Follow the Footprints:

A Transdisciplinary Perspective on Sustainability

William E. Rees, PhD, FRSC
UBC School of Community and Regional Planning

Forum EDS Qubec , Qubec

4 April 2012

Context: The Gathering Storm

A great change in our stewardship of the IMPEDING SUSTAINABILITY? earth and the life on it is required if vast THE AMBIGUOUS and our OF ROLE human misery is to be avoided HIGHER is not to be global home on this planet EDUCATION

irretrievably mutilated (UCS 1992).

Human activity is Williamsuch a strain putting E. Rees, PhD on the natural functions of theof British that University Earth Columbia School planets ecosystems to the ability of the of Community and Regional Planning sustain future generations can no longer be taken for granted (MEA 2005).

Building Sustainable Communities Kelowna, BC (27 Feb 2011)

Hypothesis: Modern H. sapiens is inherently biased against sustainability

Unsustainability is an inevitable
emergent property of the systemic interaction between technoindustrial society, as presently conceived, and the ecosphere.

Both biological (nature) and sociocultural (nurture) factors are involved.

Key Bio-behavioural Drivers

Like all other species, H. sapiens is genetically predisposed to:

expand to occupy all accessible habitats and; use up all available resources (In the case of humans, availability is determined by technology.)

A Fisheries Example: Canadas Shame

The Socio-Cultural Factor: The Perpetual Growth Myth

There are no... limits to the carrying capacity of the earth that are likely to bind any time in the foreseeable future (Summers 1991). We have in our hands now the technology to feed, clothe and supply energy to an ever-growing population for the next 7 billion years (Simon 1995).

Global Expression
Since the 1950s, virtually the entire world has come to share a mythic narrative of global development centered on unlimited economic expansion, fuelled by more liberalized trade. Sub-myth: human well-being can be all but equated with ever-expanding income/consumption.

Result: The Anomalous, Unsustainable Oil-Based Expansion of the Human Enterprise beyond Global Carrying Capacity
2012 Population: 7+ billion

The extensive reliance on fossil fuel beginning in the 19th Century allowed the explosive growth of the human enterprise and the increase in global entropy.

The period of rapid growth since the 19th Century, which we take to be the norm, actually delimits the single most anomalous period in the history of H. sapiens .

The Great Acceleration, post 1750:

The exponential growth of consumption

The Great Acceleration is clearly shown in every component of the human enterprise included in the figure. Either the component was not present before 1950 (e.g., foreign direct investment) or its rate of change increased sharply after 1950 (e.g., population)
(Steffen, Crutzen & McNeill 2007 [Ambio 36: 314-321])

A culture based on fossil energy

In 2000 fossil fuelbased energy systems generated more than 80% of the total energy used to power the global economy.

Growth in fossil energy use has been exponential. About 76% of the anthropogenic increase in atmospheric carbon (total increases= 105 ppm) has occurred since 1950, half in the past 30 years.

(TU-Wein & IIASA 2003)

Consequence: Increasing Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide (A 38% Increase since 19th Century)
390+ ppm in Aug 2011

Rate of increase (ppm/year)

1970-79: 1.3 1990-99: 1.5 2000-07: 2.3 (accelerating!)

Mean global Temp Up 0.8 C in 125 yrs

Green bars show 95% confidence intervals

The upward trend continues: Were currently 0.8C above 1880-1900 average, more than 0.5C since 1970.

And the heat goes on

Globally, the first six months of 2010 were the warmest in the instrumental record. 2010 tied with 2005 for hottest year recorded. The world is on track for a catastrophic four Celsius degree increase in mean global temperature in this century. And this is just one symptom of human ecological dysfunction.

Beyond Climate change: The Human Ecological Footprint

My transdisciplinary awakening:

should you persist in pursuing your research interests on human carrying capacity, your academic career will be nasty, brutish, and short.

Eco-Footprint Analysis Inverts the Carrying Capacity Ratio

Carrying capacity asks how large a human population could be supported in a given area without permanently damaging relevant productive ecosystems. Eco-footprinting asks how large an area (land and water ecosystems) is required to support a specified human population wherever on Earth the relevant land/water is located.

Quantifying the Human Eco-Footprint

A populations eco-footprint is the area of land and water ecosystems (biocapacity) required to produce the resources that the population consumes, and to assimilate the wastes that the population produces, wherever on Earth the relevant land/water may be located. All people everywhere are competing for a fair share of Earths declining biocapacity.

Does money wealth entitle the rich to a bigger slice of the pie?

Average per capita EFs in high-income countries range between four and ten global average hectares (10 to 25 acres). The poorest people live on a third of a gha (.74 ac). There are only about 1.8 gha per person on earth. Europeans use 2-3 times and North Americans use 34 times their equitable share of global biocapacity.

Per capita Ecological Footprints of Selected countries (Data from WWF 2008)
10

9
8

Eco-Footprint ( global hectares)

7 6 5 4 3 2 1 0

Country

Biocapacities and Ecological Footprints of Selected Countries Compared to World Averages (2005 data)
25

Eco-Footprint (global ha/capita)

Domestic Biocapacity Ecological Footprint

20

15

10

Thanks to globalization, most countries can persist in a state of ecological deficit (overshoot). They survive on imported biocapacity and by exploiting the global commons.

Country

Overshoot: Living beyond the means of nature

Humanitys Ecological Footprint, 1961-2007
(Source: WWF 2010)

Average demand for biocapacity: 2.7 gha/capita.

