundly about profit and growth and about international
power and prestige. It cares about society and the natural world in
which it operates primarily to the extent the law requires. So the pro-
gressive mandate is to inject values of justice, democracy, sustainabil-
ity, and peace into this system. And our best hope for doing this is
a fusion of those concerned about environment, social justice, true
democracy, and peace into one powerful progressive force. We have to
recognize that we are all communities of a shared fate. We will rise or
fall together, so we’d better get together.14
Good old-fashioned organizing basics, combined with new social media
and networking tools, make it easier than ever to connect with others in
Moving from Individual Change to Societal Change | 251
our own neighborhoods or around the world to build that powerful unified
force for change.
And third, action must follow. Right now, high percentages of people—
in most cases a significant majority—support a cleaner environment, safer
products, and a better functioning democracy, but these people are not yet
actively working for change. The missing ingredient is not more information
or more individual eco-perfectionists, it is collective engagement for political
and structural change. Once we have a vision and a commitment to work
together, there are an almost infinite number of ways to take action beyond
the individual level: join or form
an organization, draft legislation,
gather signatures, litigate to stop
a problem and advance a solution,
launch campaigns to get compa-
nies to change their practices, run
for office, write articles and edu-
cational material, invite others to
join, organize protests and parades
to make your opinion visible, en-
gage in nonviolent civil disobedi-
ence, and much, much more.
There are already stellar ex-
amples of coalitions of groups do-
ing just this—tackling a variety of
environmental and social issues,
from chemical pollution to cli-
mate change. The Safer Chemicals,
Healthy Families Coalition in the
United States, for example, includes 440 organizations representing more
than 11 million individuals concerned about toxic chemicals in their homes,
workplaces, and products. Members include parents, health professionals,
advocates for people with learning and developmental disabilities, reproduc-
tive health advocates, environmentalists, community-based organizations,
and businesses from across the nation. Yes, they offer advice on identifying
and avoiding toxin-containing products, but their work focuses on advocacy
campaigns for stronger policies and laws, along with market campaigns to
affect broader shifts in the industry. Campaign director Andy Igrejas ex-
plains: “You can’t shop your way around the problem and you shouldn’t
have to. There is no app for the kind of change we need. The problem is large
and pervasive enough that we need broad changes in policy and by compa-
nies themselves. Consumer action can be a tool in that process—to send a
message to a particular company for example—but it is not a substitute.”15
GAIA members and allies conduct a waste audit at Manila Bay to support their
campaign for better enforcement of Philippine waste policies.
G
ig
ie
C
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AI
A
252 | State of the World 2013
Another example, the international climate change campaign 350
.org, was founded around the idea that individual action is not going to
be enough to solve the climate crisis. It is going to take a movement. The
group’s first day of action in 2009 brought together over 5,200 events in
181 countries, what CNN called “the most widespread day of political ac-
tion in the planet’s history.” Instead of changing lightbulbs, people dove
underwater with banners carrying climate change messages, hung signs off
mountains, biked by the hundreds through their capitols, and found other
creative ways to take action together and make their voices heard. Since
then, 350.org has continued to push the boundaries of traditional environ-
mentalists, from organizing the world’s largest climate art exhibit to getting
more than 1,200 people arrested in front of the White House over several
weeks to protest the Keystone XL pipeline—a 4,300 kilometer (1,700-mile)
fuse to the largest carbon bomb on the planet, the Canadian tar sands. As
350.org founder Bill McKibben says, “First change your politicians, then
worry about your lightbulbs.”16
The Global Alliance for Incinerator Alternatives (GAIA) is a leading cata-
lyst for change in an area where historically most effort has been directed
toward changing individual actions: waste. This global network promotes
Zero Waste by providing its members with advice on setting up composting
and local recycling programs while it simultaneously lobbies governments
around the world to end subsidies for polluting waste incineration and to
adopt ambitious policies to reduce all kinds of waste. According to GAIA
U.S. coordinator Monica Wilson, “Providing tips for reducing waste at the
individual level is important since many of our members come to us eager
to get started right away in their own lives, but we know that real solutions
to waste can’t be achieved at the individual level alone. Ultimately we need
stronger standards and laws, as well as shifts in societal and cultural norms,
to achieve the solutions we know are possible.”17
The good news is that we have everything we need to make big change
in the years ahead. We have model policies and laws. We have innovative
green technologies to help with the transition. We have an informed and
concerned public; millions and millions of people know there is a problem
and want a better future. The only thing we are missing is widespread citizen
action on the issues we already care about. As American author and activist
Alice Walker says, “The most common way people give up their power is
by thinking they don’t have any.” Our real power lies not in perfecting our
ability to choose from items on a limited menu but in deciding what gets on
that menu. Let’s ensure that all the options offered move us closer to sustain-
ability and justice. That is the kind of change we need. And we can only get
it by working together.18
Open in Case of Emergency
In November 2012, the Big Four accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers
released a report that concluded it was too late to hold the future increase in
global average temperatures to just 2 degrees Celsius. “It’s time,” the report
announced, “to prepare for a warmer world.”
The same month, the World Bank released Turn Down the Heat, which
soberly set forth why a 4-degree warmer world must be avoided. Meanwhile,
accounts of myriad emergent calamities were easy to find in the press: the
failure of the Rio+20 talks, “zombie” coral reefs, calls for higher birth rates,
declining Arctic sea ice, an approaching “state shift” in Earth’s biosphere,
and other evidence of strain in natural systems and of human blindness,
ignorance, or denial.
Time to buy an Ecopod?
Clearly, trouble is coming—but there are better responses to it than
stockpiling canned goods and weaponry. In view of humanity’s failures of
foresight and political will to address the array of sustainability problems
ahead, we asked some notable thinkers to ponder what we might do to make
the best of it.
Le
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Open in Case of Emergency | 253
254 | State of the World 2013
A central theme of their answers is “build resilience.” That requires, ac-
cording to Laurie Mazur, diversity, redundancy, modularity, social capital,
agency, inclusiveness, tight feedbacks, and the capacity for innovation. To be-
gin strengthening our resilience, Erik Assadourian urges the construction of
an enduring environmental movement that can engage people and ground
their ethics and behavior in ecological reality. Michael Maniates echoes the
grounding theme in his call for environmental education to stop misleading
and underpreparing students for the challenges ahead: that the coming cri-
ses will galvanize action rather than generate anger, fear, and conflict. Paula
Green stresses the value of community roots and strong social capital, in-
cluding intergroup networks to bridge different communities. Bron Taylor
argues, carefully, for an ecological resistance movement. “Given the urgency
of the situation,” he writes, “extralegal tactics should be on the table, as they
were in earlier causes where great moral urgency was properly felt.”
If the crises do threaten conflict, that risk will be aggravated by a rising
tide of environmental refugees. Michael Renner writes that tens or even hun-
dreds of millions of people are likely to be displaced by 2050, yet money spent
on adaptation measures in developing countries is already inadequate—a
shortfall that must be remedied. Failing that, such migrations will join other
pressures driving us to deploy geoengineering techniques—giant space mir-
rors, carbon-capturing cement—as quick fixes for a disrupted climate. In
reviewing these schemes, Simon Nicholson urges research to continue but
notes that the least of their problems are the technical uncertainties and un-
predictable effects; many are fraught with grave geopolitical risks too.
Governance will figure crucially in our response to the coming “long
emergency,” as David Orr terms it (following James Howard Kunstler).
Brian Martin argues that governance should be flexible, not stiff. That re-
quires participation, high skill levels, robust debate, and mutual respect. If
this sounds like a deepened democracy, Orr agrees: he calls for “a second
democratic revolution” in which we “master the art and science of gover-
nance for a new era.”
If circumstances overtake our best efforts, there may be some comfort in
Pat Murphy and Faith Morgan’s telling of Cuba’s story. Forced to the brink
by the Soviet Union’s collapse, Cuba suffered a period of harsh adjustment
but has scavenged a culture with a small environmental footprint and re-
markably high levels of nonmaterial well-being.
Is it too late? In the concluding essay, science fiction writer Kim Stanley
Robinson says the real question is, How much will we save? “We can see our
present danger, and we can also see our future potential. . . . This is not just
a dream but a responsibility, a project. And things we can do now to start on
this project are all around us, waiting to be taken up and lived.”
—Tom Prugh
In late 2010, a respected research team led by Yale University professor Susan
Clark released a two-part assessment of college and university programs in
environmental studies and science (ESS). The team’s conclusions were hard-
hitting and pointed. Too many ESS programs, they wrote, do too much too
quickly with insufficient clarity of purpose and method. They “suffer from
muddled goals, disciplinary hodge-podge, and an educational smorgas-
bord of course offerings.” At a time when the need for dynamic college and
university programs in environmental science and studies has never been
greater, those who plan and deliver these programs appear to be selling their
students and the planet short.1
Clark’s assessment is the latest in a series of warnings about the incoher-
ence of environment and sustainability programs in higher education. In a
seminal 1998 essay, for example, University of California at Santa Cruz pro-
fessor of environmental studies Michael Soulé and his colleague Daniel Press
lamented a persistent and structural “multidisciplinary illiteracy” among ESS
undergraduates. Even critics of their argument had to admit that at least 30
percent of ESS programs were fragmented and poorly conceived.2
As the planet’s health declines and undergraduate interest in environ-
mental issues soars, concern about the effectiveness of ESS programs will
surely intensify. At first glance, this is welcome. Who, after all, could be in fa-
vor of diffuse goals and multidisciplinary illiteracy around educational pro-
grams so critical to the transition to sustainability? Architects of ESS pro-
grams and professors who work within these programs must redouble their
efforts to clarify the field’s core competencies while implementing curricular
mechanisms that enforce focus and integration. And students should ask
tougher questions about curricular form and focus. Flashy websites, green
buildings, and environmentally responsible campus practices do not neces-
sarily translate into strong ESS programs, regardless of first impressions.
But aspiring students and program architects must also remember that
Michael Maniates is a professor
of environmental science and
political science at Allegheny
College and a visiting professor
of environmental studies at
Oberlin College.
www.sustainabilitypossible.org
c h a p t e r 2 4
Teaching for Turbulence
Michael Maniates
Worldwatch Institute, State of the World 2013: Is Sustainability Still Possible?,
DOI 10.5822/ 978-1-61091-458-1_24, © 2013 by Worldwatch Institute
255
256 | State of the World 2013
the college student of today will graduate into a world that will be singularly
defined by turbulence—a white-water turbulence of climate instability, eco-
logic decline, and attendant economic and political dislocation, with win-
ners, losers, and persistent inequality. Merely sharpening the focus of pro-
grams built for placid waters will not be enough. Now is the time to explore
how current ESS programs undermine student capacity to navigate a turbu-
lent world—and to entertain new curricular features that foster nimbleness
and wisdom in times of crisis.
Patterns of Teaching and Learning
Not long ago, the notion that ESS programs could play a pivotal role in the
transition to sustainability was a distant thought. They were often viewed
on campus as marginal programs, a place where students who could not
succeed in traditional natural-science fields (biology, chemistry, or geology,
for instance) could complete their studies and graduate. On more than a few
campuses, “ES” came to stand for “easy science.”
For a time it looked as if a multidisciplinary assessment of environmen-
tal problems that integrated the social and policy sciences could only occur
outside of ESS. North Carolina State professor Marvin Soroos, a prominent
scholar of environmental politics, spoke for many when he argued, in 1991,
that professors of political science and international relations had best begin
teaching about sustainability if academia harbored any hope of “preparing
students for the historically unprecedented challenges that their generation
will face.” Soroos had no quarrel with the investigatory power of the natural
sciences but, like others, saw a natural-science focus as insufficient to the
demands of sustainability. If ESS would not change, then it would be mar-
ginalized, in part by political science and international relations programs
with their own programs in environmental studies.3
Those days of doubt about ESS programs are long gone, at least in the
United States, which boasts the greatest concentration of such programs.
According to Shirley Vincent, perhaps the nation’s premier authority on
the focus and trajectory of ESS programs, there were some 500 such pro-
grams in the United States in 1990. By 2010, there were 1,200, with 90 per-
cent of them at the undergraduate level. By 2015 that number could easily
expand to 1,400 or more, making ESS one of the fastest-growing fields of
undergraduate study in the country. This explosion in programs has been
matched by an expansion in disciplinary diversity and intellectual focus.
Some ESS programs, notes Vincent, prepare natural scientists capable of
analyzing environmental science problems, while others strive to foster a
deeper understanding of the policy process and environmental citizenship.
Still others focus on training managers in collaborative processes of envi-
ronmental problem solving. Almost all programs strive to imbue their stu-
Teaching for Turbulence | 257
dents with critical thinking and problem-solving skills appropriate to the
challenges ahead.4
Three patterns of teaching and learning emerge from today’s mélange of
programs. The first is a general trend toward urgency and alarm, coupled
with a focus on the inability of prevailing systems of economic account-
ing and political decisionmaking to address looming environmental ills. ESS
courses, and especially introductory courses that summarize the extent of
the human assault on nature, can be jarring. Students quickly learn that the
planet’s health is declining more rapidly and systematically then they might
have imagined. They discover that
the damage often flows from the
very institutions—the market,
pluralist democracy, education—
that we often look to for solutions.
Left unchallenged, this “urgency +
inability” equation can overwhelm
students with a sense of hopeless-
ness and despair and can foster the
expectation that system-jarring
crises are just around the corner.5
To battle this despair and to
create opportunities for interdisci-
plinary integration of course mate-
rial, ESS programs turn to applied
research and hands-on problem
solving. This second pattern of
teaching and learning is perhaps
the most essential feature of ESS. It
is not enough in most programs to simply understand the major environ-
mental problems. Students must critically assess them and carefully evaluate
competing solutions. To this end, program websites and brochures empha-
size the acquisition of problem-solving approaches and research skills.
Required courses focus on environmental problems on campus or in the
community and engage students in community projects and applied re-
search. Campus administrators, sympathetic community groups, and local
political actors are frequently part of the mix so that students can practice
communicating environmental information to disparate groups. Sustain-
ability coordinators responsible for college- or university-wide environ-
mental initiatives chip in by coordinating campus-wide recycling and en-
ergy conservation challenges. The problem-solving focus is typically local,
with the hope that these small-scale interventions will scale up to match
regional, national, and even international challenges.
North Carolina State University students are involved in a joint EPA/NOAA Air
Resources Laboratory project to measure and model ammonia fluxes in forest
and agricultural landscapes.
N
O
AA
P
ho
to
L
ib
ra
ry
258 | State of the World 2013
Indeed, perhaps more than any other higher-education field of study, ESS
understands and justifies itself as a problem-solving discipline. Writing in
2005 to the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, for example, professors Sharon
Hall, Tom Tietenberg, and Stephanie Pfirman, representing Colorado Col-
lege, Colby College, and Barnard College, observed that “service learning
and community-based learning (CBL) courses or experiences are among the
most successful and empowering experiences for ES students during their
time in college.” They noted that these experiences, together with courses
that focus on the local environment, provide “a productive source of in-
spiration for ‘hands on’ student research” while fostering engagement with
interdisciplinary approaches to real-world problem solving. In 2005, this as-
sessment illuminated the best practices of the top ESS programs. Today it
describes the curricular norm in the field.6
It comes as no surprise that ESS students and their mentors are unusually
active—in the lab, the classroom, the library, on campus, and in the com-
munity. Their work is both positive and normative: they seek to understand
the causes of environmental ills, and they strive to implement solutions. By
and large, though, this work occurs without any systematic assessment of
how it fits into a larger mosaic of political power, cultural transformation,
and social change. As Shirley Vincent notes, few programs ask their students
to study competing theories of social change or to critically assess how their
research or work on local projects fit into larger models or ideas about cul-
tural transformation. This is an odd oversight, since ESS students are almost
always asked to think critically about how change happens in natural sys-
tems. But such “systems analysis” rarely spills over into the social sciences, at
least not in any concerted or focused way.7
Why the omission? For Richard Wallace, an environmental studies pro-
fessor at Ursinus College who studies the dynamics of interdisciplinary edu-
cation, the “big tent” approach in ESS is largely at fault. As a field of study
and a guide to problem solving, ESS invites and includes a diversity of disci-
plinary approaches to environmental problem solving. Under this sprawling
canopy, no single notion about how or why social change occurs is priv-
ileged. Students are to glean theories of social change from their courses
outside of ESS and then integrate them during their research and project
work. It is decidedly a do-it-yourself affair. Wallace’s diagnosis enjoys sup-
port from other scholars, including Indiana University professor Matt Auer,
whose analysis of graduate-level ESS programs paints a similar “big tent”
picture of teaching and learning.8
Another explanation, according to analysts like journalist Mark Dowie
and scholars like Wallace, is the strong influence of the natural sciences
on the evolution of ESS. This influence privileges the notion that societies
change naturally and rationally in response to new scientific information.
Teaching for Turbulence | 259
Social change becomes an exercise in finding the facts and electing policy-
makers who will act on the data. It is a straightforward process in need of
no serious interrogation other than reflecting on how natural scientists can
more effectively communicate their findings to policymakers.9
Finally, faculty in ESS programs may shy away from developing courses
that focus on social activism and political change for fear of looking as if
they are training environmental activists rather than environmental sci-
entists and analysts. U.S. environmentalism, notes Dowie, has historically
been a “polite movement,” where offering additional research and compel-
ling facts has been a more comfortable way of promoting change than noisy
activism or social protest. Vermont Law School professor and author Gus
Speth, a pivotal figure in the U.S. environmental movement, makes the same
point in his clarion call to the environmental community to abandon its safe
but largely ineffective reliance on facts, studies, and data to drive political
change and social transformation.10
Disabling Assumptions
Too often, students are left to cobble together their own theories of social
and cultural change amid a backdrop of troubling urgency, looming crisis,
and a focus on research and project-implementation skills. What do they
conclude? This question weighed heavily on Sam Rigotti, an environmental
studies student and researcher at Allegheny College until his graduation in
2010. In a path-breaking study, Rigotti began by observing how “10 Easy
Ways to Save the Planet” lists and similar publications have inundated his
generation. He hypothesized that the lack of sustained analysis of processes
of social change within ESS programs creates a vacuum that the “easy ways
to save the planet” narrative quickly fills: buy green, initiate a few lifestyle
changes, spread the word to others, and wait for the totality of these small
changes to sum into fundamental social change. Rigotti feared that students
who assimilated this “small and easy” view would later come to grips with its
limitations and in frustration fall back on notions from their introductory
classes about the inevitability of crisis.11
Working with faculty and other students at Allegheny, Rigotti conducted
the first national survey that explores these issues. His results, from 437 ran-
domly selected ESS students at 15 colleges and universities, are provoca-
tive. Some three quarters of students surveyed, for example, identified green
consumption and “voting with your dollar” as among the very best strate-
gies for promoting environmentally conscious social change. By contrast,
students thought that supporting or joining environmental interest groups,
pressuring legislators, engaging in electoral politics, and other forms of civic
engagement were too diffuse or decidedly utopian. For these students, the
small and easy theory of social change seemed natural and obvious—and
260 | State of the World 2013
empowering too. Being a meaningful part of social change is as straightfor-
ward and accessible as driving less, recycling more, eating less meat, buying
vegetables at a farmers market, or making a point of purchasing environ-
mentally oriented products.12
The most startling insight from Rigotti’s analysis, however, may be around
the notion of crisis. Seventy percent of students surveyed blamed “poor en-
vironmental values” for our current predicament and pointed to the need
for more education and a compelling crisis to drive a meaningful transition
to sustainability. According to these students, the average American does not
know about environmental problems or knows but does not deeply care. For
more than half the students in the sample, a crisis that will make Americans
care—that will compel them to heed well-trained experts in environmental
problem solving—is something to anticipate and welcome.13
This naive faith in crisis and the dim view of human nature upon which
it rests reflects the literatures to which ESS students are commonly exposed.
