Lecture 5: Sustainability. What is sustainability? Strong, absurdly strong, and weak sustainability

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1 Lecture 5: Sustainability What is sustainability? Strong, absurdly strong, and weak sustainability

2 Topics What is sustainability? Strong, absurdly strong, and weak sustainability

3 Three policy goals Sustainability, wilderness, biodiversity What is sustainability? ( Sustainable initiatives ; sustainable resource use, unsustainable practice )

4 Sustainability Nice example of a concept that once had a very precise meaning and now has a relatively vague meaning. Forestry or fishery: maximum sustainable yield : the harvestable amount of a resource that would not deplete stocks (e.g., does harvest rate exceed growth rate) Our lifestyle is unsustainable.

5 UN World Commission on Environment and Development Sustainable development: Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs. Contrast with economic development that leads to the exhaustion of non-renewable resources

6 Moral Imperative to Future Generations From an ethical point of view, this definition of sustainability is interesting because sustainability is couched in terms of a moral imperative to future generations, rather than to the nonhuman natural world. It sees the natural world as essentially resources for human use. The only question is how to extract resources at the appropriate rate. Entirely different from wilderness approach, in which natural landscapes deserve protection in their own right.

7 Intrinsic and Instrumental Value Human-centered At an extreme, this view suggests that we only have direct moral obligations towards other people In other words, that non-humans only have instrumental value (that is, insofar as they are useful for our purposes), rather than intrinsic value (that is, in their own right).

8 Topics What is sustainability? Strong, absurdly strong, and weak sustainability

9 What does sustainability require? Sustainable development: Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs. What exactly does this impose on us?

10 Absurdly strong interpretation Absurdly strong interpretation: Conserve all resources in their present state. We can t live without diminishing some resources. Some resources, like fossil fuel or copper ore, are finite and non-renewable. Sometimes we should get rid of a species, like the Ebola virus or malarial mosquitoes

11 Absurdly strong interpretation Absurdly strong interpretation: Conserve all resources in their present state. Another problem is that we don t know what future generations will want or need, given their changing values and technological capacities

12 Weak Sustainability (Solow)

13 Weak Sustainability (Solow)

14 Weak sustainability Weak sustainability: Sustainability does not require us to protect any specific resource, but to ensure that if we diminish a specific resource, we can produce a substitute of comparable value for future generations to enjoy. This presupposes that all natural entities are substitutable or fungible. That means that, for any entity, in principle, I can estimate the value that it has, and substitute it for something of equal value.

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16 Weak sustainability If we use up fossil fuels, we need to invest in non-fossil fuel based technologies so that future generations can consume the same amount of energy that we do. If we drive a species to extinction (e.g., the passenger pigeon), we need to invest in an alternative form of cheap and available protein.

17 Weak sustainability If we continue to deplete groundwater resources, we should invest in technology to desalinate ocean water. If we continue to emit CO2 at the present rate, we should create technologies for carbon sequestration (capture).

18 Weak sustainability It s possible that weak sustainability could be used to justify environmentally reckless practices. That doesn t mean that Solow himself would endorse such practices. Obviously, we have to be realistic about our current technological limits.

19 Weak Sustainability A deeper problem is that not everything is substitutable for something else, or fungible If we drive mountain gorillas to extinction, what could we substitute it with that is of comparable value?

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22 Strong sustainability Strong sustainability: Sustainability does require us to protect certain specific resources, such as clean air, water, and soil; as well as the opportunities for enjoying biodiversity and wilderness. In a sense, it does involve imposing our generation s values and goals onto the next generation for them to decide what to do with

23 Strong sustainability According to Sarkar, though sustainability is one important goal, it should not be pursued alone but in tandem with other conservation values such as biodiversity and wilderness. We shouldn t look for one principle or key to govern all conservation policy.