Economics and Justice
Sustainable Humanity
Jeffrey D. Sachs
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ADDIS ABABA – Sustainable development means achieving economic growth that is widely shared and that protects the earth’s vital resources. Our current global economy, however, is not sustainable, with more than one billion people left behind by economic progress and the earth’s environment suffering terrible damage from human activity. Sustainable development requires mobilizing new technologies that are guided by shared social values.
United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon has rightly declared sustainable development to be at the top of the global agenda. We have entered a dangerous period in which a huge and growing population, combined with rapid economic growth, now threatens to have a catastrophic impact on the earth’s climate, biodiversity, and fresh-water supplies. Scientists call this new period the Anthropocene – in which human beings have become the main causes of the earth’s physical and biological changes.
The Secretary-General’s Global Sustainability Panel has issued a new report that outlines a framework for sustainable development. The GSP rightly notes that sustainable development has three pillars: ending extreme poverty; ensuring that prosperity is shared by all, including women, youth, and minorities; and protecting the natural environment. These can be termed the economic, social, and environmental pillars of sustainable development, or, more simply, the “triple bottom line” of sustainable development.
The GSP has called for world leaders to adopt a new set of Sustainable Development Goals, or SDGs, that will help to shape global policies and actions after the 2015 target date for achieving the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). Whereas the MDGs focus on reducing extreme poverty, the SDGs will focus on all three pillars of sustainable development: ending extreme poverty, sharing the benefits of economic development for all of society, and protecting the Earth.
It is, of course, one thing to set SDGs and quite another to achieve them. The problem can be seen by looking at one key challenge: climate change. Today, there are seven billion people on the planet, and each one, on average, is responsible for the release each year of a bit more than four tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. This CO2 is emitted when we burn coal, oil, and gas to produce electricity, drive our cars, or heat our homes. All told, humans emit roughly 30 billion tons of CO2 per year into the atmosphere, enough to change the climate sharply within a few decades.
By 2050, there will most likely be more than nine billion people. If these people are richer than people today (and therefore using more energy per person), total emissions worldwide could double or even triple. This is the great dilemma: we need to emit less CO2, but we are on a global path to emit much more.
We should care about that scenario, because remaining on a path of rising global emissions is almost certain to cause havoc and suffering for billions of people as they are hit by a torrent of droughts, heat waves, hurricanes, and more. We have already experienced the onset of this misery in recent years, with a spate of devastating famines, floods, and other climate-related disasters.
So, how can the world’s people – especially its poor people – benefit from more electricity and more access to modern transportation, but in a way that saves the planet rather than destroys it? The truth is that we can’t – unless we improve dramatically the technologies that we use.
We need to use energy far more wisely while shifting from fossil fuels to low-carbon energy sources. Such decisive improvements are certainly possible and economically realistic.
Consider the energy inefficiency of an automobile, for example. We currently move around 1,000 to 2,000 kilograms of machinery to transport only one or just a few people, each weighing perhaps 75 kilograms (165 lbs.). And we do so using an internal combustion engine that utilizes only a small part of the energy released by burning the gasoline. Most of the energy is lost as waste heat.
We could therefore achieve huge reductions in CO2 emissions by converting to small, lightweight, battery-powered vehicles running on highly efficient electric motors and charged by a low-carbon energy source such as solar power. Even better, by shifting to electric vehicles, we would be able to use cutting-edge information technology to make them smart – even smart enough to drive themselves using advanced data-processing and positioning systems.
The benefits of information and communications technologies can be found in every area of human activity: better farming using GPS and micro-dosing of fertilizers; precision manufacturing; buildings that know how to economize on energy use; and, of course, the transformative, distance-erasing power of the Internet. Mobile broadband is already connecting even the most distant villages in rural Africa and India, thereby cutting down significantly on the need for travel.
Banking is now done by phone, and so, too, is a growing range of medical diagnostics. Electronic books are beamed directly to handheld devices, without the need for bookshops, travel, and the pulp and paper of physical books. Education is increasingly online as well, and will soon enable students everywhere to receive first-rate instruction at almost a zero “marginal” cost for enrolling another student.
Yet getting from here to sustainable development will not just be a matter of technology. It will also be a matter of market incentives, government regulations, and public support for research and development. But, even more fundamental than policies and governance will be the challenge of values. We must understand our shared fate, and embrace sustainable development as a common commitment to decency for all human beings, today and in the future.
Jeffrey D. Sachs is Professor of Economics and Director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University. He is also Special Adviser to United Nations Secretary-General on the Millennium Development Goals.
Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2012.
www.project-syndicate.org
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Tony 05:10 01 Feb 12
Occupy movement is right to bring economic issue discussion together with climate. They have the same root cause. To solve any one of the issue requires finding out the common root cause. If one issue is addressed, another one is likely to be addressed too.