Mainstay introductory textbooks, like Environmental Science by G. Tyler
Miller and Scott Spoolman, as well as Daniel Chiras’s text of the same name,
underscore the power of crisis in driving needed change. When explaining
policy change, for instance, Chiras shares former secretary of state Henry
Kissinger’s observation that “in government, the urgent often displaces the
important” to make the case that change occurs only in the face of compel-
ling crisis. Miller and Spoolman are more direct; they simply state that “U.S.
political and cultural systems are slow moving” and that “change happens
slowly” in the absence of crisis.14
In the same vein, the core environmental policy texts in the field, includ-
ing those by Walter Rosenbaum and by Norman Vig and Michael Kraft, at-
tribute the spate of environmental regulation in the 1970s to crisis events
like air pollution alerts in Los Angeles and burning rivers in Ohio. Key in-
tellectual frameworks, finally, underscore the shortsightedness of human
behavior and the inevitability of crisis. ESS students need not go much fur-
ther in their early studies than Garrett Hardin’s famous “The Tragedy of the
Commons” essay to learn that an environmental crisis, driven by human
failing, is both necessary and inevitable.15
The small and easy theory of social change, which promises big change
when large masses of people commit themselves to small acts of personal
sustainability, only amplifies this kind of crisis thinking. This is because so-
cial change does not happen through mass, uncoordinated shifts in lifestyles
or consumption choices: small and easy is attractive, plausible, and dead
wrong. It is the rare social movement that crystalizes and advances because
of the initial mobilization of large majorities of the population, and the en-
vironmental movement is no exception. After all, some people will always
refuse to adopt any lifestyle or consumption change.
Teaching for Turbulence | 261
And in the realm of environmental action, the proportion of the reluctant
remains consistently large, despite decades of aggressive environmental edu-
cation and untold millions spent by marketers of green products. More than
80 percent of Americans fail to consistently practice a small suite of environ-
mentally sound behaviors, like reducing their energy use, driving smaller cars,
and buying green products. Almost 25 percent of Americans do not recycle,
often because they cannot be bothered or believe that doing so makes little
difference. More generally, consumer commitment to environmental prac-
tices appears to be waning. Harris
Interactive, which regularly polls
Americans on their environmental
behaviors and attitudes, reports a
decline in overall “green” activities
and concerns in 2012.16
These data and the behaviors
they document generate a predict-
able set of responses among adher-
ents to small and easy. Confronted
by low rates of green consumerism
in the general population, well-
meaning environmentalists ra-
bidly promote green lifestyles with
a heavy dose of guilt and almost
missionary zeal. They offer pro-
nouncements meant to underscore
the importance of unified commit-
ment to environmental aims, like
“If everyone in America used energy-efficient lighting, we could retire 90
average-sized power plants, reducing CO
2
emissions, sulfur oxide, and high-
level nuclear waste.” They offer more and more information on the virtues
of environmental living. And they often heap disdain on those who do not,
for instance, recycle or drive small cars or otherwise live sustainability. When
all this fails, what remains is a natural, logical, altogether understandable
tendency to conclude that people themselves are at fault—they are too self-
ish, too ignorant, too irresponsible—and that, ultimately, only a crisis will
move them.17
Of course, all this is both unproductive and misdirected. A politics of guilt
can never mobilize and inspire. And even if most Americans did suddenly
“green” their lifestyles, underlying processes of production and disposal that
are largely insulated from personal consumption decisions would still drive
the planetary ecosystem toward collapse, albeit just a bit more slowly. This
point is vividly illustrated by the “personal footprint calculator” offered by
Allegheny College students and faculty work with a local farmer on an aqua-
ponics project that raises tilapia and grows lettuce in the same facility.
Bi
ll
O
w
en
262 | State of the World 2013
the highly respected Global Footprint Network. (See Chapter 4.) As the cal-
culator consistently demonstrates, large changes in lifestyle translate into
disappointingly small effects on anyone’s environmental footprint.18
Sam Rigotti’s study was the first of its kind and thus awaits further veri-
fication and refinement. On its face, though, it is both plausible and com-
pelling. It resonates deeply with the experience of many ESS educators who
find their students to be overly enamored with the power of crisis and too
often dismissive of the capacity of Americans to sacrifice for the common
good. The risk here is not that students see crisis on the horizon, for crisis
is surely coming. The danger instead is that ESS graduates increasingly view
crisis as a benevolent force that will rally the public and enhance the power
of environmental problem solvers like themselves. This idea of crisis as a
welcome lubricant in the transition to a sustainable world is a lovely, if un-
promising, notion. Preparing students for turbulence involves making them
aware of less-benign species of crisis and enabling them to react in kind.
The Real Face of Crisis
Early in President Obama’s first term, in the midst of a financial meltdown
in the United States, chief of staff Rahm Emanuel was quoted as saying,
“Emanuel’s Rule One: Never allow a crisis to go to waste. They are oppor-
tunities to do big things.” Emanuel’s theory of crisis reaches back to the six-
teenth century, when Niccolo Machiavelli wrote, in Il Principe, “Never waste
the opportunities offered by a good crisis.”19
Students of environmental issues would undoubtedly agree with Eman-
uel, but in doing so they may have in mind a kind of crisis that author
Rebecca Solnit writes about so eloquently in A Paradise Built in Hell. Di-
sasters, Solnit says, demonstrate “the resilience and generosity of those
around us and their ability to improvise another kind of society. . . .They
demonstrate how deeply most of us desire connection, participation, altru-
ism, and purposefulness.”20
In ways both compelling and persuasive, Solnit profiles five disasters,
ranging from the San Francisco earthquake in 1906 to Hurricane Katrina’s
assault on New Orleans in late summer 2005. She documents striking hero-
ism, ingenuity, and compassion among ordinary people, and she shows
how communities traumatized by crisis self-organize in effective and hu-
mane ways. For Solnit, sudden disaster reveals a generosity, resourcefulness,
and bravery latent within us, ready to be called forth in service of a “new
paradise.” Look closely at disaster-driven crises, she says, and you can see
how a new world might be possible, with all that is necessary already within
each of us.21
A Paradise Built in Hell should be required reading for ESS students,
regardless of their disciplinary orientation. Solnit complicates the dim
Teaching for Turbulence | 263
view of human nature to which many ESS students subscribe and offers
hope of a better world rooted in existing abilities and widely felt yearn-
ings. Read closely, her work suggests that ESS students might best think
of themselves as midwives working to deliver something already present
within society rather than as experts trained to educate the uninformed
and motivate the uninspired.
The difficulty with Solnit’s work, and its notion of “crisis as deliverance,”
lies with the type of crises she documents and that ESS students so com-
monly imagine. They are sudden, cataclysmic events with jarring psycho-
logical and political impact. They bring to the forefront underappreciated
or nascent networks of human connection while, for a time, throwing exist-
ing power structures back on their heels. These sudden disasters, moreover,
expose stark divisions in wealth and power that, so brightly illuminated, are
questioned or rejected, at least for a time.
By contrast, the disasters that ESS graduates will confront are likely to
be slow-motion affairs: gradual and persistent, with moments of upheav-
al punctuating slow decline. Water will grow scarcer, food prices will rise,
coastal cities will periodically flood as increasingly intense storms lash their
shores, droughts will become more commonplace, livelihoods will be dis-
rupted, economies may falter, and inequality will deepen. The threat of these
crises is not so much that they generate catastrophes of unthinkable propor-
tion but rather that they will become the norm, freighted with a deepening
sense of inevitability.
These slow-motion crises risk evoking three dynamics that ESS gradu-
ates are poorly prepared for. One is what environmental analysts Michael
Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus call “insecure affluence”: the growing
sense among a large slice of Americans that their economic position in life
is unstable at best and more likely at imminent risk. As insecure affluence
deepens, Americans may be especially reluctant to accept even the smallest
of material sacrifices, especially if these sacrifices are imposed on them by
elites, a point emphasized by political theorist John Meyer, who observes
that “an environmentalist call to sacrifice” will be resisted “not just for
its paternalistic attitude, but also for its blindness to the lived experience
of sacrifice central to the lives of many.” Alas, too many ESS students are
trained to play the very role of elites who, in one way or another, will make
arguments supporting present sacrifice for future gain. Crisis will be no
friend to these graduates.22
Nor will a politics of anger, which is another likely result of economic
and ecologic upheaval. As former U.S. secretary of labor Robert Reich notes,
prolonged periods of stress and insecurity lead to “an increasing bitterness
and virulence of the nation’s politics” and can quickly morph into “an un-
derlying readiness among average voters to see conspiracies among power-
264 | State of the World 2013
ful elites supposedly plotting against them.” If it is true, as Shellenberger and
Nordhaus assert, that environmentalists naively “hoped that the environ-
mental crisis would bring us together and make us happier,” then Reich and
scholars like historian Richard Hofstadter, who studied paranoia in politics,
or Thomas Edsall, who reflects on American politics under conditions of
scarcity, offer a rude awakening. It is more likely that crisis will generate
widespread anger, fear, conflict, and a deepening paranoia than a spiritual
awakening and ecological reckoning. ESS graduates expecting the latter and
ill-prepared for the former may wonder why their false expectations were
not more thoroughly challenged by their professors.23
Finally, while crisis may provoke suspicion and fear of elites among some
citizens, it is likely to fuel a desire among others for greater government
power and control. In this way, as observed by economic philosopher Robert
Heilbroner in the late 1960s, ecological crisis can bring about a slow slide
to authoritarianism, as people become more willing to trade their freedom
away for the promises of strong leaders who will fix pressing problems. The
danger that Heilbroner highlighted is familiar to Americans worried about
the erosion of civil liberties after 9/11. And Heilbroner’s warnings are not
without empirical support. In her classic study of crisis and dictatorship,
which spurred an entire line of scholarship, sociologist J. O. Hertzler showed
how crisis—often but not always economic—erodes democratic impulses
and structures and produces a consolidation of power friendly to dictatorial
regimes. Studies like these suggest that crisis is inimical to progressive social
causes, environmentalism included.24
Despite these tendencies and dangers, it may yet be possible to follow
Rahm Emanuel’s Rule One. But using the crises to do big things means
seeing them for what they are and training a new generation of college
students to think strategically, rather than wishfully, about the possibilities
that crises present.
A Curriculum for Turbulence
White-water rafting is a growing tourist activity, and young people willing
to serve as raft guides are in high demand. New employees who would steer
rafts down turbulent rivers are educated in the art of “reading” rivers, navi-
gating boats, and coaxing effective and timely paddling from their guests,
who help propel and steer their craft through bumpy waters. White-water
guides-to-be are also trained to anticipate worst-case scenarios: an over-
turned raft, a guest dumped into the water, broken bones, or equipment
failure. It is impossible, of course, to prepare raft guides to handle unan-
ticipated risks and problems—but they can be and are primed to expect the
unknown and to approach it with humility and equanimity.
What might a course of instruction look like for students in ESS pro-
Teaching for Turbulence | 265
grams who will be asked to negotiate a similar kind of turbulence? Five char-
acteristics loom large, especially in light of patterns of existing curricular
deficiencies. (See Box 24–1.)25
First, ESS programs must stay true to their founding passions and intent,
even as they seek to address curricular aimlessness and incoherence. Not
every student must become an expert in processes of social change or prove
capable of thinking creatively about political behavior during prolonged cri-
sis. Nor must every program undergo radical change to effectively teach for
turbulence. The best curricular reforms will be those that achieve the great-
est effect with the least intrusion and that anticipate and prevent student
misperceptions about social change and crisis before they take deep root.
Internationally known climatologist Richard Alley, a
professor at Penn State, writes and performs rock songs
on climate change and does a spirited dance illustrat-
ing how Earth’s orbital variations influence climate.
Humboldt State University in Arcata, California, recently
launched an environmental studies program that
aspires to train students to think creatively about power,
privilege, and social change. And faculty at Wheaton
College in Norton, Massachusetts, pioneered, for a time,
an undergraduate course on the theory and practice of
environmental conflict resolution that used case stud-
ies, community engagement, and scenario building to
prepare students for an increasingly contentious world.
These examples of innovative ESS pedagogy and
curriculum stand out because they remain the excep-
tion rather than the rule. A review of the most promi-
nent ESS programs in the United States reveals that few
programs expose their students in systematic ways to
a range of ideas about how change occurs in political
and cultural systems. Even fewer still put students in
the way of experiences that will help them rigorously
analyze and initiate social change and reflect on how
locally successful initiatives might “scale up” or “network
out.” That is why new programs like that at Humboldt
State University are so exciting.
Likewise, although many ESS programs ask their
students to engage in community projects, almost all
such work occurs in no- or low-conflict situations. These
courses emphasize research skills, data collection, and
communication across disciplinary boundaries—impor-
tant goals, to be sure, but insufficient in the face of
growing social turbulence. Wheaton College’s openness
to courses that bring political conflict and cultural dis-
cord into the mix is laudable and worthy of emulation.
Finally, despite the centrality of the natural sciences
to most environmental programs, there are surpris-
ingly few places in the ESS curriculum where students
explore the changing role of science and scientists in
the struggle for sustainability. Such exploration might
begin with how scientists better communicate their
ideas in politically charged environments and then
extend to deeper questions about the politics of exper-
tise around contentious environmental issues. During
turbulent times, natural scientists and the insight they
generate will be greeted with increasing skepticism and
hostility. The best-trained ESS students, and especially
those with strong natural-science interests, will be
those who have given careful thought to these dynam-
ics, beginning but certainly not ending with Richard
Alley’s playful approach to scientific communication.
Most ESS programs fail to acclimate students to
contentious environments, neglect to analyze the
changing nature of natural-science expertise, and gloss
over processes of social and cultural change. But this is
changing, slowly. ESS programs that consciously train
students for turbulence by filling these gaps are the
promise of the future.
Source: See endnote 25.
Box 24–1. Gaps and Opportunities in environmental Studies
266 | State of the World 2013
Second, early courses in ESS programs might ask students to think criti-
cally and imaginatively about human nature and the nature of crisis, sepa-
rately and together. Instructors could take a page from Rebecca Solnit’s work
and push students to explore the often latent capacity of humans to connect
with and care for one another, to take the long view, and to work in common
for the common good. Even as these introductory courses document grow-
ing environmental threats to human well-being, they might also explore the
conditions under which humans regularly sacrifice for their family, faith,
and community. Ideally, students would leave this course work preoccupied
with how sustainability initiatives could more consistently bring these latent
and noble human capacities to the surface rather than reflecting on how
looming crises will nicely teach selfish and narrow-minded people an im-
portant lesson or two.
An important curricular pivot, of course, is a rigorous course or courses
that interrogate overlapping and competing theories of political and cultural
change. The successful integration of this third curricular element will pro-
duce students whose thinking about social change will transcend the “small
and easy” frame that is so unproductive to enlightened and empowering
action. ESS programs that focus on feedback, thresholds, and dynamics of
change in their natural-science courses must now bring the same level of rig-
orous analysis to their discussion of social and cultural change. To continue
hoping that other departments or students’ own initiative will fill the “theory
of social change” hole in the ESS curriculum is at best wishful thinking. Some
of the most exciting work in ESS over the next few years will revolve around
the design and delivery of such courses.
In their applied and experiential courses, most ESS students engage with
campus and community partners who are broadly sympathetic to their
work. During times of crisis, however, such natural sympathy will be the ex-
ception rather than the norm. To teach for turbulence, ESS programs could
expose students to more-contentious environments and create classroom
moments that foster strategic thinking about managing—and even taking
advantage of—a politics of anger or the anxiety that comes with insecure
affluence. In advancing this fourth curricular element for turbulence, ESS
programs might also consider how to draw on campus resources around
conflict management and resolution.
Finally, teaching for turbulence means providing students with the the-
oretical background and classroom practice to explore how they can best
pursue their passions in rough water. Natural scientists might focus on the
increased politicization of science in a turbulent world and what that may
imply for their own work. Students with a talent for project-based com-
munity work might be engaged in thinking critically about how local-level
initiatives can scale up in ways that address or capitalize on insecure af-
Teaching for Turbulence | 267
fluence or a politics of anger. And ESS majors who see themselves work-
ing as managers or practitioners in organizations of environmental gover-
nance or stewardship could be similarly challenged to analyze the shifting
role and power of organizations during times of political paranoia and a tilt
toward authoritarianism. After all, these three groups of students imagine
themselves as “boundary spanners” who will work at the intersection of the
multiple disciplines and disparate concerns. Their training will be complete
when they can anticipate greater discord at these intersections and react
with strategic balance.
A New Coherence
Ocean Conservation Society executive director Charles Saylan and profes-
sor Daniel Blumstein of the University of California at Los Angeles paint a
dim picture of environmental education in the United States in their recent
book, The Failure of Environmental Education. Despite decades of environ-
mental education, they say, significant change in human behaviors that mat-
ter most are scarce. Indeed, based on behavior, it is difficult to distinguish
students who have participated in environmental education from those who
have not. It is time for a better curriculum, one that moves students to new
ways of thinking and acting. That curriculum, they say, would focus on con-
sumption and overconsumption, underscore the necessity of sacrifice, and
tease apart the dynamics of policy change.26
While their work has generated controversy, in the end Saylan and Blum-
stein probably do not go far enough. The real danger, at least when it comes
to ESS education within colleges and universities, is not the puny effect of
environmental education on behavior. The danger is the impact of this edu-
cation on students’ sense of the possible and of their own role and power
in transforming the world around them. Educational programs that leave
students with an emaciated theory of social change and that fuel a politics of
guilt and crisis do little to foster the creativity and compassion that sustains
personal and collective transformation.
