Change, Uncertainty, and the Future of Sustainable Development

Change, Uncertainty, and the Future of Sustainable Development

Dr. Lenore Newman

Postdoctoral scholar, Royal Roads University, British Columbia, Canada.

Abstract

Eighteen years after its popularization in the Brundtland Report, the concept of sustainable development continues to evolve. As the study of complex adaptive systems continues to inform our understanding of socio-ecological interactions, models of sustainable development will likely continue to integrate this knowledge. This is a positive change from both top-down approaches to sustainable development and overly normative goal based approaches; if sustainable development is to properly address the complexity of social and ecological systems, it must continue to move towards a model that is both process-driven and dynamic. Both system uncertainty and continuing innovation contribute to the requirement for an ongoing project of sustainable development that addresses issues on many scales and in a diverse manner.

Introduction

As we move into the twenty-first century, it is worthwhile to consider the evolution of our thinking towards the management of environmental issues. As our understanding of complex adaptive systems has evolved, the position of nature as a separate other that can be treated in isolation has become less popular. Society and ecosystems are interconnected, and must be treated as such. One question we must ask is whether concepts such as sustainable development have kept pace, or whether new concepts of our interaction with ecosystems should be developed. Is sustainable development a concept that can inform the future of social and ecological interactions? I believe that sustainable development has evolved, and this paper argues that this evolution must continue if we are to engage in successful management of ecological problems. Any study of complex adaptive systems in and of itself must be evolutionary and dynamic.

The flexibility of the concept of sustainable development stems from the Brundtland commission’s definition of sustainable development as behaviour that “meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (Brundtland, 1987), a definition that was left purposefully vague to allow various shareholders to work toward common ground. This broad definition promoted many different angles of thought, leading to a surge of papers on sustainable development in the late 1980s and 1990s (Aguirre, 2002). Almost all of these papers provided a new definition of sustainable development; there were at least sixty definitions in use by 1989

(Pezzey, 1989). There are now hundreds of definitions of sustainable development (Dale, 2001).

Some see this as a problematic ambiguity; William Rees argued that a prerequisite to developing sustainable policies is a satisfactory working definition of the concept (Rees, 1989), and Jickling argued that sustainable development education is hindered by the lack of an adequate conceptualization of sustainable development (Jickling, 1994). However this ambiguity has also led to flexibility and resilience. At times alternative terms have been introduced, such as sustainability. This replacement term, however, eliminates the necessary paradox that is best understood from the perspective of complex adaptive systems. Sustainability is the capacity to create, test, and maintain adaptive capability. Development is the process of creating, testing, and maintaining opportunity (Holling, 2001). Together these terms describe a process of environmental management that is evolutionary in nature. One does not make sense without the other. Sustainability tends to imply a stasis that does not reflect the reality of changing societies and ecosystems, and the need for development.

Critics have claimed that the concept of sustainable development is too normative, ambiguous and ineffective to solve the complex problems that will face the next generation (Jickling 2000). Others have declared the concept dead (Imber, 1996). Dale refers to the concept’s constructive ambiguity that qualifies development, bringing people to the table who normally don’t talk to one another. However sustainable development’s ambiguity continues to be a hallmark of a concept that is very much alive; when dealing with complex systems meaningful global definitions are not always possible or useful. The controversy over the definition of sustainable development has created a unique and constructive dialogue (Dale, 2001), especially at the grassroots level as many communities attempt to develop their own sustainable relationships with the ecosystems around them.

One of the main models of sustainable development to emerge over the last decade defines the sustainable development process as the reconciliation of three imperatives. There is an ecological imperative to respect global biophysical carrying capacities and to maintain biodiversity, a social imperative to develop of democratic systems of governance that can effectively propagate and sustain the values that people wish to live by, and an economic imperative to ensure that basic needs are met worldwide (Dale 2001; Robinson and Tinker 1997). This model reflects a critical interdisciplinarity needed for further progress in the management of ecological and social problems. I now argue that what this model still needs is the dynamics implied by the very term “development”. The concept must be grounded in complex adaptive systems epistemology, reflecting properties such as emergence, resilience, unpredictability, and change.