Share vision, get commited, improve ourselves. http://think4sustain.wordpress.com
eak 04:51 01 Feb 12
You wrote, "shifting from fossil fuels to low-carbon energy sources", but even zero-carbon energy sources are not enough, unless they are from solar or geothermal (fusion and fission don't qualify for example). The real problem is exponential growth (and therefore our current economics) is not sustainable. Consider the article Long-Term Global Heating From Energy Usage, published in the climate science journal EOS by Eric Chaisson. There he put it this way:"More realistically, if world population plateaus at 9 billion inhabitants by 2100, developed (Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, or OECD) countries increase nonrenewable energy use at 1% annually, and developing (non-OECD) countries do so at roughly 5% annually until east-west energy equity is achieved in the mid-22nd century, after which they too will continue generating more energy at 1% annually, then a 3ºC rise will occur in about 320 years (or 10ºC in ~450 years), even if carbon dioxide emissions end." This is basically a blackbody radiation (i.e. really basic physics) calculation for things like fusion.
We have to question exponential growth itself.
Galan 10:36 01 Feb 12
Can we have this type of transformation without a global governance, a confederation? We need to replace state security with human security. Values are easier to change if governace is appropriate. Old type competition among states is a hurdle when we face binding global problems.
Zsolt 02:12 02 Feb 12
I agree with the basic idea of the article and the suggestions from the GPS.
The problem is the motivation, what will make people change their minds, habits?
At the moment it feels we appeal to some ethical, moral behaviour, that we "should do this, should do that" because this way we can sustain the environment, and help poverty to diminish, and so on.
This has not worked, and will not work, and the climate change problem, or the Eurocrisis is the best current examples of it.
People need clear cause and consequence scenarios where they understand that if we do something, what will be the result, and preferably in short term, because we do not waste time on long term planning these days, we do not even care what will happen to our children.
If we could show people in a clear manner that humans are not above the system of nature as we widely think, but we are part of the general network, and we could show that this general natural system is based on very clear and unbreakable laws, basically thriving and always returning to balance and homeostasis, then we could already make the connection in between our present behaviour, attitude and the global crisis.
We could see why suddenly we are running into walls with our previous methods, when even 10 years ago we though growth will be unlimited, except that we did not calculate that we were inside a closed interdependent system and our agressive, expansive, exploitative lifestyle has become threatening and harmful for the whole system, and thus now we run into problems as the system self adjusts, pushing us towards the balanced path.
We do not need to worry about 9 billion people becoming rich, causing more CO2 emission as the global crisis will take away even the wealth we have today. Also as growths declines we do not need to worry about destroying the environment or depleting natural resources.
We can try however hard we want, the system will not allow us to take our exploitative system further.
Thus we have two options from here, either we learn the laws governing our system and return to necessity and resource based consumption in a mutual and equal manner, or we will be forced to do so in a very harsh way through more crisis and more suffering, not sometime in the future but within years.
We already have all the scientific, objective material to teach people about this, only our willingness and wisdom is missing to do so.
robot5x 09:32 02 Feb 12
how can such an eminent writer offer such a paucity of ideas:
according to Mr Sachs the only way we can achieve sustainable development is by banking on technology which - given the gravity of our current situation - does nothing more than tinker around the edges. Do you really think that driving an electric car and expanding mobile broadband networks across Africa will be sufficient, Mr Sachs??!
The point is completely missed. We need to STOP using fossil fuels immediately as a minimum. Why is this so hard? Corporate/WTO influence over national politics is too powerful and entrenched. So much so that the political left has collapsed, and the neoliberal right has spun such a ubiquitous Overton window that even the mildest Keynesian is now equal to a radical communist.
The developing world DON'T WANT sustainability. They want to be rich, fat and greedy like the developed worlds have been for 40 years and more. Who can blame them? The only question is how genuinely the developed world is willing to change their lives radically on a massive scale to show true generosity of spirit to their less-wealthy brothers and sisters.
Sandeer 06:18 02 Feb 12
Thank you for this article.
I believe that it is impossible to achieve any sustainable development between peoples without mutual responsibility.
There are many various methods and plans, but they are totally incapable of being compared to each other. No one has the answer to this question because it is impossible to achieve any solution between peoples without first seeing everyone as one family.
I think a sustainable development would look something like a round table where everyone, like a family, discuss common problems and you would feel that everyone is equally close to you. Only then could we begin to distribute our common pie and solve the problems between us, only together with each of us and consulting each other and taking all our opinions into consideration. Are we really ready for this? Probably not! But we see that we are all being pushed in this direction. We are discovering that there is no other way to find the answers, because the real issue lies between our relationships with each other.
How can we achieve equality between us? How can we balance these two parts of humanity? The poor, do you not want the rich? The rich, do you see that you can no longer control anything? But you, the rich enjoy managing and gaining much pleasure from the money in your bank account, but now you are in suffering because there are less zeroes there. The continually increasing gains approach is not benefiting society as a whole, so the question I have for you is can society give something else instead of money? Is money the only thing that satisfies all of humanity in today's world?