It is time for a new coherence in undergraduate ESS programs—not just
among the hodgepodge of courses that produce multidisciplinary illiteracy
but also within the story that students hear as they move through the cur-
riculum. These students come to understand, with great clarity, that indus-
trial civilization as we know it stands at a precipice of change, where exist-
ing political, economic, cultural, and technological patterns must quickly be
supplanted by new arrangements and habits. But they are rarely presented
with a coherent picture of how to bring about these arrangements or of how
exploring competing processes of social, scientific, and technological change
can illuminate pressure points for change. Instead they are offered, in some-
times intricate detail, the blueprints of a sustainable future— renewable
268 | State of the World 2013
energy, sustainable agriculture, reconfigured cities, and a plentitude econ-
omy—but with little integrated, systematic sense of how to get from here
to there.
In defense of those who teach in and design ESS programs, the path from
here to there is profoundly unclear. But this uncomfortable fact only under-
scores the importance of preparing students for times of turbulence in the
hope that when white water hits, they have both the tools and the vision to
see the route down the river and coax effective and timely paddling from
their fellow rafters. The future, as most people who work or study within
ESS programs know, will not be like the present. Now is the time to carefully
consider how students are best prepared to be thoughtful and anticipatory
agents of change in the tumult to come.
c h a p t e r 2 5
Effective Crisis Governance
Brian Martin
Brian Martin is a professor of
social sciences at the University
of Wollongong, Australia.
www.sustainabilitypossible.org
When a crisis develops, what sort of governance—what sort of system for
running society—is most resilient? Does centralized control give the best
prospect of survival? Or is something more decentralized needed?1
Possible political sources of crisis include military invasion, internal
coups, political paralysis, major corruption, and revolutionary change. Wars
in the past century triggered changes in governance in countries such as
Germany, Japan, and Cambodia. Coups affected dozens of countries, from
Chile to Greece. Revolutions transformed Russia, China, and Iran.
At least as significant are changes enabled by belief systems. The spread
of neoliberalism—based on belief in unfettered markets—has trans-
formed political systems, especially in the United States, the United King-
dom, and other English-speaking countries. Belief in political freedoms
and fair elections has underpinned challenges to repressive regimes in Ser-
bia, Georgia, Ukraine, and elsewhere. Belief in racial equality was behind
the successful struggle against apartheid in South Africa.
Environmental impacts intersect with political and economic systems
and crises in various ways. Disasters with environmental impacts can affect
politics, as when the devastation from the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami en-
couraged the signing of a peace agreement in Indonesia’s war-torn province
of Aceh. Governments can influence responses to crises with environmental
impacts, as when the Burmese government hindered international relief ef-
forts following the devastating 2008 cyclone Nargis. Some types of political
and economic systems are more prone to contributing to environmental
problems, and some systems are better at responding to emerging or full-
blown environmental crises.2
War, which can be considered a type of political crisis, is devastating to
humans and the environment and in fact can be a source of environmental
crisis. Massive refugee movements—themselves a source of political crisis—
can be triggered by war and political repression but also by environmental
Worldwatch Institute, State of the World 2013: Is Sustainability Still Possible?,
DOI 10.5822/ 978-1-61091-458-1_25, © 2013 by Worldwatch Institute
269
270 | State of the World 2013
disasters. Global warming has the potential of creating huge numbers of
“environmental migrants.”3
Resilience is the capacity of a system to respond effectively to assaults
like these on its functioning or very existence. Resilience in the case of com-
munication technology includes the capacity to keep functioning despite
breakdowns or attack: the Internet was originally designed, remember, to
maintain communication in the face of nuclear attack. The resilience of po-
litical systems includes both the survival and the maintenance of formal de-
cisionmaking processes and of associated systems—such as transport, food,
and communication—for maintaining the survival and social functioning
of the population.4
When considering responses to crises, it is useful to distinguish two con-
trasting sorts of governance: stiff and flexible. Stiff governance can be well
suited for a particular task, often for a particular threat. The classic example
is a dictatorship with a command economy, ideally designed for warfare:
central direction can be used to mobilize resources for defense or attack.
Such a system can have great difficulty dealing with other sorts of threats,
however. A command economy cannot innovate easily because the initiative
of the populace is suppressed, which means that retooling for a different
sort of threat—economic competition, for instance, or a shortage of liquid
fuels—is more difficult.
Flexible governance, in contrast, is based on the capacity to adapt, impro-
vise, and change directions. It may not be ideally designed for any specific
threat, but it is able to deal credibly with a variety of threats. In general,
systems based on participation, high skill levels, robust debate, and mutual
respect are more likely to be flexible.
Command systems might seem to have a greater capacity to respond to a
new type of threat because the people in command can simply direct people
and resources to deal with it. But these systems have several inherent dif-
ficulties in actually doing this. Because relatively few people have an input
into decisionmaking, there is lower capacity to recognize novel threats and
to innovate against them. Subjects—those who are expected to follow or-
ders—are typically less than enthusiastic in obeying. Finally, change can be
threatening to those with power and privilege, so maintaining the relations
of power can become more important than making sure the system survives.
An example of stiff governance is China in the 1950s, with a command
economy driven by political ideology. The Great Leap Forward, launched
in 1957, was an attempt to accelerate economic development. But the result
was a vast famine that killed tens of millions of people and caused mas-
sive destruction of property and damage to the environment. The politi-
cal system was incapable of responding to the catastrophe it created. Had
there been a more flexible, open system in China, with independent media,
Effective Crisis Governance | 271
things might have turned out differently. Countries with a flexible gover-
nance system are far less susceptible to famine because leaders are under
greater pressure to respond to emerging crises. In essence, there is a feedback
mechanism to stimulate political responses to a crisis, preventing cover-up
and making inaction untenable.5
Centralized rule thus can be a threat in itself as well as an obstacle to
responding to other sorts of threats. Fiji was a thriving multicultural democ-
racy when, in 1987, there were two military coups. The result was mobiliza-
tion of racism, emigration of skilled professionals, decline in the economy,
general cultural stagnation, and ongoing political instability.6
Lessons from Civil Resistance
The history of civil resistance against repressive regimes reveals features that
raise the odds of governance systems responding effectively to technologi-
cal or political threats. The power of a mobilized citizenry is dramatically
revealed in popular challenges to autocratic governments through demon-
strations, strikes, boycotts, sit-ins, and other forms of protest, but without
physical violence. This method of struggle is called nonviolent action, civil
resistance, or “people power.” In country after country, repressive rulers have
succumbed to people power, for example in the Philippines in 1986, Eastern
Europe in 1989, and Egypt in 2011. In these dramatic episodes, large num-
bers of people protested by using rallies, strikes, boycotts, and a host of other
techniques, usually with little or no violence by the protesters.7
Erica Chenoweth and Maria J. Stephan, in a path-breaking study of peo-
ple-power movements between 1900 and 2006, showed that regime change
and anti-occupation nonviolent movements are more likely to be successful
than armed movements in achieving their goals when facing similarly re-
pressive opponents. (See Table 25–1.) They also found that success is more
likely when large numbers of people are mobilized and when protesters
are tactically and strategically innovative. When more people are actively
involved, there is a greater capacity to try out creative ideas for resistance,
which are needed to counter new repressive moves by the government.
Greater participation needs to be accompanied by an ethos of inclusiveness,
so that diverse groups can support the common cause. Groups with skills in
many areas—including communication, organization, finance, languages,
persuasion, and psychology—are valuable to help the movement operate
effectively and survive attacks. If, for example, the movement depends on a
single sector, such as students, it is easier for the government to repress or
co-opt it. Wider participation provides a greater capacity for learning. This
also provides a better basis for a stable, free society if the movement is suc-
cessful in toppling a ruler.8
People power can be used to resist coups, as happened in Germany in
272 | State of the World 2013
1920, Algeria in 1961, and the Soviet Union in 1991. In each case, the key was
the willingness of large numbers of people to take action—without using
violence. In contrast, armed resistance to coups easily degenerates into civil
war, which is a different sort of crisis, and a highly damaging one.9
Flexible Governance
Flexible governance means that there are methods for making and imple-
menting decisions affecting entire communities in ways that enable rapid
adaptation to new situations. This form of governance virtually requires
flexible technological systems, which typically are modular, adaptable, and
low cost.
In the energy sector, the best example of a rigid, inflexible technology is
nuclear power, with its high capital cost, long lead times for construction,
large unit sizes, and potential for causing environmental catastrophe through
reactor accidents, terrorist attacks, or the proliferation of nuclear weapons.
Because of its scale and potential risk, nuclear power requires special security
measures, which in turn limit the possibility for citizen participation. Intro-
duction of a “plutonium economy” based on the nuclear fuel cycle would
drastically limit flexibility in both energy systems and governance.10
Small-scale renewable energy systems are better matched to flexible gov-
ernance. Community-level solar and wind systems are relatively low cost,
quick to construct, and small in scale, with only a small potential for en-
vironmental risk: for example, terrorists are unlikely to attack them. These
features mean that communities are less locked-in to the technology and,
just as important, that corporate and government commitments to the sys-
tem are less entrenched.11
Most technologies are intermediate in scale between nuclear power and
table 25–1. Outcomes of Violent and Nonviolent campaigns aimed at regime change,
anti-occupation, or Secession, 1900–2006
Outcome
Regime Change Anti-occupation Secession
Violent
(111
campaigns)
Nonviolent
(81
campaigns)
Violent
(59
campaigns)
Nonviolent
(17
campaigns)
Violent
(41
campaigns)
Nonviolent
(4
campaigns)
(percent)
Success 27 59 36 35 10 0
Limited success 12 24 10 41 22 0
Failure 61 17 54 24 68 100
Source: See endnote 8.
Effective Crisis Governance | 273
a solar hot water heater, but the same sort of analysis applies: technologies
with lower unit costs and lower potential risks to health and the environ-
ment are usually also more amenable to citizen control. In short, flexible
technological systems are well suited to flexible governance.
The experience of people power against repression provides a template
for the sort of governance most likely to be effective in crises. There are four
key features:
• Participation of significant numbers of people. Significant participation is es-
sential for rapidly responding to crises. People’s commitment comes from
being involved in decisionmaking and feeling part of the solution. Genu-
ine participation is greatest when power is shared. Governance with exten-
sive participation goes under various names, including participatory de-
mocracy, self-management, workers’ control, and neighborhood power.12
• Resources, including food, transport, and especially communication. Resourc-
es, including material and technological resources, need to be available and
ready. A society needs to have the capacity to deal with future contingen-
cies rather than putting all its resources into one development path.
• Openness, tolerance, and inclusion, with involvement of many different sec-
tors of the population. Openness, tolerance, and inclusion are necessary to
be able to mobilize the entire society to meet the challenge. When sig-
nificant groups are opposed to action, this can paralyze efforts. The gov-
ernance form most suited to inclusion is consensus, sometimes called uni-
tary democracy, in contrast to representative government, which can be
called adversary democracy. But just as electoral systems require innovation
and modification to address problems such as voting fraud, consensus sys-
tems require experience, testing, and innovation to address problems such
as entrenched resistance to a near-unanimous agreement. There is now
considerable experience with consensus-building processes.13
• Learning skills for struggle and developing strategic acumen. Skills and stra-
tegic acumen are needed to be effective in responding to threats intelli-
gently rather than in an instinctive, unreflective way. Strategic insight is
most likely to flourish in a form of governance that gives considerable au-
tonomy to smaller units, while enabling communication between them so
that insights can be shared, tested, and applied.
These four features are mutually supportive. Widespread participation is
necessary for collective change or response, but it needs to be coordinated,
hence the need for communication infrastructure and skills. Strategy can
be more adaptable when there is openness to participation by a wide di-
versity of individuals with different perspectives and recognition that their
perspectives and ideas may be worthwhile.
Openness, tolerance, and inclusion include forging links with sectors of
the population often seen to be part of the problem. In a military coup, sol-
274 | State of the World 2013
diers are at the heart of the threat. People-power resistance requires winning
over some of the soldiers, weakening their resolve or convincing them to
join the opposition. Armed resistance is counterproductive for this purpose
when it stimulates unity within the regime, as often occurs. By analogy, in
dealing with other sorts of threats, tactics need to be chosen that win over
some people normally seen as being on the “other side,” whether corporate
elites, government personnel, or security forces.14
Adding these elements together, the form of governance most promis-
ing for responding to threats will have significant citizen participation in
decisionmaking, will allocate ample resources for communication and con-
tingencies, will include diverse groups in the population, and will allow de-
centralized yet coordinated action.
Transforming Governance
Rather than try to describe this flexible form of governance—which can
quickly degenerate into arguments about preferred models—it is useful to
look at methods for moving toward these four elements. In other words,
rather than fixating on the desirable end state, which might not be knowable
anyway, it is worth turning each of the elements of flexible governance into
methods for transforming governance.
Significant Participation. Initiatives to foster participation can be taken
at all levels. Within local groups—including formal associations from sports
clubs to churches, and informal groups—leaders and members can foster
greater participation. Local governments can introduce various forms of
citizen participation. Companies can promote worker participation.
One of the most promising initiatives is the movement for “deliberative
democracy,” which includes experiments in direct decisionmaking by citi-
zens on important policy issues. An example of this is inviting a randomly
selected group of 12–25 citizens—called planning cells or citizens’ juries—to
address a policy issue over several days by reading materials, hearing from
experts and partisans, and developing recommendations, all under the guid-
ance of neutral facilitators. Hundreds of such exercises have been held in
various countries, including Australia, the United Kingdom, Germany, and
the United States. Many of these deliberative democracy initiatives are tak-
ing place below the radar of mainstream politics and the mass media, so few
people realize how much of this activity is occurring.15
In crises, opportunities can exist for dramatically increased participa-
tion. Historically, there are numerous examples of popular participation in
crisis situations, such as in Paris in 1871, Russia in 1917, Spain in the late
1930s, and France in 1968. These revolutions of popular control were all
suppressed by the state, but they do show the possibility for citizens to reor-
ganize decisionmaking at short notice.16
Effective Crisis Governance | 275
In contrast, after the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991 there was a
rapid transition to predatory capitalism involving massive corruption: pop-
ular mobilization was restricted to resisting a coup rather than creating a
participatory alternative. This suggests the importance of local initiatives
that build the foundation for a genuinely participatory alternative.17
In Argentina, following the 1999 economic collapse and the freezing of
bank assets in December 2001, in a surge of local initiatives workers took
over failed businesses, and communities made decisions in neighborhood
assemblies. The Argentine initiatives have succeeded more than some pre-
vious ones, perhaps because there was less of an attempt
to take over the state and more emphasis on creating a
living alternative.18
Environmental movements can contribute to trans-
forming governance through the way they operate. When
movements are made up of many local groups that foster
participation—for example, through consensus decision-
making—and are not dominated by central offices and
paid staff, they are ideally poised to react quickly and cre-
atively to existing and new crises. They also provide a mod-
el of flexible governance.
Resources for Struggle. Promoting the development of
resources for any struggle is an ongoing process in which
many groups are involved. The movement for appropriate
technology—typically small-scale, low-cost, locally pro-
duced, and locally managed technology for energy, agricul-
ture, transport, and other sectors—is a model for building
resources that support resilient governance. Communities
using appropriate technology are better able to survive in
the face of economic or physical-system collapse: they can
rely on their own resources without excessive dependence
on imports or specialist skills.19
The Transition Towns movement, motivated by preparation for a loom-
ing shortage of cheap liquid fuels and the impacts of climate change, com-
bines local participation in planning with the promotion of community
resilience, including local production of food, energy, and housing. In this
model, resources for struggle are developed as part of the struggle itself.20
In the communication sector, the key is the ability to maintain commu-
nication in a crisis. The technology for network communication is becom-
ing ever-more developed with the Internet, Web 2.0, and social media. These
provide powerful tools for rapidly and flexibly responding to emergencies,
and when people gain practice in coordinating responses, this has relevance
for both political and environmental crises.
A demonstration garden in the Transition Town
Linlithgow, Scotland.
ye
llo
w
b
oo
k
276 | State of the World 2013
Working against this ability are governments and corporations that seek
to limit communication freedom, for example through censorship, surveil-
lance, and controls over innovation in the guise of intellectual property. If
governments can shut down or restrict the Internet for political purposes—
as happened in Egypt in 2011, among other places—and use digital surveil-
lance techniques to track dissidents, the ability and willingness of citizens
to coordinate against threats, whether political or environmental, will be
reduced. The struggle for free communication can be considered an essen-
tial part of the struggle for more flexible governance.21
Openness, Tolerance, and Inclusion. Movements that polarize society,
turning some groups into enemies, contribute to stiff governance. U.S.
foreign and domestic policies have done this. Foreign military interven-
tions such as in Afghanistan and Iraq, with civilian deaths as “collateral
damage,” create enmity and enemies and then, when foreign groups re-
taliate, become justifications for further interventions. The domestic re-
sponse to 9/11, which involved labeling terrorists as enemies to be de-
stroyed, did little to include a range of groups in a struggle against the
roots of terrorism. In this context, efforts to promote tolerance and inclu-
sion—nationally and internationally—are important in moving toward
flexible governance.22
One of the biggest challenges ahead is growing economic inequality, lead-
ing to disenfranchisement of all but the wealthy. Responding to economic,
resource, or political crises will be much more difficult in societies divided
into “haves” and “have-nots.” This suggests that movements for greater eco-
nomic equality can, as a side effect, help build resilience. The Occupy Move-
ment has put the issue of inequality on the popular and political agenda, but
it remains to be seen if this can slow or reverse the continuing increase in
inequality stimulated by corporate globalization.
Pervasive corruption is a major obstacle to good governance. One of
the most powerful tools against corruption is nonviolent action; some
popular challenges to repressive regimes, such as in Egypt in 2011, have
been stimulated by opposition to high-level corruption. Political and eco-
nomic systems that permit fair participation by a wide range of groups
rather than siphoning spoils to the ruling elite are more likely to lead to
prosperity. Inclusion thus is a key to greater commitment in addressing
social problems.23
Learning Skills for Struggle and Developing Strategic Acumen. Nu-
merous initiatives and movements around the world foster greater skills
for satisfying human needs, from agriculture to software development.
A prime example is the open source movement, building software and
other products that draw on contributions from numerous volunteers.
Another example is the ever-increasing information and tools for learn-
Effective Crisis Governance | 277
ing available on the Internet, enabling learning outside of institutions.
Community renewable-energy projects foster learning of practical skills;
the Danish community wind-power movement in the 1970s did this
while sparking development of what is now a major industry. Also rel-
evant are self-help groups—for example, addressing particular diseases
or experiences ranging from breast cancer to having a family member in
prison. There are a growing number of activist handbooks and activist
training programs.24
As more and more people increase their education (formal and informal)
and engage in civic initiatives (face-to-face or online), skills and strategic
flexibility increase. Especially relevant for this are initiatives to provide expe-
rience in governance, such as the participatory budgeting pioneered in cities
in Brazil. In a typical process of participatory budgeting, multiple citizen
assemblies discuss priorities, and then a participatory budget council, with
representatives from the assemblies, deliberates on priorities, negotiating
between the assemblies and the city administration.25
In a Crisis
International governance is particularly unsuited for dealing with crises.