Supply: 1.8 gha

The human enterprise already exceeds global carrying capacity by about 50%.
In August the world reached overshoot day for 2011. For the rest of that year humanity lived in part by depleting natural capital and over-filling waste sinks.

This threshold represents one-planet living

When growth is uneconomic

Adapted from Daly (2005)

The optimum level of consumption (*) is reached when marginal gains equal marginal losses. Any further increase in consumption (economic scale) is uneconomic growth (growth that makes us poorer rather than richer).

In theory, H. Sapiens has unique potential to confront the crisis

Four intellectual and emotional qualities distinguish humans from other advanced vertebrates:

unparalleled capacity for evidence-based reasoning and logical analysis; unique ability for long-term forward planning; the capacity to exercise moral judgment; compassion for other individuals and other species.

Nevertheless:

Despite decades of hardening evidence and rising rhetoric on the risks of global change, no national government, no prominent international agency, no corporate leader anywhere has begun to advocate in public let alone implement the kind of policy responses that are called forth by the best science available today.

Higher education as cause?

To the extent that higher education (re)produces the cores beliefs, values and assumptions of contemporary growth-oriented techno-industrial society, it is a source of the problem (Rees 2003).

What Perceptive Educators Say

[the depletion and pollution of the planet] is not the work of ignorant people. Rather it is largely the result of work by people with BAs, BSs, LLBs, MBAs and PhDs (Orr 1994).

A naturalist poet makes the same point

It is people who make unimaginably large sums of money, people impeccably groomed, excellently educated at the best universitiesmale and female alike[who orchestrate] the investment and legislation that ruin the world (Snyder 1990).

Trapped by our triune brains?

Cerebrum (Neo cortex or new brain)
- logic and reason; forward thinking and planning; language and speech;
Corpus callosum

Limbic System: (Mammalian or mid-brain)

- Emotions, feelings; responses to food and sex; bonding and attachment; memory

Cerebellum (RC) Brain stem (RC)

Reptilian Complex (Old brain)

- physical survival; reproduction; social stature; fight or flight; hard-wired ritual and instinct

Tension in the Integrated Mind

We claim to be a uniquely selfconscious, rational species. We live in cerebral awareness. However, circumstances in which reason predominates are limited to relatively trivial circumstances. That is: Passion and instinct often trump reason.

H. sapiens is a deeply conflicted Species

We live in deep denial

The masses have never thirsted after truth. They turn aside from evidence that is not to their taste, preferring to deify error (Gustave le Bon 1896). For us to maintain our way of living, we must tell lies to each other, and especially to ourselves the lies act as barriers to truth. These barriers are necessary because without them many deplorable acts would become impossibilities (Jensen 2000). a new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it (Max Planck, 1949)

An Explanatory Cognitive Mechanism

During individual development, sensory experiences and cultural norms literally shape the human brains synaptic circuitry in patterns that reflect and embed those experiences. Subsequently, people seek out compatible experiences and, when faced with information that does not agree with their [preformed] internal structures, they deny, discredit, reinterpret or forget that information
(Wexler, 2006).

So, the question of the day

What would a truly intelligent, compassionate, forward-thinking, planning-capable species do in response to the historical record and ongoing trends?

First Step
Acknowledge that the dominant growth narrative is merely a flawed social construction not a representation of truth

You may say, if you wish, that all reality is a social construction, but you cannot deny that some constructions are truer than others (Postman 1999) .

Popper put it this way

What the scientists and the lunatics theories have in common is that both belong to conjectural knowledge. But some conjectures are much better than others
(Karl Popper, The Problem of Induction)

The challenge for higher education

Help script a new, better, more realistic and adaptive cultural narrative. For example: The economic policy emphasis must shift from efficiency and growth (merely getting bigger) toward equity and development (qualitative improvement, getting better). The underpinning values of society must shift from competitive individualism, greed, and narrow self-interest, toward community, cooperation, and our collective interest in survival.

Goals: Reduced material throughput and greater social equity

Industrialized world reductions in material consumption, energy use, and environmental degradation of over 90% will be required by 2040 to meet the needs of a growing world population fairly within the planets ecological means (BCSD 1993) . For sustainability with equity, wealthy OECD nations should be taking steps to reduce their ecological footprints by 50% to 80% (Rees 2006).

Motivation and Rationale?

Its in everyones long-term best interest

For the first time, individual and national interests have converged with humanitys common interests. That is; Sustainability is a collective problem that demands collective solutions (no country can become sustainable on its own). Failure to act for the common good will ultimately lead to civil insurrection, resource wars and ecological destruction.

A convenient truth: GDP Growth in rich countries is borderline futile

Since 1976, the Canadian economy has grown by 130%. GDP per capita is 70% per cent higher. There has been no change in the percentage of the population in poverty or in the unemployment rate.

Optimal economic scale?

The absolute numbers of impoverished and unemployed has increased. Subjective well-being is constant or declining.

(Siegel 2006)

This is serious business

Maladaptive memes (ideologies, paradigms and narratives) like unfit genes, can be selected out by a changing environment. Whole societies have failed for their beliefs.

Is societal collapse possible? It wouldnt be the first time!

...what is perhaps most intriguing in the evolution of human societies is the regularity with which the pattern of increasing complexity is interrupted by collapse (Tainter 1995).

The sustainability challenge is for global society to break from the historic pattern of ignominious collapse