Levantine 08:22 02 Feb 12
I wonder if the greatest impediment to constructive international collaboration isn't the predatory policies of global corporatism. The more powerful countries are in crisis and they turn to imperialism. The other aren't left alone sufficiently enough to gestate and develop thoughtful policies with an international vision.
As for the whole humanity as a family, "As McLuhan puts it, the globe is now a village with everyone in face-to-face intimacy with everyone else. Of course this is untrue. The chief fact of life today is alienation of individuals, so that only a rare person, in Sauk Center or anywhere else, can establish a personal relationship with the person next door, or even with members of his own family. This alienation results from the fact that the intimate existential relationship which used to give us satisfying emotional relationships between persons and with nature have been weakened, and even destroyed, by the intrusion between individuals of artifacts, bureaucratic and other organizational structures, and abstract concepts and verbalisms, so that anyone who wants real relationships today must fight his way through these obstacles, as modern youths and artists and real social engineers are now trying to do."[1]
"A community is a social aggregate (group, society, or civilization) whose members trust each other until they have explicit reasons to distrust a particular person; such reasons for distrust can be found very easily in an age of general conflict and general politicization, in which power intrudes into all human relationships. More important than this, however, is the second reason, the fact that human emotional needs can be satisfied only by contacts with nature and with other humans on an existential, unique, face-to-face basis in which individuals know each other personally. An institutionalized society is too cluttered up with artifacts, institutions, and power factors to permit the achievement of any “global village,” a McLuhan myth which is typical of McLuhan’s efforts to please the contemporary institutionalized establishment. Any large social aggregate, especially a highly politicized one as a Universal Empire must be, has to operate through artifacts, general rules, abstractions, permanent status, and generalized, non-personal (that is, not “face-to-face”) behavior. All these things are obstacles to the unique, existential relationships among persons and with nature required by human emotional needs. The effort to make a Universal Empire into a community, or to pretend that it is, is bound to fail from the cumulative frustration of unexpressed emotional energies." [2]
[1] http://www.carrollquigley.net/book-reviews/McLuhan_as_Global_Verbalizer.htm
[2] http://www.carrollquigley.net/Lectures/General_Crises_in_Civilizations.htm
Sandeer 10:42 07 Feb 12
I totally agree that we all need to understand our shared fate and I am committed to decency for all human beings.
The world situation is changing rapidly, and I think we are in need of an integral method of educating humanity so everyone will be prepared for the many changes coming our way.
Unemployment is on the rise, and hundreds of millions of people who will lose work because the crisis will destroy all the industries that are not vitally important. What will the people do who produced what no one needs any longer? http://www.shadowstats.com/
We are also seeing that protest movements are growing due to the Internet, with all our mutual communications and influence on each other. All humanity, from the ordinary citizens to their governments, is interested in bringing this process under their control and preventing its development. All our modern weapons plus the unpredictable future events can lead us to such disastrous results.
In order for us to prevent all kinds of disasters, civil or even world wars, we need to think in advance about global, integral upbringing of the majority of the population.
Satyendra 07:37 12 Feb 12
we nurture the nature for our own survival & nature nurture us for its own survival.she gives us wheat rice mangoes so that we keep growing them more.Author says by 2050 population will rise from 7 billion to 9 billion and CO2 emission will double or triple.But reverse is also true industrialisation led to increase in CO2 emission people's life standard has raised,mortality rate has decreased & life expectancy has increased so poplation is increasing.If author(J D Sachs) become father or grandfather it is not necessary new comer will be only CO2 emittor,he may grow more trees that absorb the CO2 and give oxygen & glucose to us.CO2 emission led global warming.But what is happening in Denube(europe)?460 peoples had died of bitter cold in this season only.so in winters we need a summit on 'global cooling' .
Extreme poverty is matter of concern.tribals living in thick forest hunting and dancing nakedly,no problem they all are Bill Gates.but if a industrialist went there he cut the forest and plant a factory there make the tribals low wage worker and their life deplorable.that is unfortunate.In same way if a banker or broker become billionare then they should not be considered as innovators like James Watt and Graham Bell.
Levantine 11:11 31 Jan 12
Thanks for the article. I have some very rudimentary remarks.
Sustainable development means achieving economic growth that is widely shared and that protects the earth’s vital resources.
* Should development always be sustained? We may imagine progress as attractive to us, but it doesn’t mean it’s necessarily good for us.
Related to it... In the phrase ‘economic growth,’ how to understand the term ‘economic’? If I nod to you, does that act not form a part of an economy that, though unacknowledged, is nevertheless essential to society? Same goes for the abilities to engage with art, to consider a subject in its wider context, to take initiative, to keep good longterm relationships. And remarkably, all of these skills are virtually absent from the school curriculum.
* The main reason for the UN was protection of peace. Now when the UN has been used as a tool to facilitate war, it’s hard to take it’s appeals seriously.
* It’s been said that civilisation is about decency. Decency can be found in sub-Saharan desert villages, as well as in a sunken Kursk submarine. So, it seems that it's not essentially dependent on human living standards or prospects of survival. Sustainable development may well be a token of civilisation, the substance is something else.