The United Nations might give the appearance of having a centralized re-
sponse capability, but in reality it is the tool of powerful governments that
have their own agendas. There is little citizen participation and little capac-
ity for skill development. The result is a form of symbolic politics that gives
only the illusion of authority and response capacity.26
In Rwanda in 1994, for example, when mass killings commenced, west-
ern governments pulled out their citizens, thereby removing sources of in-
formation on and witnesses to human rights violations. The United Na-
tions Security Council dithered and then withdrew most U.N. peacekeepers.
In this case, international governments utterly failed to avert or confront a
genocide in which over half a million people were killed.27
Rapidly developing crises are obvious and hence are more likely to stimu-
late responses. Far more challenging are slow-moving crises, which escape
attention but can cause just as much damage. An example is the oil spill in
Guadalupe Dunes on the central Californian coast, which released as much
oil as in the famous 1989 Exxon Valdez spill but which is virtually unknown.
Because it happened more slowly, over decades, people in the region accom-
modated the oil releases, psychologically and socially.28
Climate change is the most prominent slow-moving crisis. As in the case
of war and genocide, many governments and international bodies have pro-
vided only symbolic gestures. By far the most effective response arguably has
come from grassroots groups and local governments, indicating the impor-
tance of participation in dealing with environmental crises.
278 | State of the World 2013
Moving toward Flexible Governance
Governance is often seen as a comprehensive package: an entire system, op-
erating according to a consistent set of principles, whether it be dictatorship,
representative government, or a modern-day plutocracy in which the rich
rule via captive politicians. Any such pure system of governance would be
suited for one set of conditions but be vulnerable to sudden changes. How-
ever, actual systems in the world today are mixed. The United States, for
example, could be considered a combination of representative government,
plutocracy, a security state, and pockets of participatory democracy ranging
from cooperatives to the free-software movement. Governance in practice
contains rigidities, capacities, and possibilities.
In the face of threats and crises—political, economic, and resource-
based—the most promising sort of governance is flexible, able to draw on
widespread participation and an abundance of human and material re-
sources. The inclusion of different groups provides a greater diversity of
knowledge and experience for meeting challenges. Whether or not there is
an ideal system with all these characteristics, it is possible to move in the
direction of flexible governance by taking initiatives that support participa-
tion, resources for struggle, inclusion, and skills development.
In responding to environmental and resource crises, activists usually fo-
cus primarily on the immediate issues—trying to stop logging, for example,
or the burning of fossil fuels and other damaging activities. To maximize
long-term effectiveness, it is valuable to complement these actions with ef-
forts to transform governance, as otherwise the same problems will recur.
Ideally, responses to environmental problems should themselves incorpo-
rate the elements of flexible governance, so that current actions can help cre-
ate the sort of institutions that are more capable of dealing with problems
and preventing them in the first place.
c h a p t e r 2 6
Governance in
the Long Emergency
David W. Orr
David W. Orr is the Paul Sears
Distinguished Professor of Envi-
ronmental Studies and Politics
at Oberlin College in Ohio.
www.sustainabilitypossible.org
The first evidence linking climate change and human emissions of carbon
dioxide was painstakingly assembled in 1897 by Swedish scientist Svante
Arr henius. What began as an interesting but seemingly unimportant con-
jecture about the effect of rising carbon dioxide
on temperature has turned
into a flood of increasingly urgent and rigorous warnings about the rapid
warming of Earth and the dire consequences of inaction. Nonetheless, the
global dialogue on climate is floundering while the scientific and anecdotal
evidence of rapid climate destabilization grows by the day.1
We have entered a “long emergency” in which a myriad of worsening eco-
logical, social, and economic problems and dilemmas at different geographic
and temporal scales are converging as a crisis of crises. It is a collision of two
non-linear systems—the biosphere and biogeochemical cycles on one side
and human institutions, organizations, and governments on the other. But
the response at the national and international levels has so far been indif-
ferent to inconsistent, and nowhere more flagrantly so than in the United
States, which is responsible for about 28 percent of the fossil-fuel carbon that
humanity added to the atmosphere between 1850 and 2002.2
The “perfect storm” that lies ahead is caused by the collision of chang-
ing climate; spreading ecological disorder (including deforestation, soil loss,
water shortages, species loss, ocean acidification); population growth; unfair
distribution of the costs, risks, and benefits of economic growth; national,
ethnic, and religious tensions; and the proliferation of nuclear weapons—all
compounded by systemic failures of foresight and policy. As a consequence,
in political theorist Brian Barry’s words, “it is quite possible that by the year
2100 human life will have become extinct or will be confined to a few resi-
dential areas that have escaped the devastating effects of nuclear holocaust
or global warming.”3
Part of the reason for paralysis is the sheer difficulty of the issue. Climate
change is scientifically complex, politically divisive, economically costly,
Worldwatch Institute, State of the World 2013: Is Sustainability Still Possible?,
DOI 10.5822/ 978-1-61091-458-1_26, © 2013 by Worldwatch Institute
279
280 | State of the World 2013280 | State of the World 2013
morally contentious, and ever so easy to deny or defer to others at some later
time. But the continuing failure to anticipate and forestall the worst effects
of climate destabilization in the face of overwhelming scientific evidence is
the largest political and moral failure in history. Indeed, it is a crime across
generations for which we have, as yet, no name.
Barring a technological miracle, we have condemned ourselves and pos-
terity to live with growing climate instability for hundreds or even thousands
of years. No government has yet shown the foresight, will, creativity, or ca-
pacity to deal with problems at this scale, complexity, or duration. No gov-
ernment is prepared to make the “tragic choices” ahead humanely and ratio-
nally. And no government has yet demonstrated the willingness to rethink
its own mission at the intersection of climate instability and conventional
economic wisdom. The same is true in the realm of international governance.
In the words of historian Mark Mazower: “The real world challenges mount
around us in the shape of climate change, financial instability . . . [but there
is] no single agency able to coordinate the response to global warming.”4
The Problem of Governance
In An Inquiry into the Human Prospect, in 1974, economist Robert Heil-
broner wrote: “I not only predict but I prescribe a centralization of power
as the only means by which our threatened and dangerous civilization will
make way for its successor.” Heilbroner’s description of the human pros-
pect included global warming but also other threats to industrial civiliza-
tion, including the possibility that finally we would not care enough to
do the things necessary to protect posterity. The extent to which power
must be centralized, he said, depends on the capacity of populations, ac-
customed to affluence, for self-discipline. But he did not find “much evi-
dence in history—especially in the history of nations organized under the
materialistic and individualistic promptings of an industrial civilization—
to encourage expectations of an easy subordination of the private interest
to the public weal.”5
Heilbroner’s conclusions are broadly similar to those of others, includ-
ing British sociologist Anthony Giddens, who somewhat less apocalyptically
proposes “a return to greater state interventionism”—but as a catalyst, fa-
cilitator, and enforcer of guarantees. Giddens believes the climate crisis will
motivate governments to create new partnerships with corporations and
civil society, which is to say more of the same, only bigger and better. Da-
vid Rothkopf of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace likewise
argues that the role of the state must evolve toward larger, more innovative
governments and “stronger international institutions [as] the only possible
way to preserve national interests.”6
The performance of highly centralized governments, however, is not
Governance in the Long Emergency | 281
encouraging—especially relative to the conditions of the long emergency.
Governments have been effective at waging war and sometimes in solving—
or appearing to solve—economic problems. But even then they are cumber-
some, slow, and excessively bureaucratic. They tend to fragment agencies
by problem, rather like mailbox pigeonholes, but the long emergency will
require managing complex systems over long time periods. Might there be
more agile, dependable, and less awkward ways to conduct the public busi-
ness in the long emergency that do not require authoritarian governments,
the compromises and irrational messiness of politics, or even reliance on
personal sacrifice? Can these be made to work over the long time spans nec-
essary to stabilize the climate? If not, how else might we conduct the public
business? Broadly, there are three other possibilities.7
First, champions of markets and advanced technology propose to solve
the climate crisis by harnessing the power of markets and technological in-
novation to avoid what they regard as the quagmire of government. Ratio-
nal corporate behavior responding to markets and prices, they believe, can
stabilize climate faster at lower costs and without hair-shirt sacrifice, moral
posturing, and slow, clumsy, overbearing bureaucracies. The reason is said
to be the power of informed self-interest plus the ongoing revolution in
energy technology that has made efficiency and renewable energy cheaper,
faster, less risky, and more profitable than fossil fuels. In their 2011 book,
Reinventing Fire, Amory Lovins and his coauthors, for example, ask whether
“the United States could realistically stop using oil and coal by 2050? And
could such a vast transition toward efficient use and renewable energy be
led by business for durable advantage?” The answer, they say, is yes, and the
reasoning and data they marshal are formidable.8
But why would corporations, particularly those in highly subsidized ex-
tractive industries, agree to change as long as they can pass on the costs of
climate change to someone else? Who would pay for the “stranded” oil and
coal reserves (with an estimated value in excess of $20 trillion) that can-
not be burned if we are to stay below a 2 degree Celsius warming—often
thought to be the threshold of catastrophe? Would corporations continue to
use their financial power to manipulate public opinion, undermine regula-
tions, and oppose an equitable sharing of costs, risks, and benefits? How
does corporate responsibility fit with the capitalist drive to expand market
share? Economist Robert Reich concludes that given the existing rules of
the market, corporations “cannot be socially responsible, at least not to any
significant extent. . . . Supercapitalism does not permit acts of corporate vir-
tue that erode the bottom line. No corporation can ‘voluntarily’ take on an
extra cost that its competitors don’t also take on.” He further argues that the
alleged convergence of social responsibility and profitability is unsupported
by any factual evidence.9
282 | State of the World 2013
There are still larger questions about how large corporations fit in dem-
ocratic societies. One of the most insightful students of politics and eco-
nomics, Yale political scientist Charles Lindblom, concluded his magisterial
Politics and Markets in 1977 with the observation that “the large private cor-
poration fits oddly into democratic theory and vision. Indeed, it does not fit”
(emphasis added). Until democratized internally, stripped of legal “person-
hood,” and rendered publicly accountable, large corporations will remain
autocratic fiefdoms, for the most part beyond public control.10
These issues require us to ask what kind of societies and what kind of
global community do we intend to build? It is certainly possible to imagine
a corporate-dominated, hyper-efficient, solar-powered, sustainable world
that is also grossly unfair, violent, and fascist. To organize society mostly
by market transactions would be to create a kind of Ayn Randian hell that
would demolish society, as economist Karl Polanyi once said. Some things
should never be sold—because the selling undermines human rights; be-
cause it would violate the law and procedural requirements for openness
and fairness; because it would have a coarsening effect on society; because
the sale would steal from the poor and vulnerable, including future gen-
erations; because the thing to be sold is part of the common heritage of
humankind and so can have no rightful owner; and because the thing to be
sold—including government itself—should simply not be for sale.11
A second alternative to authoritarian governments may lie in the emer-
gence of national and global networks abetted by the Internet and advancing
communications technology. They are decentralized, self-replicating, and
sometimes self-correcting. In time, they might grow into a global system do-
ing what traditional governments and international agencies once did—but
better, faster, and cheaper. Some analysts believe that the old model of the
nation-state is inadequate to meet many of the challenges of the long emer-
gency and is losing power to a variety of novel organizations. Anne-Marie
Slaughter of Princeton University, for one, envisions networks of “disaggre-
gated states in which national government officials interact intensively with
one another and adopt codes of best practices and agree on coordinated
solutions to common problems,” thereby sidestepping conventional inter-
governmental practices and international politics.12
Below the level of governments there is, in fact, an explosion of nongov-
ernmental organizations, citizens’ groups, and professional networks that
are already assuming many of the functions and responsibilities once left
to governments. Writer and entrepreneur Paul Hawken believes that the
world is already being reshaped by a global upwelling of grassroots organi-
zations promoting sustainable economies, renewable energy, justice, trans-
parency, and community mobilization. Many of the thousands of groups
Hawken describes are linked in “global action networks,” organized around
Governance in the Long Emergency | 283
specific issues to provide “communication platforms for sub-groups to or-
ganize in ever-more-specialized geographic and sub-issue networks.” Early
examples include the International Red Cross and the International La-
bour Organization.13
Recently clusters of nongovernmental groups have organized around is-
sues such as common property resources, global financing for local projects,
water, climate, political campaigns, and access to information. They are fast,
agile, and participatory. Relative to other citizens’ efforts, they require little
funding. But like other grassroots organizations, they have no power to leg-
islate, tax, or enforce rules. In Mark Mazower’s words, “Many are too opaque
and unrepresentative to any collective body.” Much of the same, he believes,
can be said of foundations and philanthropists. By applying business meth-
ods to social problems, Mazower
writes, “Philanthrocapitalists ex-
aggerate what technology can do,
ignore the complexities of social
and institutional constraints, often
waste sums that would have been
better spent more carefully and
wreak havoc with the existing fab-
ric of society in places they know
very little about.” Moreover, they
are not immune to fashion, delu-
sion, corruption, and arrogance.
Nor are they often held account-
able to the public.14
So what is to be done? Robert
Heilbroner proposed enlarging the
powers of the state. Green econo-
my advocates believe that corpora-
tions can lead the transition through the long emergency. Others argue that
an effective planetary immune system is already emerging in the form of
networks. Each offers a piece in a larger puzzle. But there is a fourth possibil-
ity. Canadian writer and activist Naomi Klein proposes that we strengthen
and deepen the practice of democracy even as we enlarge the power of the
state. “Responding to climate change,” she writes:
requires that we break every rule in the free-market playbook and that
we do so with great urgency. We will need to rebuild the public sphere,
reverse privatizations, relocalize large parts of economies, scale back
overconsumption, bring back long-term planning, heavily regulate
and tax corporations, maybe even nationalize some of them, cut mili-
tary spending and recognize our debts to the global South. Of course,
School children joined with local organizations in Nagpur, India, to form a
giant 350 on the International Day of Climate Action, 2008.
35
0.
or
g
284 | State of the World 2013
none of this has a hope in hell of happening unless it is accompanied
by a massive, broad-based effort to radically reduce the influence that
corporations have over the political process. That means, at a mini-
mum, publicly funded elections and stripping corporations of their
status as “people” under the law.15
Democracy, Winston Churchill once famously said, is the worst form of
government except for all the others ever tried. But has it ever been tried? In
columnist Harold Myerson’s words, “the problem isn’t that we’re too demo-
cratic. It’s that we’re not democratic enough.” The authors of the U.S. Con-
stitution, for example, grounded ultimate power in “we the people” while
denying them any such power or even much access to it.16
Political theorist Benjamin Barber proposes that we take some of the
power back by revitalizing society as a “strong democracy,” by which he
means a “self-governing community of citizens who are united less by ho-
mogeneous interests than by civic education and who are made capable of
common purpose and mutual action by virtue of their civic attitudes and
participatory institutions rather than their altruism or their good nature.”
Strong democracy requires engaged, thoughtful citizens, as once proposed
by Thomas Jefferson and John Dewey. The primary obstacle, Barber con-
cedes, is the lack of a “nationwide system of local civic participation.” To fill
that void he proposes, among other things, a national system of neighbor-
hood assemblies rebuilding democracy from the bottom up.17
Political theorists Amy Gutmann and Dennis Thompson similarly pro-
pose the creation of deliberative institutions in which “free and equal citi-
zens (and their representatives), justify decisions in a process in which they
give one another reasons that are mutually acceptable and generally acces-
sible, with the aim of reaching conclusions that are binding in the present
to all citizens but open to challenge in the future.” Reminiscent of classical
Greek democracy, they intend to get people talking about large issues in
public settings in order to raise the legitimacy of policy choices, improve
public knowledge, and increase civil discourse. (See Box 26–1.) A great deal
depends, they concede, on the durability and vitality of practices and insti-
tutions that enable deliberation to work well.18
Political scientists Bruce Ackerman and James Fishkin propose a new na-
tional holiday, Deliberation Day, on which citizens would meet in structured
dialogues about issues and candidates. They believe that “ordinary citizens
are willing and able to take on the challenge of civic deliberation during or-
dinary times” in a properly structured setting that “facilitates genuine learn-
ing about the choices confronting the political community.”19
Legal scholar Sanford Levinson believes, however, that reforms will be
ineffective without first repairing the structural flaws in the U.S. Constitu-
tion, which is less democratic than any of the 50 state constitutions in the
Governance in the Long Emergency | 285
Philosophers have argued through the ages
that democracy is the best form of government,
and some have claimed that the deeper it is, the
better. By “deeper” they mean a structure that
spreads power widely, engages more people,
and invites them to take a more direct role in the
shaping of policy.
Most liberal (current) democracies do not
meet that definition, being republican in form
and thus giving most power and decisionmaking
responsibility to elected representatives. In some
of these republics, democracy is even further
degraded. In the United States, for instance,
Supreme Court decisions over the years have
established that there is essentially no difference
in civic standing between individual citizens
and corporations or other private interests that
can and do spend billions of dollars on political
advertising, lobbying, and propaganda (over $8
billion in the 2010 election cycle).
But it is not simply such distortions of democ-
racy that compel a closer look at the benefits of
deepening it. The democracies that most of the
industrial world lives in have been derided by
political theorist Benjamin Barber as “politics as
zookeeping”—systems designed “to keep men
safely apart rather than bring them fruitfully
together.” In fact there are major potential advan-
tages in bringing people fruitfully together in
the political arena, not least with respect to the
environmental crises that beset humanity now.
Paradoxically, one of the weaknesses of liberal
democracy may be not that it asks too much
of its citizens but that it asks too little. Having
mostly handed off all responsibility for assessing
issues and setting policy to elected politicians,
voters are free to indulge themselves in narrow
and virulently asserted positions rather than
having to come together, work to perceive the
common good, and plot a course toward it.
One antidote to this is deliberation. Delib-
erative democracy can take many forms, but
its essence, according to social scientist Adolf
Gundersen, is “the process by which individu-
als actively confront challenges to their beliefs.”
It can happen when someone reads a book
and thinks about what it says, but in the public
sphere more generally it means engaging in
pairs or larger groups to discuss issues, com-
pare notes, probe (not attack) one another’s
assertions, and take the opportunity to evolve
a personal position in the interests of forging
a collective one. Deliberative democracy, in
Gundersen’s words, “challenges citizens to move
beyond their present beliefs, develop their ideas,
and examine their values. It calls upon them
to make connections, to connect more firmly
and fully with the people and the world around
them.” When arranged to address environmen-
tal aims, deliberative democracy “connects the
people, first with each other and then with the
environment they wish not simply to visit, but
also to inhabit.”
Given the uneven record of democracies
in educating their people into citizenship, true
deliberation might be difficult to learn, espe-
cially in countries where the politics are strongly
adversarial. Deliberative democracy is a “conver-
sation,” Gundersen says, “not a series of speeches.”