Dynamic Sustainable development

The above suggests that sustainable development is alive and well, but it is also a project that needs a direction for the future. The three pillar model has greatly refined the “sustainable” side of the term by stressing that for systems to be sustainable economic, ecological, and social concerns must all be addressed. However to properly embrace the “development” aspect of the term, we must above all stress flexibility in the face of change. The language of sustainable development needs to continue its shift from terms such as “equilibrium and steady state” to terms such as “resilience and adaptation”. In the following paragraphs I propose a set of qualities such a model of dynamic sustainable development might possess.

1. Dynamic Sustainable Development is a process, not a goal.

Goal orientated utopian models of environmental action range from Skinner’s “Walden Two” (Skinner, 1976) to the steady state economics proposed by Herman Daly (Daly, 1991). However sustainable development literature is already moving towards a focus on processes rather than goals. In recent literature, sustainable development is described as a continuous process of change (Jokinen et al, 1998), and is described as a process that must be treated as an evolution of ideas (Rammel & Van den Bergh, 2003). This shift is well founded; complexity theory has shown us that change is the norm in social and ecological systems. Any static or “climax community” will eventually fall prey to the “inevitable accident” (Kay et al, 1999). Change is the process that allows evolving systems to thrive. Rammel notes, “…there cannot be any best state, or stable equilibrium, or optimal path of development” (Rammel, 2003).

C.S. Holling argues that ‘sustainable development’ refers to the goal of fostering adaptive capabilities and creating opportunities. It is therefore not an oxymoron but a term that describes a logical partnership (Holling, 2001). However this partnership has a price; a process driven sustainable development has the disadvantage of all on-going processes; it is never completed. A true program of sustainable development is an indefinite process of monitoring and adjustment. Sustainable development is a moving target, (Salwasser, 1993); each successful adaptation is only a temporary “solution” to changing selective conditions (Rammel & Van den Bergh, 2003).

2. Dynamic Sustainable Development must cope with the inherent unpredictability of the systems it addresses.

Complex systems such as ecosystems and social systems are notoriously difficult to predict. Positive feedback loops allow accidents of history to get magnified in outcome (Waldrop, 1992). This leads to many results of small actions being unintended (Jervis, 1997) and unpredictable from the initial conditions. Our predictions of the future are at best temporary guides, leaving us in the need to iteratively monitor feedback loops and continually adjust our models and our actions accordingly. This inherent unpredictability represents a “strong uncertainty”; not only are we unable to predict the consequences of events we are unable to determine which events are the ones that will lead to future change (Spash, 2002).

Addressing strong uncertainty presents another reason for an on-going process of sustainable development. Tools such as “The Ecological Footprint” (Wackernagel & Rees, 1996) and other indicators can aid this process, as they provide a repeatable measurement of sustainable development at any one time. The changes that can arise in a complex system involving society and the environment can be particularly perplexing, as they can involve changes in human knowledge and awareness, changes in technology, and also changes in public perception (Hadfield, 1999). These three aspects can all be present at the same time and interact. Uncertainty also provides a good argument for diversity, as diversity can build resilience to disruption, erecting “firewalls” to ensure that portions of a system will survive an unexpected disruption.

3. Innovation processes greatly affect Sustainable Development Initiatives.

Early models of environmental societies were almost always static, steady state societies that changed very little over time. These models however, ignore innovation as a fundamental component of human society. We use technical ingenuity to create new technology, but social ingenuity reforms old institutions and social arrangements into new ones (Homer-Dixon, 2000). Managing our interaction with the Earth’s ecosystems would be much easier without the complicating factor of innovation constantly changing the nature of this interaction, but this process is constantly occurring on a number of scales. At the smaller scale we see incremental innovations, which are small refinements that occur relatively continuously. At a larger scale, there are radical innovations representing large shifts in technologies. These are not predictable, and may happen at any time. There are systematic innovations that can create entirely new fields (Pereira, 1994). Such sudden shifts can provide new technologies to protect ecosystems, can shift our resource use from one resource base to another, and can also increase our impact on ecosystems in new and unexpected ways. Some, like the introduction of chloroflurocarbons, might seem benign for decades. There are considerable lags, however, in the take-up of new innovations, due to the human propensity to resist change as well as critical lags in diffusion due to structural barriers, such as solitudes, silos and stovepipes (Dale 2001) within organizations and between sectors.

