Sustainability, v2.0

More than a little debate has taken place in recent months about the future of the environmental movement. It is dying, some say, from self-inflicted wounds resulting from its inability to construct a coherent and compelling public message.

“The environment,” these critics point out, isn’t just a bunch of “things” — old-growth trees, spotted owls, polluted rivers, denuded parks, and the like — but the interconnectedness of all things. As such, it is part of other “movements” — for racial and gender equity, for improved access to health care, for worker rights, human rights, civil rights, and more. Making those connections more clearly, the argument goes, will bring environmentalism back from the edge of death.

If that’s the case, we can thank the Worldwatch Institute for taking some heroic measures.

The 2005 edition of Worldwatch’s authoritative State of the World series focuses on the links between environmental and social ills and global security. “Poverty, disease, and environmental decline are the true axis of evil,” it says. “Acts of terror and the dangerous reactions they provoke are symptomatic of underlying sources of global insecurity, including the perilous interplay among poverty, infectious disease, environmental degradation, and rising competition over oil and other resources.”

Or, as I like to put it: Sustainability = Security.

That’s a message that’s got legs, as they say in the ad biz. To be sure, it’s far from feel-good or uplifting; it definitely needs a little punching up by the Madison Ave. wizards. But it’s a start.

Worldwatch doesn’t overtly make the sustainability-security link in its book, but it’s a subtext throughout. Some examples:

• Continued dependence on oil fuels geopolitical rivalries, civil wars, and human rights violations. The economic security of supplier and buyer nations is compromised by severe swings in price and supply. And oil’s role in climate change poses grave threats to human safety.

• Insufficient access to water by nearly a half-billion people worldwide is a major cause of lost rural livelihoods, compelling farmers to abandon their fields and fueling conflicts.

• Food security is often undermined by factors such as water availability, land distribution, poverty, and environmental degradation. Among food security threats are climate change, the loss of plant and animal diversity, the rise of foodborne illnesses, and food bioterror.

• HIV/AIDS infects up to 46 million people, mostly in poorer countries. In sub-Saharan Africa, the disease is devastating education, weakening militaries, and undermining political stability.

• A “youth bulge” in more than 100 developing countries, in which 15- to 29-year-olds account for more than 40% of all adults, is threatening to be a destabilizing force if their discontent pushes them into crime or to join insurgencies or extremist groups.

And we haven’t yet mentioned the impacts of climate change.

How does the private sector fit in? Somewhat disappointingly, Worldwatch doesn’t really say, except for offering a sort of corporate Hippocratic oath: First, do no harm. Recent years has seen documentation of the complicity of multinational companies in exacerbating some of these problems: human rights abuses in oil-rich countries; the importing of “blood diamonds” whose profits support terrorist organizations; the misuse of financial services for arms purchases by terrorists, and more.

But Worldwatch doesn’t offer much counsel about how typical firms can leverage their considerable economic clout to address these global security threats — a gaping hole in an otherwise excellent report. Clearly, there’s much more needed on this topic.

But for now, let’s pause and celebrate a small step forward toward a reinvigorated environmental ethic — one that focuses not just on the birds and the trees but on the larger systemic issues: the inequalities, injustices, and inefficiencies that lead to ecosystem disruption — and the plight of the people both at home and around the world who suffer most when these systems are out of whack.

It doesn’t exactly sing, message-wise, but it’s a good moral foundation on which to build a global movement.

The catchy slogans will come.

Comments

[stephen o'grady]

great piece. i'd argue, however, that the more serious challenge to environmental efforts the world over is to step back from the often fundamentalist positions they occupy.

that they're often - but not always - in the right is besides the point; many normal folks that otherwise might be willing and active participants in green efforts are put off either by some overzealous activists or the doom and gloom outlook often espoused by environmental groups (which are often cyncially, and potentially accurately, construed as an attempt to secure future funding).

in addition to the more holistic approach you advocate, i'd also like to see one thing held out to the less environmentally minded segment of the population: hope. less doom and gloom, more here's how we can make it better. less ostracizing, more practical, small steps towards being more ecofriendly.

i know it hurts sometimes, but pragmatism is in my view the only way to engage the population as a whole.

[Will Duggan]

I'd love to know how the "end of environmentalism" story got legs. I suspect wise use fanatics who are so embolded by the power of audacious commentary, best embodied (that might be the wrong word) by Ann Coulter ("Canada had better watch out, McCarthy was a hero..."). What I would hope is that environmentalism is transforming as corporations stare EU regulations in the face and sustainability transcends enrionmentalism to include refere to holistic strategis for healtheir environment, social development, and economic prosperity. Also, people with neocortexes have been saying for a while that it would have to get worse before it got getter. It's getting worse . We'll have to see how the mainstream US press reacts to this report.