Conversations involve respectful listening—not
just waiting to talk—as well as speaking. Yet
there is an untapped hunger for it that can be
released when the circumstances are condu-
cive. And Gundersen has established through
240 hours of interviews with 46 Americans
that deliberation about environmental matters
“leads citizens to think of our collective pursuit
of environmental ends in a more collective,
long-term, holistic, and self-reflective way.” Such
thinking might be the indispensable foundation
for achieving anything like sustainability.
—Tom Prugh
Codirector, State of the World 2013
Source: See endnote 18.
Box 26–1. a More Sustainable Democracy
286 | State of the World 2013
United States. He proposes a Constitutional Convention of citizens selected
by lottery proportional to state populations to remodel the basic structure
of governance. Whether this is feasible or not, the U.S. Constitution has oth-
er flaws that will limit effective responses to problems of governance in the
long emergency.20
In this regard the U.S. Constitution is typical of others in giving no “clear,
unambiguous textual foundation for federal environmental protection law,”
notes legal scholar Richard Lazarus. It privileges “decentralized, fragmented,
and incremental lawmaking . . . which makes it difficult to address issues
in a comprehensive, holistic fashion.” Congressional committee jurisdiction
based on the Constitution further fragments responsibility and legislative
results. The Constitution gives too much power to private rights as opposed
to public goods. It does not mention the environment or the need to protect
soils, air, water, wildlife, and climate and so it offers no unambiguous basis
for environmental protection. The commerce clause, the source for major
environmental statutes, is a cumbersome and awkward legal basis for en-
vironmental protection. The result, Lazarus notes, is that “our lawmaking
institutions are particularly inapt for the task of considering problems and
crafting legal solutions of the spatial and temporal dimensions necessary for
environmental law.”21
The U.S. Constitution is deficient in other ways as well. Posterity is men-
tioned only in the Preamble, but not thereafter. The omission, understand-
able when the Constitution was written, now poses an egregious wrong. In
1787, the framers could have had no premonition that far into the future
one generation could deprive all others of life, liberty, and property with-
out due process of law or even good cause. And so, in theologian Thomas
Berry’s words: “It is already determined that our children and grandchildren
will live amid the ruined infrastructures of the industrial world and amid
the ruins of the natural world itself.” The U.S. Constitution gives them no
protection whatsoever.22
Further, with a few notable exceptions—such as in Ecuador—most con-
stitutions pertain only to humans and their affairs and property. We privi-
lege humans, while excluding other members of the biotic community. A
more expansive system of governance would extend rights of sorts and in
some fashion to species, rivers, landscapes, ecologies, and trees, as legal
scholar Christopher Stone once proposed. In Thomas Berry’s words: “We
have established our human governance with little regard for the need to
integrate it with the functional order of the planet itself.” In fact, from our
bodies to our global civilization we are part of a worldwide parliament of
beings, systems, and forces far beyond our understanding. We are kin to all
that ever was and all that ever will be and must learn what that fact means
for governance.23
Governance in the Long Emergency | 287
Building the Foundations of Robust Democracies
The history of democracy is complex and often troubled. In classical Athens
it lasted only 200 years. Political philosopher John Plamenatz once wrote
that “democracy is the best form of government only when certain condi-
tions hold.” But those conditions may not hold in established democracies
in the long emergency ahead and may be impossible in less stable societies
and failed states with no history of it. The reasons are many.24
For one, citizens in most democratic societies have become accustomed
to comfort and affluence, but democracy “requires citizens who are willing
to sacrifice for the common good and [restrain] their passions,” notes politi-
cal theorist Wilson Carey McWilliams. How people shaped by consumption
will respond politically in what will certainly be more straitened times is un-
known. Political analyst Peter Burnell cautions that “democratization does
not necessarily make it easier and can make it more difficult for countries to
engage with climate mitigation.”25
Even in the best of times, however, representative democracies are vul-
nerable to neglect, changing circumstances, corruption, the frailties of hu-
man judgment, and the political uses of fear—whether of terrorism or sub-
version. They tend to become ineffective, sclerotic, and easily co-opted by
the powerful and wealthy. They are vulnerable to militarization, as James
Madison noted long ago. They are susceptible to ideologically driven fac-
tions that refuse to play by the rules of compromise, tolerance, and fair play.
They work differently at different scales. And they cannot long endure the
many economic and social forces that corrode political intelligence and
democratic competence.26
Democracies are also vulnerable to what conservative philosopher Rich-
ard Weaver once described as the spoiled-child psychology, “a kind of irre-
sponsibility of the mental process . . . because [people] do not have to think
to survive . . . typical thinking of such people [exhibits] a sort of contempt
for realities.” Psychologists Jean Twenge and Keith Campbell believe that the
behavior Weaver noted in the 1940s has now exploded into a full-blown
“epidemic of narcissism.” Such failures of personality, judgment, and char-
acter could multiply under the stresses likely in the long emergency.27
We are between the proverbial rock and a hard place. There is no good
case to be made for smaller governments in the long emergency unless we
wish to sharply reduce our security and lower our standards for the pub-
lic downward to a libertarian, gun-toting, free-for-all—Thomas Hobbes’s
nightmare on steroids. On the contrary, it will be necessary to enlarge gov-
ernments domestically and internationally to deal with the nastier aspects
of the long emergency, including relocating people from rising oceans and
spreading deserts, restoring order in the wake of large storms, managing
288 | State of the World 2013
conflicts over diminishing water, food, and resources, dealing with the
spread of diseases, and managing the difficult transition to a post-growth
economy. On the other hand, we have good reason to fear an enlargement of
government powers as both ineffective and potentially oppressive.28
Given those choices, there is no good outcome that does not require some-
thing like a second democratic revolution in which we must master the art
and science of governance for a new era—creating and maintaining govern-
ments that are ecologically competent, effective at managing complex sys-
tems, agile, capable of foresight, and sturdy over an extraordinary time span.
If we intend for such governments to also be democratic, we will have to
summon an extraordinary level of political creativity and courage. To meet
the challenges of the late eighteenth century, James Madison argued that
democracy required a free press that served a well-informed and engaged
citizenry, fair and open elections, and reliable ways to counterbalance com-
peting interests. But he feared that even the best government with indifferent
and incompetent citizens and leaders would sooner or later come to ruin.
In our time, strong democracy may be our best hope for governance in the
long emergency, but it will not develop, persist,
and flourish without significant changes. The
most difficult of these will require that we con-
front the age-old nemesis of democracy: eco-
nomic oligarchy. Today the majority of con-
centrated wealth is tied, directly or indirectly,
to the extraction, processing, and sale of fossil
fuels, which is also the major driver of the long
emergency. Decades of rising global inequality
have entrenched control in a small group of
super-wealthy individuals, financiers, corpora-
tions, media tycoons, drug lords, and celebri-
ties in positions of unaccountable authority.29
In the United States, for example, the
wealthiest 400 individuals have more net
wealth than the bottom 185,000,000 people.
Six Walmart heirs alone control as much
wealth as the bottom 42 percent of the U.S.
population. Rising inequality in the United
States and elsewhere reflects neither efficiency
nor merit. And beyond some threshold it divides society by class, erodes
empathy, hardens hearts, undermines public trust, incites violence, saps our
collective imagination, and destroys the public spirit that upholds democra-
cy and community alike. Nonetheless, the rich do not give up easily. Accord-
ing to political economist Jeffrey Winters, the redistribution of wealth has
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Governance in the Long Emergency | 289
always occurred as a result of war, conquest, or revolution, not as a demo-
cratic decision or from the benevolence of plutocrats.30
Toward the end of his life, historian Lewis Mumford concluded that the
only way out of this conundrum is “a steady withdrawal” from the “me-
gamachine” of technocratic and corporate control. He did not mean com-
munity-scale isolation and autarky, but rather more equitable, decentral-
ized, and self-reliant communities that met a significant portion of their
needs for food, energy, shelter, waste cycling, and economic support. He did
not propose secession from the national and global community but rather
withdrawal from dependence on the forces of oligarchy, technological dom-
ination, and zombie-like consumption. Half a century later, that remains
the most likely strategy for building the foundations of democracies robust
enough to see us through the tribulations ahead.31
In other words, the alternative to a futile and probably bloody attempt
to forcibly redistribute wealth is to spread the ownership of economic as-
sets throughout society. From the pioneering work of progressive econ-
omists, scholars, and activists such as Scott Bernstein, Michael Shuman,
Gar Alperovitz, Ted Howard, and Jeff Gates we know that revitalization of
local economies through worker-owned businesses, local investment, and
greater local self-reliance is smart economics, wise social policy, smart en-
vironmental management, and a solid foundation for both democracy and
national resilience.32
Simultaneously, and without much public notice, there have been dra-
matic advances in ecological design, biomimicry, distributed renewable
energy, efficiency, ecological engineering, transportation infrastructure,
permaculture, and natural systems agriculture. Applied systematically at
community, city, and regional scales, ecological design opens genuine pos-
sibilities for greater local control over energy, food, shelter, money, water,
transportation, and waste cycling. (See Box 26–2.) It is the most likely ba-
sis for revitalizing local economies powered by home-grown efficiency and
locally accessible renewable energy while eliminating pollution, improving
resilience, and spreading wealth. The upshot at a national level is to reduce
the need for government regulation, which pleases conservatives, while im-
proving quality of life, which appeals to liberals. Fifty years ago, Mumford’s
suggestion seemed unlikely. But in the years since, local self-reliance, Transi-
tion Towns, and regional policy initiatives are leading progressive changes
throughout Europe and the United States while central governments have
been rendered ineffective.33
A second change is in order. Democracies from classical Athens to the
present are only as vibrant as the quality and moral power of the ideas they
can muster, mull over, and act upon. Debate, argument, and civil conversa-
tion are the lifeblood of the democratic process. In our time, said to be an
290 | State of the World 2013
At the dawn of the modern environmental era, in
1970, the National Environmental Policy Act required
all federal agencies to “utilize a systematic, interdis-
ciplinary approach which will insure the integrated
use of the natural and social sciences and the envi-
ronmental design arts in planning and in decision-
making.” Nonetheless, the government and corpo-
rations, foundations, and nonprofit organizations
still work mostly by breaking issues and problems
into their parts and dealing with each in isolation.
Separate agencies, departments, and organizations
specialize in energy, land, food, air, water, wildlife,
economy, finance, building regulations, urban policy,
technology, health, and transportation as if each
were unrelated to the others.
Reducing wholes to parts is the core of the mod-
ern worldview we inherited from Galileo, Bacon, and
Descartes. And for a time it worked economic, scien-
tific, and technological miracles. But the price we pay
is considerable and growing fast. For one, we seldom
anticipate or account for collateral costs of fragmenta-
tion or count the benefits of systems integration. We
mostly focus on short-term benefits while ignoring
long-term risks and vulnerabilities. Imponderables
and non-priced benefits are excluded altogether. The
results corrupt our politics, economics, and values, and
they undermine our prospects.
Nonetheless, we administer, organize, and analyze
in parts, not wholes. But in the real world there are
tipping points, surprises, step-level changes, time
delays, and unpredictable, high-impact events. To
fathom such things requires a mind-set capable of
seeing connections, systems, and patterns as well as
a perspective far longer than next year’s election or
an annual balance sheet. Awareness that we live in
systems we can never fully comprehend and control
and humility in the face of the unknown gives rise to
precaution and resilient design.
One example of this approach comes from
Oberlin, a small city of about 10,000 people with a
poverty level of 25 percent in the center of the U.S.
“Rust Belt.” It is situated in a once-prosperous indus-
trial region sacrificed to political expediency and
bad economic policy, not too far from Cleveland and
Detroit. But things here are beginning to change.
In 2009, Oberlin College and the city launched the
Oberlin Project. It has five goals: build a sustainable
economy, become climate-positive, restore a robust
local farm economy supplying up to 70 percent of
the city’s food, educate at all levels for sustainability,
and help catalyze similar efforts across the United
States at larger scales. The community is organized
into seven teams, focused on economic develop-
ment, education, law and policy, energy, community
engagement, food and agriculture, and data analysis.
The project aims for “full-spectrum sustainability,” in
which each of the parts supports the resilience and
prosperity of the whole community in a way that is
catalytic—shifting the default setting of the city, the
community, and the college to a collaborative post-
cheap-fossil-fuel model of resilient sustainability.
The Oberlin Project is one of a growing number
of examples of integrated or full-spectrum sustain-
ability worldwide, including the Mondragón Coop-
erative in Spain, the Transition Towns movement, and
the Evergreen Project in Cleveland. In different ways,
each is aiming to transform complex systems called
cities and city-regions into sustainable, locally gener-
ated centers of prosperity, powered by efficiency
and renewable energy. Each is aiming to create
opportunities for good work and higher levels of
worker ownership of renewably powered enterprises
organized around necessities. The upshot is a global
movement toward communities with the capacity
to withstand outside disturbances while preserv-
ing core values and functions. In practical terms,
resilience means redundancy of major functions,
appropriate scale, firebreaks between critical sys-
tems, fairness, and societies that are “robust to error,”
technological accidents, malice, and climate desta-
bilization. In short, it is human systems designed in
much the way that nature designs ecologies: from
the bottom up.
Source: See endnote 33.
Box 26–2. resilience from the Bottom Up
Governance in the Long Emergency | 291
age of information, one of the most striking characteristics is the trivial-
ity, narrowness, and often factual inaccuracy of our political conversations.
Much of what passes for public dialogue has to do with jobs and economic
growth, but it is based on economic theories that fit neither biophysical real-
ity nor the highest aspirations of humankind. The rules of market econo-
mies are said to date from Adam Smith 237 years ago, but those of natural
systems are 3.8 billion years old. Allowed to run on much longer, the mis-
match will destroy us.
It is time to talk about important things. Why have we come so close
to the brink of extinction so carelessly and casually? Why do we still have
thousands of nuclear weapons on hair-trigger alert? How can humankind
reclaim the commons of atmosphere, seas, biological diversity, mineral re-
sources, and lands as the heritage of all, not the private possessions of a
few? How much can we fairly and sustainably take from Earth, and for what
purposes? Why is wealth so concentrated and poverty so pervasive? Are
there better ways to earn our livelihoods than by maximizing consumption,
a word that once signified a fatal disease? Can we organize governance at all
levels around the doctrine of public trust rather than through fear and com-
petition? And, finally, how might Homo sapiens, with a violent and bloody
past, be redeemed in the long arc of time?34
Outside of Hollywood movies, stories do not always have happy endings.
Human history, to the contrary, is “one damn thing after another” as an
undergraduate history major once famously noted. And one of those damn
things is the collapse of entire civilizations when leaders do not summon
the wit and commitment to solve problems while they can. Whatever the
particulars, the downward spiral has a large dose of elite incompetence and
irresponsibility, often with the strong aroma of wishful thinking, denial, and
groupthink abetted by rules that reward selfishness, not group success.35
In the long emergency ahead, the challenges to be overcome are first and
foremost political, not technological or economic. They are in the domain
of governance where the operative words are “we” and “us,” not those of
markets where the pronouns are “I,” “me,” and “mine.” At issue is whether
we have the wherewithal, wisdom, and foresight to preserve and improve the
human enterprise in the midst of a profound human crisis. Any chance for
us to come through the trials of climate destabilization in a nuclear-armed
world with 10 billion people by 2100 will require that we soon reckon with
the thorny issues of politics, political theory, and governance with wisdom,
boldness, and creativity.
Erik Assadourian is a senior
fellow at Worldwatch Institute
and director of the Transform-
ing Cultures Project. He is
codirector of State of the
World 2013.
www.sustainabilitypossible.org
In the early 1980s—not long after monumental victories in improving air
and water quality—some within the environmental movement questioned
the true value of these successes. Environmentalist Peter Berg pointed out
that “rescuing the environment has become like running a battlefield aid
station in a war against a killing machine that operates just beyond reach,
and that shifts its ground after each seeming defeat. No one can doubt the
moral basis of environmentalism, but the essentially defensive terms of its
endless struggle mitigate against ever stopping the slaughter.”1
Decades later, the moral basis of environmentalism is still undoubted,
though the design and execution of many environmental campaigns have
received increased scrutiny. And the deeper critique has yet to be answered.
Environmentalism, first and foremost, continues to be a game of defense—
working to reduce overall carbon emissions, chemical releases, forest loss—
rather than a battle to transform the dominant growth-centric economic
and cultural paradigm into an ecocentric one that respects planetary bound-
aries. And today, more than ever, environmentalists are outmaneuvered by
better funded, better organized, and better connected adversaries, which
keeps victory well beyond reach.
The current focus of environmentalism leaves little hope of successfully
defeating the ecologically destructive political, economic, and cultural forces
that undermine the very foundations of life. It will require a dramatic reboot
if the movement is going to reverse Earth’s rapid transformation and help
create a truly sustainable future—or at least help humanity get through the
ugly ecological transition that most likely lies ahead.
Are Today’s Environmental Organizations Succeeding?
There have been plenty of internal critiques of the environmental move-
ment since it appeared on the scene in the 1960s—from deep ecology and
bioregionalism in the 1970s to the recent reports The Death of Environ-
c h a p t e r 2 7
Building an Enduring
Environmental Movement
Erik Assadourian
Worldwatch Institute, State of the World 2013: Is Sustainability Still Possible?,
DOI 10.5822/ 978-1-61091-458-1_27, © 2013 by Worldwatch Institute
292
Building an Enduring Environmental Movement | 293
mentalism and Weathercocks and Signposts: The Environment Movement at
a Crossroads.2
In 2004, in The Death of Environmentalism, Michael Shellenberger and
Ted Nordhaus made two important criticisms of modern environmental
advocacy: that it fails to provide any bold vision of a sustainable future and
that it is essentially “just another special interest,” unable to capture “the
popular inspiration nor the political alliances the community needs to deal
with the problem.”3
In the 2008 WWF-UK report Weathercocks and Signposts, Tom Cromp-
ton noted that in environmentalists’ urgent efforts to change people’s behav-
ior, they have often reinforced dominant consumeristic values rather than
tapping more-sustainable values, like altruism. This, he noted, has proved
to be a strategy that offers some short-term success but undermines itself
in the long run, for example, as people who were encouraged to save money
by buying energy-efficient lightbulbs then spend their savings on new con-
sumer products.4
And recently the Smart CSOs Lab noted that environmental organiza-
tions are typically focused on a single issue—climate change, biodiversity,
deforestation, toxic chemicals, conservation—and thus fail to think holisti-
cally about solutions, focusing on short-term fixes rather than addressing
root causes.5
There is validity in all of these critiques. Many campaigns focus on treat-
ing environmental problems rather than addressing their roots, and they
typically do so in ways that fail to build an alternative vision for a species not
in a permanent state of conflict with the planet.