There is a historical uneasiness with innovation that informs the development of sustainable development dialogues. Though technology can be seen as an “adaptive answer” to problems (Rammel & Van den Bergh, 2003), there is a fundamental disconnect between the world of the information society and the groundings of sustainable development due to differing values held by the actors involved (Jokinen et al, 1998). This uneasiness is made more acute by the inherent uncertainty in the process of innovation. (Buenstorf, 2000)

Planning is difficult when things useful to us today might be of no use in the future and things we do not value may be essential to humans living in the future (Gowdy, 1994).

One method used to manage the uncertain effect of new innovations is to employ a precautionary principle. Precautionary principles follow a variety of models. Strong precautionary principles suggest that one take no action unless one is sure it will do no harm. A weak precautionary principle allows one to proceed with diffusion of an innovation even if there is a lack of certainty over its effect. Many people argue that where catastrophic risk is involved, a strong precautionary should be used (Morris, 2000).

Some form of precautionary principle is needed to “tame” the innovation process, and move away from the assumption that our innovations are “safe until proven dangerous” (Ravetz, 2004). Such a principle should weigh the costs and benefits of an innovation to the extent that this is possible within a complex society. We do have precedents for precautionary principles; examples include food safety laws and engineering standards.

4. Sustainable Development processes must be diverse and proceed at multiple scales.

Sustainable development began as very much a top-down enterprise. Governments were seen to be the drivers of change in the Brundtland report, and this was mirrored in the action plan which followed the Brundtland Commission, Agenda 21. A lack of grassroots involvement contributed to the poor implementation of the vision presented in this visionary plan (Ford, 2003). Sustainable development needs to occur on many scales, as the problems it claims to address are also found on many scales. Central government can be badly out of touch with local conditions (Roy & Tisdell, 1998), and often nation states are too large to tackle large global problems and too small to tackle global ones (Columbo, 2001). There needs to be larger scale international action, but also local grassroots action.

One promising feature of encouraging local response is that each local produces a slightly different approach, creating diversity. This variability of response allows society to experiment; evolving and refining approaches to sustainable development (Rammel & Straudinger, 2002). This view is not universally shared; in response to Rammel and Straudinger, McIntosh and Jeffrey ask:

Is it reasonable to maintain redundant diversity as a response to the

implications of uncertainty and change in social and socio-natural

systems (2004)?

They feel the answer is no; humans are quite able to adapt new solutions as required without a redundant pool of responses (2004). However in their following paper, Rammel and Straudinger reply that adaptability requires some diversity of response to function; adaptability stems out of a collective memory of past innovations (2004). In effect, adaptability without diversity is unlikely.

One avenue for increasing the diversity of sustainable development responses is to encourage action on all of the pillars of sustainability. Though much energy has been focused on the ecological pillar, the other pillars are of equal importance. This is a disputed statement; it has been argued that the pillar model is flawed as the environment should take primacy (Dawe & Ryan, 2003), but it is difficult in an age of deep interconnection between ecologies and societies to argue that the environment can be treated separately from ecological and social concerns. For example, income gaps continue to grow both internationally and within countries, especially since 1992 (Ward, 2002). Once the poor become so poor that they must exploit their environment to survive, the folly of considering social and environmental issues separately becomes evident. The social dimension, in fact, is likely the weakest pillar of sustainable development (Lehtonen, 2004), and the key challenges reside at the spaces where the dimensions come together.

Conclusion:

The lasting influence of sustainable development lies in its ability to evolve as a concept. Given the advances in the understanding of complex adaptive systems and the application of this understanding to ecological and social systems, there are likely many fruitful avenues that combine sustainable development and complex systems theory. I believe one of the outcomes of this combination is a process-based approach to sustainable development focused upon evolution and change. Such a dynamic approach to sustainability is centered upon management processes rather than short term goal driven initiatives. This is partly due to the need to address both uncertainty and the effects of innovation, which create new environmental challenges even as they create answers to others. These shifts will be accompanied by a continued shift from top down approaches to sustainable development to local empowerment supported by larger scale organizations and government. In effect, a plentiful supply of local grassroots sustainable development initiatives provides an ongoing laboratory. Rapidly improving communications technology will play a growing role in linking small scale efforts together and disseminating information. Each community can learn from the others, evolving the most promising approaches to managing ecosystem interactions. In the long run, the most successful sustainable development initiatives will likely look rather a lot like ecosystems; diverse, complex, and evolving.

Acknowledgements:

I would like to thank Dr. Ann Dale for her many enlightening conversations on this topic.

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