Worse still is that the movement is not even battling immediate threats all
that well. Along with often being a marginalized special interest—failing to
build strong-enough alliances to pass Earth-saving legislation—many con-
servation and environmental groups have also fallen prey to the same con-
flicts of interest observed in other philanthropy-dependent sectors. Just as
more medical researchers have accepted funding from pharmaceutical com-
panies, and breast cancer advocacy groups from companies that produce
cancer-causing products, some environmental groups—seeking to have as
large an impact as possible—are taking more funds from corporations with
questionable environmental track records.6
As journalist and former Conservation International employee Christine
MacDonald describes in Green, Inc., accepting funding from corporations—
which have a lot to spread around and are willing to do so to “greenwash”
their image—has misdirected organizations from the true challenges facing
them. Moreover, it has led some groups to soften their criticism of support-
ive companies and in some cases has even led to questionable endorsements
of polluting companies or their products. 7
294 | State of the World 2013
This cozy relationship has also provided some of the most unsustainable
corporations a way to mitigate the public relations challenges of being ma-
jor polluters. MacDonald found that 29 of “The Toxic 100”—the worst cor-
porate air polluters in the United States according to the Political Economy
Research Institute—are major contributors to conservation organizations.
Whether these and other corporations have just used environmental groups
as greenwashing vehicles or have also influenced the agendas of the orga-
nizations that they donate to is harder to measure. But considering the size
of some donations and the pres-
ence of corporate representatives
on many organizations’ boards, it
is hard to imagine that these re-
lationships have no influence at
all. David Morine, a former vice
president in charge of land acqui-
sition at The Nature Conservancy,
said after leaving the organization
that his pioneering effort to bring
in corporate funders “was the big-
gest mistake in my life,” as he told
the Washington Post. “These cor-
porate executives are carnivorous.
You bring them in, and they just
take over.”8
What is more, most environ-
mental organizations, including
Worldwatch Institute, receive funding from affluent donors, foundations,
and corporations that depend on a growing economy to keep their endow-
ments robust enough to continue their philanthropy. Ironically, if environ-
mental groups actually succeed in building a sustainable, equitable, steady-
state economy, there is a good chance that their donors’ philanthropic giving
would shrink as wealth is better distributed and as stock markets stop grow-
ing. And if environmentalists fail in their mission, there’s also a good chance
the economy will contract: a 2012 report by DARA International projects
that gross domestic product worldwide will shrink 3.2 percent a year by
2030 if climate change and air pollution are not dealt with. A shrinking
economy is rarely a boon to philanthropy.9
Even if most environmental groups had secure forms of funding that did
not lead to conflicts of interest, the broader critique remains. The movement
is trying to stem the tide of global ecocide with strategies that fall far short of
what is necessary to create a truly sustainable civilization—whether that is
due to short-term thinking, overspecialization, lack of vision, or the realities
The environmental group Audubon displays the new car it won from Toyota
in a social media popularity contest.
To
yo
ta
Building an Enduring Environmental Movement | 295
of making political compromises, especially when at the table with much
more powerful actors.
Thus it is time for the environmental movement to evolve. It needs to ac-
celerate the shift to a sustainable society and to become more independent
and resilient, even in the worst-case scenario of a rapid ecological transition.
The only question is, How?
A Deeper Environmentalism
In 2007, a group of prominent environmentalists gathered in Aspen, Colo-
rado, to discuss how to redesign the environmental movement to combat
the linked environmental, social, and spiritual crises facing humanity. The
group concluded that humanity needs a “new consciousness,” new stories,
new values—including an “ethics of reverence for the Earth” and a sense
of intergenerational responsibility. And that to spread these, the movement
will need to redevelop its grassroots potential, diversify its sources of fund-
ing, and use a variety of innovative strategies like embedding environmen-
tal education into schools’ core curricula, doing a better job using media
programming to spark environmental awareness, and establishing a Peace
Corps–like effort that could help restore ecosystems and tackle global envi-
ronmental challenges.10
The idea of deepening humanity’s environmental consciousness and re-
designing the movement to help do this is certainly not new. In 1973 Nor-
wegian philosopher Arne Naess coined the term deep ecology, criticizing the
“shallow” anthropocentric approach to environmentalism and instead ad-
vocating an ecocentric ecological philosophy to guide individuals and the
movement. One of his main conclusions was that we need a set of principles
to guide our behavior and to reinforce our commitment to help our planet
flourish. His hope was that each of us would make a personal “ecosophy”
(ecological philosophy) stemming from these principles that would shape
our broader values and lives—from what we buy and eat and how many chil-
dren we have to how we spend our time. Naess, with deep ecology, was per-
haps the first to propose making environmentalism a fully lived philosophy.11
But deep ecology and its critique have remained marginal ideas in the
broader movement, with environmentalists continuing to focus instead on
short-term or shallow campaign goals. So it is not surprising, then, that en-
vironmental groups continue to engage their members in shallow ways—
asking for donations, signatures on petitions, support of a specific political
candidate, perhaps participation in a local protest. Yet within the movement,
rare are the deeper opportunities to engage—community potlucks, for in-
stance, or weekly meetings filled with stories of celebration or hope.
Defensive advocacy remains the environmental movement’s primary
role. As theologian and environmentalist Martin Palmer notes, “Environ-
296 | State of the World 2013
mentalists have stolen fear, guilt and sin from religion, but they have left
behind celebration, hope and redemption.” The problem is that fear without
hope, guilt without celebration, and sin without redemption is a model that
fails to inspire or motivate.12
Environmentalists must create a more comprehensive philosophy—
complete with an ethics, cosmology, even stories of redemption—that could
deeply affect people and change the way they live. Vaclav Havel, the Czech
writer and political leader, once asked, “What could change the direction of
today’s civilization?” He answered that “we must develop a new understand-
ing of the true purpose of our existence on this Earth. Only by making such
a fundamental shift will we be able to create new models of behavior and a
new set of values for the planet.”13
This, naturally, should be the starting point of any philosophy, ecological
or otherwise. Why are we here? and What is our purpose? are questions as
old as human beings. And while religions have offered one set of explana-
tions, and science another, neither have proved up to the task of answering
in a way that enables humanity to live within the bounds of Earth.
The first principle of deep ecology points out that “the flourishing of
human and nonhuman life on Earth has inherent value. The value of non-
human life-forms is independent of the usefulness of the nonhuman world
for human purposes.” This ecocentric view of the planet offers a possible
answer. Humanity’s purpose may be as straightforward as helping the earth
to flourish—and certainly not impeding its ability to do so.14
The ethics of an effective eco-philosophy must be grounded, complete-
ly and fully, in Earth’s ecological realities and should facilitate humanity’s
Earth-nurturing purpose. As conservationist Aldo Leopold noted over 60
years ago, “A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability,
and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.”
This simple rule could serve as a foundation for a broader ecological ethics.15
Granted, this will not be an easy ethical code to follow. As the fourth
principle of deep ecology notes, “the flourishing of human life and cultures
is compatible with a substantial decrease of the human population. The
flourishing of nonhuman life requires such a decrease.” Decreases in both
human population size and its impact (as much an outcome of how we con-
sume as our total numbers) may raise some uncomfortable questions, such
as, Can we have a sustainable civilization while fully respecting people’s free-
dom to reproduce or consume without limits? However, not wrestling with
these limits may prove much more perilous. And perhaps over time, norms
around optimal family size and consumption levels will evolve, facilitating
the transition to cultures in balance with a flourishing Earth.16
In order for this philosophy to attract people, it will also need to answer
broader philosophical questions like Where did we come from? (cosmology)
Building an Enduring Environmental Movement | 297
and Why do we suffer? (theodicy)—an essential component of any com-
prehensive philosophy, and one that will be especially necessary in getting
through the difficult centuries to come.
Of course, other elements will have to emerge as well. Stories, exemplars,
ways to cultivate fellowship among adherents, and ways to celebrate life’s rites
of passage—birth, coming of age, marriage, and death—and other cycles of
life like the advent of a new year. Together, these elements could add up to a
robust, holistic ecological philosophy that could inspire people across cul-
tures to follow a new ecocentric way of life and encourage others to join them.
For that to happen, however, environmentalists must build the mecha-
nisms to cultivate community among members and to spread this philoso-
phy to new populations. In other words, for the environmental movement to
succeed it will have to learn from something it often ignores or even keeps its
distance from—religion, and specifically missionary religions, which have
proved incredibly successful in orienting how people interpret the world for
millennia, effectively navigating across radically dif-
ferent eras and geographies.
Missionary Movements
and Their Potential
Let’s start with a basic question. How have missionary
religious philosophies spread so completely around
the world? (Religions, while they are understandably
more than this to adherents, are essentially orienting
philosophies.) Yes, swords and guns were part of the
success equation, as was the adoption of these phi-
losophies by governments. But a larger part of these
philosophies’ success was a powerful, timeless vision,
beautiful stories, inspiring exemplars, committed ad-
herents, and the promise of immediate assistance—
the offering of food, clothing, education, livelihoods,
medical care, even a community.
The advent of Christian Socialism in the mid-
nineteenth century offers a powerful and relevant
case study on the spread of Christianity in a disrupt-
ed, rapidly industrializing, and urbanizing Europe
and United States. Recognizing the corrosive effects
of cities and urban poverty, many Christian reformers
worked to spread the Gospel through the creation of
social programs—including providing job trainings, food, safe shelters for
people migrating to the cities, and so on.17
Both the Salvation Army and the YMCA were founded in the United
Two Mormon missionaries speaking to an African
woman with a baby.
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298 | State of the World 2013
Kingdom in this era, spreading Christian values and the faith through the
provision of social services. Today, both organizations continue to have a
global reach, and combined they have several million volunteers reaching
out to tens of millions of people in more than 110 countries. In 2011, the
Salvation Army alone provided $3 billion worth of basic social service as-
sistance to nearly 30 million people.18
The Catholic Knights of Columbus—founded in Connecticut in 1882
and now boasting 1.8 million members world-
wide—also used a powerful communitarian mod-
el, offering support for recent Catholic immigrants
to the United States (who often worked dangerous
jobs and were excluded from labor unions). The
Knights provided life insurance to care for widows
and orphans if members were killed. Today it un-
derwrites more than $80 billion in life insurance
policies and continues to be active in charitable
and political activities.19
Providing social services is not only a worthy
goal in itself but also a means to build broader
influence—growing the ranks of adherents and
changing how people view the world and live their
lives, and then using that influence to shape broad-
er social, cultural, economic, and political norms.
The Shakers, a Christian sect founded in England
in 1771, offer a valuable lesson in how to grow in-
fluence and even in how to prepare for the coming
economic and ecologic transition. (See Box 27–1.)20
Another Christian offshoot, the Church of
Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the Mormons),
offers one more successful strategy to spread a phi-
losophy—going door to door. Each year 55,000
full-time Mormon missionaries fan out around
the world (with more than 1 million missionar-
ies having served since the Church’s founding),
going on two-year missions to convert people to
their philosophy slowly and methodically—a lead-
ing reason that a religion that is less than 200 years
old has more than 14.4 million adherents worldwide. For these missionar-
ies—typically young adults supported by family and friends or by their own
childhood savings—this rite of passage is often life-changing. It deepens
their own commitment to their beliefs while also spreading the ideas of this
religion and drawing new members to the Mormon faith.21
While often dismissed as a failed experiment—as their
community no longer exists today—at their peak the
Shakers were a powerful religious, economic, and
social force, growing to 6,000 members in 1840 even
while practicing celibacy. At the time, the group was a
leading producer of herbal medicines. And its mem-
bers were celebrated architects and craftspeople as
well as renowned inventors: they invented the circular
saw, clothespins, and ironing-free cloth. Believing that
God dwelt in the quality of their craftsmanship, the
Shakers strove for perfection in crafting their simple but
beautiful products. And this success drew many new
adherents to their faith.
But the Industrial Revolution and the mass-produced
goods it led to were the Shakers’ undoing. As markets for
their high-quality, higher-cost products collapsed in the
mid-1800s, so did their economic niche and their total
number of adherents. The Shakers offer an important
lesson, however: strong community and a relevant eco-
nomic niche can attract people and provide the founda-
tion for broader influence, even when certain elements
of the philosophy are hard to stomach.
As access to cheap energy sources wanes, and with
it mass-produced goods and globalized trade, many
aspects of this model could once again flourish, provid-
ing one possible way to spread an ecocentric philosophy.
Source: See endnote 20.
Box 27–1. the Shakers’ relevance in a
post-consumer era
Building an Enduring Environmental Movement | 299
Compare this to modern environmental canvassers who also go door-to-
door asking for campaign donations. They are typically told by their man-
agers to get a donation and move to the next door as quickly as possible,
forgoing true engagement with the people they meet. Rather than growing
supporters and political power, most of today’s environmental door-knock-
ers are merely neighborhood money-miners.22
Other missionary religious philosophies, such as Buddhism and Islam,
also use a variety of social service provisions to spread their philosophies.
Islamic madrassas are a leading provider of education in many countries.
Today, madrassas educate millions of students around the world, provid-
ing literary, math, and science education in addition to knowledge of the
Koran and Islam.23
As the provision of basic services led to new members being integrated
into these various communities, social modeling played an important role
in shaping their behaviors, and the routine professing of values and myths
helped reinforce a new way of living. As numbers grew, so did their politi-
cal, economic, and cultural influence—both at the aggregate and through
the spread of smaller sects of broader philosophical persuasions. Quakers,
Jesuits, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Shriners (with their network of children’s hos-
pitals), and Scientologists have effectively spread their orienting philoso-
phies—no matter how controversial they might have been—through the
concerted proliferation of social services, designed in ways that help people
in their moment of need and, as important, fold them into a broader philo-
sophical community. Unfortunately, there have been few equivalent efforts
by the environmental community.
The Rise of a Missionary Eco-Philosophy?
An informal survey of Kibera, one of the largest slums in Africa, found
that nearly half of the roughly 250 schools serving the 200,000–250,000
Kenyans living there are religious in nature. The goal of these Pentecostal,
Catholic, Protestant, Jehovah’s Witness, YMCA, Salvation Army, Quaker,
and other religious schools is to charitably provide the basic service of
education—a service the Kenyan government cannot provide enough of.
But these schools are also there to save souls and to add members to their
philosophical communities.24
At the same time, there appear to be no schools in Kibera teaching an
ecological philosophy. But imagine if there were. Imagine a school that, at
every turn reinforced the idea that humanity depends completely and ut-
terly on Earth and its complex systems for our well-being. That it is unjust
to consume more than your fair share and to have a lifestyle that depends
on the exploitation of ecosystems, workers, and communities polluted by
factories, mines, and dumps. That the best life to live is one committed to
300 | State of the World 2013
changing this untenable, inhumane, and unsustainable system in ways that
improve the well-being of your local community, your broader philosophi-
cal community, and above all the planetary community.25
This is a philosophy that could be reinforced in every aspect of the
school—from what is taught in the classroom (ecology, ethics, activism,
and permaculture along with basic math and literacy) to what is served
in the lunchroom and everything in between. Some students would walk
away just with knowledge, including a better understanding of our depen-
dence on Earth and perhaps a basic livelihood and trade skills—skills that
will only grow in value in a post-consumer future. But others would walk
away with a deep commitment to this way of thinking, and perhaps even
become missionaries of that ecological philosophy, starting new schools
or other social services that could improve people’s lives while spreading a
way of life that could compete with the seductive consumerist philosophy
so dominant today.26
And this model could be applied to a variety of needs. Eco-clinics could
provide basic medicine but also focus on prevention that will help both
people and the planet. For example, people with adult-onset diabetes might
be asked to spend time tending the eco-clinic garden in partial payment
for treatment, growing healthy food to replace the toxic, processed fare that
contributed to their diabetes and so many other modern ailments. The clinic
could also provide cooking and lifestyle courses as well as engaging with the
larger community to help patients eat well and regain their health. In the
process, their ecological impact would shrink along with their waistlines as
they reduced their consumption of meat and processed food, both of which
have higher ecological impacts than locally grown vegetables.27
Of course, religious social service providers are embedded in a broader
community with a somewhat unified belief system—something environ-
mentalists currently lack. But as ecosystems decline further, as the consum-
erist philosophy is revealed as no longer workable, the philosophies with
alternative visions that also offer help and community solidarity will flour-
ish—whether they are ancient religions, new religions, or perhaps even phi-
losophies like environmentalism.
Ideally, social services should not be provided piecemeal by civil society
organizations of any type. They should be the responsibility of a function-
ing government. But in reality, even at the peak of our unsustainable levels
of wealth today, many governments fail in their duty to provide basic ser-
vices for their citizens. As ecosystems unravel, as economies falter, and as
local and national governments go bankrupt or adopt austerity measures
to appease lenders, there is a good chance that social services will be cut.
In that case, the need for nongovernmental actors to provide these services
will only increase.
Building an Enduring Environmental Movement | 301
Just like advocacy campaigns, these efforts cost money, of course. Some of
the funding could come from foundations perhaps. But groups could also use
strategies more typical of religious organizations, generating money directly
from adherent communities. Of the $298 billion donated to charity in 2011 in
the United States, 32 percent went to religious groups, while just 2.6 percent
was given to environmental groups. People are more likely to give to their own
communities—those who are there for them through thick and thin—as well
as to those who share deeply in their beliefs and understanding of the world.28
Funding could also come from social enterprises. Just as the Salvation
Army earns hundreds of millions of dollars a year from the sale of used
household goods and clothing (while also providing a valuable service),
the environmental movement could take a more active role in setting up
profitable social enterprises that generate revenue for its social service pro-
vision arm, as well as for efforts focused on advocacy and shifting broader
cultural norms.29
These social-service providers and social enterprises—from cafes, book-
stores, and used item stores to renewable energy utilities, energy retrofit
providers, and permaculture training programs—would not only generate
revenue but also offer a key mechanism to spread the eco-philosophy and
recruit new members.
As eco-philosophies spread, and their followers grow in number, new op-
portunities would grow too. The Quakers, a small Christian sect, became a
dominant economic and political force of Pennsylvania in the 1700s as well
as a major force in the abolition movement. Even today Quakers remain
a powerful voice in international peace and governance processes—far be-
yond what their total membership of 340,000 would seem to warrant. Eco-
philosophical adherents could also play an outsized role in driving cultural
change, particularly working to shift the consumer culture to be more sus-
tainable by taking leadership roles in government, the media, business, and
education. (See Chapter 10.)30
As the need for resistance to the modern industrial socioeconomic mod-
el grows (see Chapter 28), a committed community of environmentalists
could be a powerful force, helping to use these tactics—whether as a dis-
tinct philosophical group or embedded in other philosophical traditions.
(See Box 27–2.)31
Getting from Vision to Reality
The odds are that the state of the world is going to get really bad—and much
sooner than we think. Reports about the fallout from climate change alone
make it clear that the twenty-first century is unlikely to follow a linear path
of more growth, more progress, more “development.” There are probably
going to be major political, social, and economic disruptions, a flood of fail-
302 | State of the World 2013
ing states, the dislocation of millions of people. Will people in environmen-
tal organizations simply close their doors as things unravel, as their funding
dries up, and turn instead to simply surviving—taking any job still available
in order to feed their families? Who will serve as a voice for Earth? Who will
help steer us through this historically unique global ecological transition?
Will it be fundamentalist religious institutions that read the unraveling eco-
systems as signs of the end times? Or authoritarian governments that offer
security in exchange for the last remnants of freedom?32
The future increasingly looks like it could take a page from a dystopian
science fiction novel. Perhaps from A Canticle for Leibowitz—the story of
a post-collapse civilization where one occupation is harvesting iron rebar
out of concrete rubble, with the workers musing on how their ancestors got
iron bars into stone in the first place. Over the course of the novel, modern
knowledge is rediscovered, and once again people invent electricity, engines,
even nuclear power. And how does it end? With humanity once again pur-
suing growth and empire, and once again destroying itself in the process.33
The hope is that we prevent collapse by following a new set of philo-
sophical, ethical, and cultural norms that bring about a life-sustaining
civilization, or what eco-philosopher Joanna Macy has called “the Great
Are ecological and religious philosophies incompat-
ible? Not at all. Effective missionary philosophies can
live beside other philosophies or incorporate those
traditions into their practices: witness the syncretic
relationship between Shintoism and Buddhism in Japan
and the way Christianity incorporated folk religions as
it spread.
An ecological philosophy may grow up alongside
the dominant religious philosophies of today or even
be absorbed by religious reformers, which could pre-
vent the latter from losing their followers as ecological
philosophies grow in attractiveness.
Indeed, the greening of religious traditions has
already started at the margins, with more Christian sects
drawing attention to green teachings from the Bible
and designing programs to appeal to environmentally
minded adherents. Buddhist monks are establish-
ing sacred forests, Muslims are developing ways to
celebrate Ramadan sustainably, and Hindus are finding
ways to make ritual sacrifices greener.
In Sri Lanka, the Buddhist movement Sarvodaya
Shramadana has created a comprehensive path to both
material and spiritual development—emphasizing com-
munity, basic economic security, and sustainability at
the heart of their model. The movement, which literally
means “awakening through sharing,” has focused on
small community projects—building latrines, schools,
and cultural centers—that improve village well-being
and has simultaneously discouraged adoption of con-
sumerism (or in Buddhist terms, attachment and desire).
Today this sustainable Buddhist movement has a pres-
ence in more than half of Sri Lanka’s 24,000 villages.
As these ideas incubate in coming centuries and the
world undergoes dramatic changes, ecological philoso-
phies may form independently and stay independent,
they may be absorbed by today’s dominant philoso-
phies (or come into conflict with those philosophies as
they compete for members), or they may even absorb
or replace older philosophies.
Source: See endnote 31.
Box 27–2. the relationship Between ecological and religious philosophies
Building an Enduring Environmental Movement | 303
Turning.” The second hope is that,
failing this—and failing to prevent
“the Great Unraveling”—we preserve
enough knowledge and wisdom so
that as the dust settles in a few centu-
ries, with the population stabilized at
a lower number that a changed plan-
etary system can sustain, our great-
great-great-great-great grandchildren
do not reinvent our mistakes. That
they do not once again start worship-
ping growth and consumption but
instead stay true to a philosophy that
allows them to sustain the planet that
sustains them. As Macy notes, “The
awesome thing about the moment
that you and I share is that we don’t
know which is going to win out, how
the story is going to end. That almost seems orchestrated to bring forth
from us the biggest moral strength, courage, and creativity. When things are
this unstable, a person’s determination—how they choose to invest their
energy and heart-mind—can have much more effect on the larger picture
than we are accustomed to think.”34
Let us hope that this proves to be the case. And that centuries from now
an ecocentric civilization—celebrating its nurturing niche on a once-again
flourishing planet—tells stories of the bold individuals and communities
that changed humanity’s path in such a glorious way.
Tree seedlings being distributed in Uganda as part of The Alliance of
Religions and Conservation’s long-term environmental action plan for
sub-Saharan Africa.
AR
C-
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Bron Taylor is a professor of
religion and nature, environ-
mental ethics, and environ-
mental studies at the University
of Florida, and a fellow of the
Rachel Carson Center in Mu-
nich, Germany.
www.sustainabilitypossible.org
c h a p t e r 2 8
Resistance:
Do the Ends Justify the Means?
Bron Taylor
Has the time come for a massive wave of direct action resistance to acceler-
ating rates of environmental degradation around the world—degradation
that is only getting worse due to climate change? Is a new wave of direct
action resistance emerging, one similar but more widespread than that
sparked by Earth First!, the first avowedly “radical” environmental group?
The radical environmental movement, which was formed in the United
States in 1980, controversially transformed environmental politics by en-
gaging in and promoting civil disobedience and sabotage as environmen-
talist tactics. By the late 1980s and into the 1990s, when the most militant
radical environmentalists adopted the Earth Liberation Front name, arson
was increasingly deployed. The targets included gas-guzzling sport utility
vehicles, U.S. Forest Service and timber company offices, resorts and com-
mercial developments expanding into wildlife habitat, and universities and
corporations engaged in research creating genetically modified organisms.
Examples of such militant environmentalism can be found throughout the
world, and they are increasingly fused with anarchist ideologies. Given this
history, the question arises as to whether direct action resistance is becom-
ing unambiguously revolutionary, or perhaps even purposefully violent.1
People attending the Earth at Risk: Building a Resistance Movement to
Save the Planet conference in Berkeley, California, in November 2011 might
well have thought so. Some 500 people joined this conference, which called
for a new “deep green resistance” movement in response to intensifying
environmental decline and increasing social inequality. The format of the
conference was a scripted dialogue, or what might be called political perfor-
mance art, with the writer and activist Derrick Jensen posing questions to a
series of environmental activists and writers, including, most prominently,
the Man Booker Prize winner from India, Arundhati Roy.2
The tone of the meeting was sober and its messages radical. Succinctly
put, the speakers issued the following diagnoses: Electoral politics and lob-
Worldwatch Institute, State of the World 2013: Is Sustainability Still Possible?,
DOI 10.5822/ 978-1-61091-458-1_28, © 2013 by Worldwatch Institute
304
Resistance: Do the Ends Justify the Means? | 305
bying, as well as educational and other reformist conversion strategies that
give priority to increasing awareness and changing consciousness, have been
ineffective. Such strategies do not work because for 10,000 years agricul-
tures have been established and maintained by violence. This violence has
foremost targeted foraging societies (and later indigenous and poor people),
nonhuman organisms, and nature itself. Fossil-fueled industrial-agricultur-
al civilizations are especially destructive and unsustainable. Popular and
democratic movements have been overwhelmed by the increasingly sophis-
ticated ways that elites justify and enforce their rule and promote material-
ism and the domination of nature.
In concert, the conference speakers offered radical prescriptions. They
called for direct and aggressive resistance to plutocracy and environmental
destruction. The immediate objective, several of them contended, should be
to bring down industrial civilization—which, they claimed, has structural
vulnerabilities. Specifically, they urged those gathered to form or support
secret cells that would, as their first priority, sabotage the energy infrastruc-
ture of today’s dominant and destructive social and economic systems. It
is also critical, they contended, that activists avoid pacifist ideologies and
even carefully consider whether, and when, the time might be ripe to take
up arms to overturn the system. After the most inflammatory of these state-
ments, at least a third of the crowd rose in standing ovation.3
It is not necessary to hold an anarchist or anti-civilization ideology to
wonder if electoral politics, lobbying and educational efforts, or litigation-
based strategies are enough. Indeed, one reason that many people in main-
stream environmental organizations sympathize with these radicals is that
they often share a despairing view of the current destructive trends and
recognize that, despite their best efforts, they have been unable to slow or
reverse them.
It is also not necessary to be willing to contemplate violent tactics when
considering or engaging in resistance. Although definitions of resistance
typically include underground organizations opposing an occupying or au-
thoritarian power or regime, often with acts of sabotage or guerilla warfare,
the term can also refer to nonviolent, extralegal opposition to a regime or its
practices—even a regime that is considered politically legitimate, such as in
democratic countries. Examples of such resistance include disruptive pro-
test, civil disobedience, and noncompliance with government laws or with
the dictates or operations of public or private institutions considered to be
engaged in wrongdoing.
Anyone paying attention can easily identify both actions and negligent
inaction on the part of public and private actors that are exacerbating excep-
tionally harmful environmental and social trends. Is it time, then, for resis-
tance? Has it been effective or counterproductive? If effective or potentially
306 | State of the World 2013
so, which kinds are, under what circumstances, and by whom? What should
the posture of mainstream environmental organizations be toward those
who engage in resistance?
It is time to break the taboo against talking about this and to consider
what lessons can be drawn from decades of experimentation with direct
action resistance.
Premises
This is ethically fraught terrain. To be as clear as possible, let’s begin with a
forthright statement of the premises underlying the analysis in this chapter.
First, sometimes it is permissible or even obligatory to resist legally con-
stituted laws and policies. This statement is uncontroversial when it comes
to long-settled social conflicts. In hindsight, at least, nearly everyone would
agree that the Confessing Church’s resistance to the duly elected Nazi regime
and its laws was not only morally permissible but obligatory. To this a host
of additional examples could easily be added: Mahatma Gandhi leading the
resistance to British imperial rule, Martin Luther King, Jr. in his often illegal
pursuit of full citizenship for African-Americans, and even Nelson Mandela
and the African National Congress’ insurrectionary strategy to topple South
Africa’s apartheid regime.
Once it is acknowledged that laws and policies have been and can be un-
just, whether to resist becomes a muddier moral terrain. When laws are en-
acted through democratic processes, of course, they are generally considered
on first appearance to be legitimate, so any decision to break them ought not
be taken lightly. Such a decision often requires someone to choose between
competing goods, between moral principles that ordinarily would not be
in conflict but that can be in specific cases. The best laws try to anticipate
exceptions and complexity, including by fashioning penalties that recog-
nize moral ambiguity and unusual circumstances. Breaking into someone’s
home, for example, is normally and properly judged illegal, but in the case
of a fire, it becomes permissible so that lives can be saved.
Criminal codes at their best carefully consider the intent of the accused,
and penalties increase according to a crime’s maliciousness. But exigent
circumstances are not usually factored into criminal statutes. Nor do law-
makers always anticipate and incorporate into law, as they should, new cir-
cumstances or understandings. It is not uncommon, therefore, that deeply
ethical and well-informed people will decide that some laws are inadequate,
outdated, or just plain wrong, that the processes for changing them are too
corrupt or the time too short, and that the stakes just too high to justify
obeying such laws.
Second, it is wrong for one species to dramatically reduce Earth’s bio-
logical diversity, and preventing anthropogenic species extinctions should
Resistance: Do the Ends Justify the Means? | 307
be a high moral priority. This ethical premise has been defended on many
grounds, a survey of which is not possible here, but they include prudential
and anthropocentric concern for human welfare, biocentric philosophy or
spirituality, and diverse religious grounds in which protecting species is a
religious duty.4
Third, the best available consensus science indicates that our species is
precipitating a rapid decline of biological diversity, and this process is ac-
celerating due to anthropogenic climate change. It is also clear that political
systems have not halted these processes.
Fourth, and finally, since species that go extinct are lost forever, the stakes
are high and an exigent response is urgently needed. Political systems have
utterly failed to arrest biodiversity decline, nor are they poised to respond
quickly and effectively.
Given these ethical and factual premises, individuals and organizations
should consider the reasons for this decline and how to overcome it. Since
current laws and political activities have failed to redress the situation and
appear unlikely to do so, it is incumbent to ask what strategies and tactics
might be successful. Such an assessment should include determining wheth-
er strategies and tactics must be constrained by existing laws and prevailing
assumptions about what constitutes acceptable political action.
Put more simply: anthropogenic environmental decline in the light of
life-affirming values and political inaction demands analysis of the obstacles
to effective action, including laws and mores that might constrain it. Given
the urgency of the situation, extralegal tactics should be on the table, as they
were in earlier causes where great moral urgency was properly felt.
This does not, however, answer the question of whether the time for re-
sistance has come. For this, we would need to diagnose the reasons for the
present predicaments, determine what resources can be acquired, the sort of
resistance needed, and whether a given action or campaign would be mor-
ally permissible, likely to be effective, and unlikely to be counterproductive.
Venturing answers is perilous, in part, because there is so much complexity
and uncertainty in the deeply entwined environmental and human socio-
economic systems we seek to understand and affect. Yet the urgency of the
situation requires nothing less.
Types of Resistance
Recognizing that social reality never perfectly reflects our maps of it, it is
nevertheless useful to proceed with a review of the main types of resistance.
First, but not least, there are many ways that people of conscience re-
sist current trends, including by battling ideas that consider the world to
be a smorgasbord for ever-swelling human numbers and appetites and that
view human beings as somehow exempt from nature’s laws. More impor-
308 | State of the World 2013
tant, there is a revolution going on with regard to understanding the hu-
man place in and responsibilities to nature. These are unfolding rapidly and
globally, and while the trends have diverse tributaries and expressions, they
also have common emotional and spiritual dimensions, including deep feel-
ings of belonging and connection to nature, as well as convictions about the
value of all living things. There are, put simply, many forms of cultural resis-
tance to beliefs and practices that do not cohere with science or progressive
environmental ethics. These trends
are important to note if we are to
avoid the disempowering influence
of cynicism.5
While contemplating the possi-
bility and promise of resistance, it is
also important to note that not ev-
eryone has the ability to participate
in its more radical forms. Economi-
cally vulnerable populations, for ex-
ample, might have few resources or
opportunities to directly confront
forces they understandably fear or
upon whom they directly or indi-
rectly depend. People in such situa-
tions, who have much to lose from
direct confrontation with workplace
authorities or rulers, sometimes
engage in what might be labeled passive resistance. This generally involves
noncooperation and noncompliance, such as through work slowdowns,
theft, feigned ignorance, and sometimes difficult-to-detect forms of sabo-
tage. Such tactics are designed to avoid attention or detection. The focus
here, however, is on whether more direct and aggressive forms of resistance
are warranted.6
For radical environmentalists, the answer is a resounding yes, because
they agree that the agricultural-capitalist-industrial system is fundamen-
tally destructive and inherently unsustainable. The earliest Earth First! ac-
tivists, for example, hoped that a combination of public protest—including
civil disobedience and sabotage to thwart and deter the greatest assaults
on biodiversity—would increase public sympathy and demands for envi-
ronmental protection. Often, but not always, a connection was made be-
tween the erosion of biological diversity and cultural diversity (especially
as represented in indigenous and peasant cultures). And concern for both
animated the efforts.
Some also supported the political theory that creating an environmental
Fi
bo
na
cc
i B
lu
e
March against the proposed Keystone XL pipeline, Minneapolis.
Resistance: Do the Ends Justify the Means? | 309
extreme would serve as a counterweight to the extreme right in political
battles, pulling the political center more toward the environmentalist pole
of the right/left continuum, which is where laws and policies tend to end up.
Yet others, such as the radical environmental activists who, after a number
of their comrades were arrested, concluded that they could save nothing
from prison, established the Greater Gila Biodiversity Project in 1989, which
eventually became the Center for Biological Diversity. These activists were
among the ones who pioneered tenacious litigation strategies, using existing
laws and rules written by resource agencies to challenge, with great success,
practices they considered destructive. This is another form of resistance, al-
though it is seldom recognized as such.7
While these early radical environmental activists maintained an apoc-
alyptic view that modern society would collapse of its own unsustainable
weight, their priority was to save what they could of the genetic and species
variety of the planet before that inevitable collapse. They welcomed the en-
visioned collapse, believing it would halt the destruction and give the planet
a chance to heal.8
This stream of thought thus had both radical and reformist dimensions.
The more optimistic activists thought that direct action resistance might
help precipitate widespread consciousness change, preventing humans from
overshooting their carrying capacity and precipitating the collapse of en-
vironmental and thus social systems. The more reformist participants re-
sembled those from more mainstream environmental movements, who
consider mass protests, accompanied by nonviolent civil disobedience and
sometimes spectacular acts of protest and resistance (such as by Green-
peace), as a way to educate and transform public opinion and thus to change
behaviors, laws, and policies.
The revolutionary stream of these activists find hope only in actions that
would accelerate the collapse of the societies they do not believe can be re-
formed voluntarily. These activists believe that, given the propaganda power
of the elites who are most responsible for the destruction and who control
political systems, more egalitarian, democratic, and environmentally sus-
tainable systems have no chance of being established until this system is
demolished or falls of its own unsustainable weight.9
In sum, when it comes to ecological resistance movements, there is a con-
tinuum of types, with varying diagnoses, strategies, and tactics. One extreme
of the continuum of activists, who grew in number soon after the founding
of Earth First!, is represented by the Earth Liberation Front, green anar-
chism, and Deep Green Resistance. These forms can be labeled revolution-
ary resistance, and they boldly proclaim an intention to bring down, “by any
means necessary,” an industrial system considered inherently destructive.
More-moderate sectors of radical environmentalism represent a kind
310 | State of the World 2013
of revolutionary/reformist hybrid, which shares many of the critical per-
spectives about the roots and current drivers of environmental degrada-
tion but which draws more eclectically and pragmatically on revolutionary
and reformist ideas, strategies, and tactics. These activists do not absolutely
dismiss the possibility that, with the right combination of resistance and
reform strategies, there could be an upwelling of public support for envi-
ronmental health and social equity and therefore that a less catastrophic
transition toward sustainability might yet be possible.
On the other end of this spectrum is reformist resistance, which endors-
es demonstrations, including extralegal tactics such as civil disobedience
(which can be highly disruptive, as for example when logging roads or high-
ways are blockaded) as well as diverse pedagogical efforts, hoping to sway
public opinion and pressure public officials into changing laws and policies
while also affecting whether they honestly and successfully enforce current
laws and policies. More so than the previous two types, here the goal is to
force a democratic revolution or restore it where it has been subverted. And
the hope is that this could create the conditions needed for dramatic action
to address the most trenchant environmental and social problems.
Activists taking this approach may share the critical perspective of the
more radical advocates of resistance about agriculture and industrialism,
but they nevertheless take a more pragmatic approach, sometimes acknowl-
edging that the current systems are powerful, resilient, and difficult to bring
down. Or they may conclude that the threat to human beings, to other spe-
cies, and to environmental systems would be too great should the current
systems precipitously collapse and that therefore such an outcome should
not be pursued.
Assessing Resistance
With premises about and types of resistance established, and with humility
given the diverse variables in play and the difficulty in predicting the effects
of different courses of action, it is possible to venture a broad assessment of
resistance strategies. These views are quite properly subject to change, given
changed circumstances and understandings.
The radical critique of agricultural, industrial civilization cannot be eas-
ily dismissed. It is true that as agricultural societies spread around the world,
cultural diversity has dramatically eroded. Agricultures have displaced,
murdered, or assimilated foraging peoples, whether through superior num-
bers and force, through the diseases their lifestyles brought with them, or
through processes of settler colonialism. The erosion of biological diversity
has gone hand-in-hand with these processes, all of which intensified with
the power of the fossil-fuel-driven industrial age.10
Modern societies are unduly celebratory of their achievements when they
Resistance: Do the Ends Justify the Means? | 311
have amnesia about what has been lost and by whom. With an understanding
of the tragic aspects of this history and recognition that these very processes
are ongoing, it is clear that dramatic actions to halt these processes and en-
gage in restorative justice and healing where possible are morally obligatory.
This does not mean, however, that the revolutionary prescription of the
Deep Green Resistance activists—attacking the energetic infrastructure of in-
dustrial civilization—is warranted. Indeed, the claim that this could cause the
collapse of industrial civilization is fanciful. Natural disas-
ters (including those intensified or worsened by human
activities) demonstrate that as long as energy is available,
large-scale societies will rebuild. Even if resisters were to
disrupt the system significantly, not only would the sys-
tem’s rulers rebuild, recent history has shown that they
would increase their power to suppress resisting sectors.
Moreover, as many radical activists have acknowl-
edged in interviews—even those who have supported
sabotage—the more an action risks or intends to hurt
people, the more the media and public focus on the tac-
tics rather than the concerns that gave rise to the actions.
This means that the most radical tactics tend to be coun-
terproductive to the goal of increasing awareness and
concern in the general public.
When accessing the effectiveness of resistance, it is also
important to address how effective authorities will be at
preventing and repressing it. The record so far does not
lead easily to enthusiasm for the most radical of the tactics
deployed thus far. Authorities use tactics that are violent
or can be framed as such to justify to the public at large
spying, infiltration, disruption, and even violence against
these movements. Such repression typically succeeds in
eviscerating the resistance, in part because as people are
arrested and tried, some will cooperate with the prosecu-
tion in return for a reduced sentence.
More than half of those arrested did just that during what Federal au-
thorities dubbed “operation backfire,” which led to the arrests and convic-
tion of more than two dozen Earth Liberation Front saboteurs who had
been involved in arson cases. One of the leaders, facing life in prison under
post-9/11 terrorism laws, committed suicide shortly after his arrest, while
several others became fugitives. The individuals convicted drew prison
terms ranging from 6 to 22 years. The noncooperating activists, and those
for whom terrorism enhancements had been added to the arson charges,
drew the longest terms.11
In
gr
id
Ta
yl
ar
At the University of California, Berkeley, protestors
refuse to leave the last standing tree of a grove of
mostly oaks leveled to make way for construction
of a campus building.
312 | State of the World 2013
As if this were not devastating enough to the resistance, broader radi-
cal environmental campaigns that were not using such radical tactics ebbed
dramatically in the wake of these arrests. This was because movement activ-
ists who were friends and allies of those arrested rallied to provide prison
support, which then took their time and resources away from their cam-
paigns. But it was also because the resistance community was divided over
whether (and if so, how) to support the defendants who, to various degrees,
cooperated with investigators. Given this history, it makes little sense to base
strategy and tactics on such an unlikely possibility that communities of re-
sistance will ever be able to mount a sustained campaign to bring down
industrial civilization, even if that were a desirable objective.12
The envisioned alternative to this objective—creating or, in the view of
many activists, returning to small-scale, egalitarian, environmentally friendly
lifestyles—would not be able to support the billions of people currently liv-
ing on Earth, at least not at anything remotely like the levels of materialism
that most people aspire to. So the most radical of the resistance prescriptions
would quite naturally lead to strong and even violent counter-resistance.13
These ideologies, explicitly or implicitly, make unduly optimistic assump-
tions about our species, including about our capacity to maintain solidarity
in the face of governmental suppression, as well as about the human capac-
ity for cooperation and mutual aid. To expect such behavior to become the
norm may be conceivable, and it may be exemplified by some small-scale
societies, but it is not something to be expected universally, let alone during
times of social stress intensified by increasing environmental scarcity.14
So despite the accurate assessment about the ways agricultural and in-
dustrial societies have reduced biocultural diversity, there is little reason to
think that the most radical resistance tactics would be able to precipitate or
hasten the collapse of such societies. Nor is there much evidence that such
tactics would contribute to more-pragmatic efforts to transform modern
societies. In contrast, there is significant evidence that these sorts of tactics
have been and are likely to remain counterproductive.
Spiking Awareness of Biodiversity Decline
There are, nevertheless, concrete historical examples where extralegal resis-
tance has played a significant and even decisive role in campaigns to protect
natural habitats and change government policies. Examples from diverse
sites of contention around the world are documented in Ecological Resistance
Movements: The Global Emergence of Radical and Popular Environmental-
ism. Many other studies have documented the successes and promise of such
movements, as well as the failures and often-violent resistance that they face.15
These dynamics were all present a few decades ago when activists ag-
gressively, and often illegally, campaigned to halt deforestation in the for-
Resistance: Do the Ends Justify the Means? | 313
ests of the Pacific Northwest and Rocky Mountains of the United States.
Tree spiking, which involves putting metal or ceramic spikes in trees that are
slated for logging, was among the most controversial of tactics. First used
in anti-logging campaigns in Australia in the late 1970s and in Canada in
1982, radical environmentalists took up the practice with a vengeance in the
United States during the 1980s and early 1990s.16
Tree spiking was a tactic that, it was hoped, when combined with block-
ades and other forms of sabotage, would bankrupt logging companies
believed to be engaged in unsustainable and species-threatening logging.
Failing that, the hope was that logging would slow down when some of it
became unprofitable due to the additional costs of removing the spikes.
Although there have been examples of spiking leading directly to the
quiet cancellation of a timber sale or to economic distress for a small log-
ging company, the practice did not often, in a direct way, significantly reduce
deforestation. It did, however, have another important impact. In a short
period of time, the controversy it precipitated contributed significantly to
public awareness of deforestation and related endangered species issues. As
Mike Roselle, one of Earth First!’s cofounders, later claimed, before they be-
gan spiking trees nobody had even heard of the ancient forests or the threats
to them. Indeed, before these campaigns the term biodiversity was not in
the public lexicon, nor was its value advanced in public discourse. It took
these campaigns to bring the very idea of biodiversity and its importance
out from obscure scientific enclaves and into public view.17
With the occasional destruction of logging equipment, publicity stunts
such as banner hangings, increasingly sophisticated blockades of logging
roads, and the occupation of logging equipment or trees to prevent logging,
public awareness of these issues grew. So did expressions of concern (and
sometimes outrage) to public officials. In several cases, the resistance gained
enough strength to orchestrate large protests that included mass arrests, as
when in 1996 thousands of citizens gathered in a sparsely populated area
of northern California to protest logging by the Pacific Lumber Company
(PALCO) in ancient redwood groves. More than a thousand people were ar-
rested for trespassing on land owned by the timber company.18
This, plus a decade of resistance to PALCO’s practices, contributed to po-
litical pressures to reduce social disruption and the loss of political support,
and it led to heightened scrutiny and a citation to the company for violat-
ing the law. Eventually, a deal was worked out to sell the most biologically
precious old-growth groves to the state of California. Not long afterward,
the company went bankrupt and was sold to another firm that promised to
protect the remaining ancient groves and manage the rest of its forestland
more gently.19
This was not the only case in which blockades of logging roads or tree
314 | State of the World 2013
occupations, which were sustained for months and even years, forced con-
cessions from business or resource managers or provided time for attorneys
to win injunctions or lawsuits against the logging. Not incidentally, one ra-
tionale for extralegal resistance is the often-accurate charge, as validated in
the courts in responses to lawsuits, that industries or the government itself
had broken environmental laws. Such facts allow those engaged in resistance
to contend that they are actually displaying respect for laws by risking arrest
and incarceration in their efforts to force companies and the government
to obey existing statutes. And when governments and corporations see that
they are being monitored, it contributes to improved compliance with envi-
ronmental laws and regulations.20
Sometimes resistance movements put so much pressure on government
officials that major victories are won, as when the U.S. Forest Service under
President Bill Clinton issued the Roadless Area Conservation Rule in 2001,
which protected some 25 million hectares (more than 58 million acres) of
federal forestland. Although it took more than a decade of legal battles for
opponents of this rule to exhaust their legal challenges to it, this has become
the law of the land. And it is inconceivable that this rule would have been
issued without more than a decade of very strong and often disruptive re-
sistance to the Forest Service’s timber program. Although the rule does not
do everything that activists sought, it is a significant advance for biodiversity
conservation in North America.21
A Time for Resistance?
People engaged in environmental causes around the world, including those
who deploy resistance strategies, lose far more often than they win. But there
are signs that direct action resistance is growing. Reports of desperate people
resisting displacement from their lands and livelihoods for environmentally
devastating projects justified under the rubrics of progress and development
appear to be increasing in many regions, including in China, South America,
Russia, and a variety of other sites. Increasingly, those resisting are threaten-
ing or even in a few cases resorting to violence, although such movements
have generally been the object of far more violence than they have ever used
against others.22
It is by no means certain that these movements will succeed or even sur-
vive the repression by authorities that they all too typically face. This will
depend in no small measure on whether strong, international alliances are
established and whether repressive acts are publicized internationally. Done
in a way that minimizes or prevents reactionary counter-resistance and
that does not lead to widespread public revulsion, ecological resistance has
played and can continue to play a valuable and important role in environ-
mental protection and sustainability.23
Resistance: Do the Ends Justify the Means? | 315
Indeed, direct action resistance can bring attention to issues in a way that
electoral politics and lobbying cannot. It can inspire action and apply politi-
cal pressure on corporate and governmental officials. Like a rowdy audience
or angry coach riding a referee, it can affect the decisions that are made and
even whether officials will enforce the law. More significant in the long term
is that such resistance may even contribute to shifting the center of public
debate more toward the positions of environmentalists.
That mainstream environmental organizations and actors are reticent
to acknowledge the positive role of resistance is understandable. After all,
they work within the system and by its rules, and it would seem hypocritical
to work for laws, policies, and enforcement mechanisms while refusing to
abide by society’s existing laws. Yet there are many examples of individu-
als and groups honored today for obeying the overwhelming majority of
existing laws while protesting highly consequential and exceptionally harm-
ful immoral laws. Martin Luther King, Jr., for one, claimed that disobeying
unjust laws and facing the consequences for doing so actually expresses the
highest regard for the importance and value of the law as an institution.24
In August 2011, journalist and activist Bill McKibben and his group 350
.org orchestrated a protest at the White House demanding action and lead-
ership by the United States on climate change. The action led to 143 arrests
that same day and over a thousand that month. Most prominent among
those arrested was James Hansen, the head of the National Aeronautics and
Space Administration’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies. It was not Han-
sen’s first arrest, for he had become so alarmed about climate change and the
government’s anemic response that he had decided the time for resistance
had come. In 2013, more such protests are being organized.25
But how much more powerful these protests would be if there were a
march on Washington comparable to those during the civil rights era and
involving thousands of arrests by individuals demanding action on climate
change? And how much more powerful yet if similar marches took place
in Brussels, Beijing, Brasília, London, Moscow, Cairo, Pretoria, and other
centers of power around the planet? Of course, there have been some large
demonstrations already, beginning most notably with the anti-globalization
protests at the World Trade Organization meeting in Seattle in 1999 and
continuing at other such international meetings. But the complaints and
demands in these cases were diluted, ultimately unspecific, and thus easier
to ignore. Climate change protest could provide a unifying focus for forcing
global changes toward sustainability. Indeed, as there are many precedents
where “people power” has toppled regimes, the global nature of the threat
posed by climate change certainly makes it feasible that social protest and
unrest could force concerted action on the part of targeted governments
and businesses.
316 | State of the World 2013
Arguably, such protests would be all the more effective if they were
protracted and scrupulously nonviolent, while also disrupting business as
usual. Social disruption is often a prerequisite to concessions by political
elites. Yet for such a dramatic, global movement of conscience to arise and
gather strength, there would need to be leadership from the most power-
ful environmental organizations, alliance building by them and the world’s
religious communities, and careful planning regarding the kind of public
theater that would be the most effective. Given how high the stakes are, and
how slow the global response has been, it is reasonable to ask whether the
time has come for the most prominent and respected environmental orga-
nizations and individuals to add another dimension to their advocacy for
environmental sanity: direct action resistance.
If there are regrets in the struggle for sustainability among those who
know the facts and the stakes involved, it may well be akin to the musings
of Henry David Thoreau. Toward the end of his life, after noting how out-
of-step he was with the conventional wisdom of his day, he commented, “If
I repent of anything, it is very likely to be my good behavior. What demon
possessed me that I behaved so well?” That is a timely question for us all.26
c h a p t e r 2 9
The Promises and Perils
of Geoengineering
Simon Nicholson
Simon Nicholson is an assistant
professor in the School of In-
ternational Service at American
University in Washington, DC.
www.sustainabilitypossible.org
Over the last handful of years, a set of radical ideas that have long been
confined to the fringes of climate change discussions have begun to edge
toward center stage. The ideas are known collectively as geoengineering pro-
posals—sweeping technological schemes designed to counteract the effects
of planetary warming. (See Box 29–1 for a full definition.)1
Many of the best-known geoengineering proposals read like science fic-
tion. One widely circulated idea is to launch giant mirror arrays or sunshades
into near-Earth orbit, in an attempt to reflect some amount of solar radia-
tion. Other lines of research suggest that a similar effect could be achieved
by depositing fine reflective particles of sulfur dioxide in the stratosphere or
by deploying a host of ocean-going ships to spray cloud-whitening saltwater
high into the sky. At the same time there are ongoing efforts to develop vast
machines designed to suck carbon dioxide (CO
2
) out of the air, to produce
carbon-capturing cement, to lock carbon into soil, and to perfect the drop-
ping of massive quantities of soluble iron into the oceans to encourage great
carbon-inhaling blooms of plankton.2
Yet even while many geoengineering proposals sound fantastical, the
field is beginning to receive sustained attention from serious people and
groups. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has con-
vened expert meetings to consider the topic. So too have other important
scientific bodies around the world. In the United States, government agen-
cies from the Pentagon to the Department of Energy have advocated that
federal dollars be devoted to geoengineering research, and research teams
in universities and the private sector in many countries are looking to move
beyond theorizing about global climate control to technological develop-
ment and deployment.3
Even as sober a scientific voice as President Obama’s chief science advi-
sor, John Holdren, who in 2007 had claimed that “belief in technological
miracles is generally a mistake,” seems to have come at least partly around.
Worldwatch Institute, State of the World 2013: Is Sustainability Still Possible?,
DOI 10.5822/ 978-1-61091-458-1_29, © 2013 by Worldwatch Institute
317
318 | State of the World 2013
Holdren suggested in 2009, when asked about the
geoengineering option, that “we don’t have the
luxury of taking any approach off the table. . . .We
might get desperate enough to want to use it.”4
Dreams of weather and climate control are
hardly new. Ancient traditions had a variety of
rituals aimed at calling forth favorable weather.
Since the beginning of the science age, numerous
attempts have been made to create or dissipate
rain, to still hurricanes, and to manage ice flows.
This has not always been a venerable undertaking.
Weather and climate manipulation has through-
out history been a field replete with more than
its share of tricksters and dreamers. Today a fresh
cadre of would-be climate engineers is emerging.
They have newly honed scientific understandings,
increasing amounts of money, and strengthening
political winds at their backs. So what, then, is to
be made of geoengineering? Is it a new form of
hucksterism? A dangerous folly? Or does geoengi-
neering have some ultimately positive role to play
in the transition to a sustainable future?5
Answering such questions is hardly straightfor-
ward. One important thing to keep in mind is that
not all geoengineering proposals are alike. A catch-
all category like this hides some very important
distinctions. Some geoengineering ideas threaten
to unleash extraordinarily high environmental
or social costs or promise to concentrate political
power in a troubling fashion. Other proposals, if developed in sensible and
sensitive ways, hold out some real hope for a world adjusting to a changing
climate. Making sense of geoengineering demands a separation of the reality
from the hype—and a separation of the ideas that are altogether too risky
from those that appear a good deal more benign.
A Look at the Geoengineering Landscape
In November 2007, the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration
(NASA) hosted a meeting of handpicked scientists at the Ames Research
Center in San Francisco, California. The meeting was called to look at the
innocuous-sounding enterprise of “managing solar radiation.”6
The gathering brought together an array of geoengineering luminaries.
While their main goal was development of a scientific research agenda for
A straightforward definition of geoengineeering comes
from an influential report issued by the United King-
dom’s Royal Society in 2009. Geoengineering, says the
report, is any “deliberate large-scale manipulation of the
planetary environment to counteract anthropogenic
climate change.”
Building on this definition, there are—as physicist
David Keith has noted—two key aspects that must
delineate a geoengineering enterprise: scale and intent.
By these criteria, sending giant mirrors into orbit is
clearly a geoengineering activity. So would be the drop-
ping of thousands of tons of iron into the oceans or the
introduction of hundreds of tons of sulfate particles into
the stratosphere.
Other activities fall in a gray zone. An individual
installing a reflective white roof on a house gets a check
mark for “intent,” but such an activity fails, by Keith’s
criteria, to qualify as a geoengineering effort because
of limited “scale.” The same can likely be said of a single
coal-fired power plant that attempts to capture and
sequester some portion of its emitted carbon. On the
other hand, if a coordinated nationwide or international
effort were made to install white roofs, or if a regulatory
move required carbon sequestration from coal-fired
power plants, then activity would be prompted at a
large-enough scale to constitute geoengineering.
Source: See endnote 1.
Box 29–1. Defining Geoengineering
The Promises and Perils of Geoengineering | 319
this developing field, a central theme over the two days of conversation was
impatience and frustration with the traditional suite of measures put for-
ward to tackle climate change. United Nations–sponsored political negotia-
tions, carbon trading schemes, attempts to promote alternative energies—
all were seen by those in attendance as doomed to fail or to be progressing
far too slowly to avert disaster.7
In this, the tone of the Ames meeting echoed a message from a partic-
ularly influential geoengineering paper in 2006 by Nobel prize–winning
chemist Paul Crutzen. There, Crutzen had labeled attempts by policymakers
to bring about reductions in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions as “grossly
unsuccessful.” He went on to call the hope that emissions could be brought
under control rapidly enough to prevent widespread climate catastrophe a
“pious wish.”8
Such views are the entry point into the world of geoengineering. By just
about any available measure, the climate situation is worsening. As Arctic ice
melts, sea levels rise, wildfires increase in frequency and severity, and storms
worsen, there is a growing sense in influential quarters that political and
social strategies aimed at reducing GHG emissions are proving hopelessly
ineffective. The stage is set for a shift in focus to dramatic, technology-based
climate stabilization measures.
The technological strategi