Sustainability Discourses

1
Sustainability Discourses

• Conceptually linked to the question of
  obligations/responsibilities to future
  generations of people.
• Since the early 1970s Often couched in terms of
  I PAT.
• Since the 1980s Often couched in terms of
  sustainable development.
• Since the 1990s Often couched in terms of weak
  sustainability and strong sustainability.
• Today There are many, many sustainability
  discourses. Our textbook Green Development
  Environment and sustainability in a developing
  world by W.M. Adams is one attempt to sort
  through some of these discourses.

2
Obligations to Future GenerationsFive Central
Problems

• 1. Ignorance Problem How can we know what
  future people will really need and want,
• what rights they might insist upon, and what
  they will blame us for doing right and
• wrong?
• 2. Typology of Effects Problem How can we
  determine which of our actions will really
• have moral implications for the future?
• 3. Problem of Intergenerational Trade-Offs How
  should a particular generation balance
• concern for its own moral and prudential
  concerns with concern for future generations?
• 4. Distance Problem How far into the future do
  our moral obligations extend?
• 5. Saving Stuff Problem What should we save
  for future generationsactual natural
• resources or monetary investments? This tracks
  the distinction between strong and weak
  sustainability.

3
What is development?

• As cited in Adams (pp. 7-11), development is
• an ambiguous and elusive concept, a Trojan Horse
  of a word (L. Frank).
• a perception which models reality, a myth which
  comforts societies, and a fantasy which unleashes
  passions (W. Sachs).
• the colonization and enclosure of debate that
  limits the extent to which alternative futures
  can be imagined (A. Escobar).
• a word used both descriptively to describe what
  happens in the world as economies, environments,
  and societies change and normatively to set out
  what should happen (D. Goulet).

4
And development is

• a duty the United States has to extend foreign
  aid to underdeveloped areas of the world for
  humanitarian reasons and to prevent communism
  from expanding (President Harry S. Truman,
  Inaugural Address, 1949)
• a worldview in which the modern West is recreated
  across the globe by industrialization,
  urbanization, democracy, and capitalism (G.
  Aseniero).
• a refiners fire though which successful
  societies emerge singed but purified, modern, and
  affluent as they pass through five stages of
  economic growth traditional society,
  preconditions for take-off, take-off, maturity,
  and a new age of high mass consumption (W.W.
  Rostow).

5
The Dilemma of Sustainability

• In order to achieve sustainability, development
  must occur to bring people out of poverty.
• In order to achieve sustainability, development
  must be slowed or halted to protect nonhuman
  nature.

6
Feeding People vs. Saving NatureHolmes Rolston
III

• If persons widely demonstrate that they value
  many other worthwhile things over feeding the
  hungry (Christmas gifts, college educations,
  symphony concerts),
• And if developed countries, to protect what they
  value, post national boundaries across which the
  poor may not cross (immigration laws),
• And if there is unequal and unjust distribution
  of wealth, and if just redistribution to
  alleviate poverty is refused,
• And if one-fifth of the world continues to
  consume four-fifths of the production of goods
  and four-fifths consumes one-fifth,
• And if escalating birthrates continue so that
  there are no real gains in alleviating poverty,
  only larger numbers of poor in the next
  generation,
• And if low productivity on domesticated lands
  continues, and if the natural lands to be
  sacrificed are likely to be low in productivity,
• And if significant natural values are at stake,
  including extinctions of species,
• Then one out not always to feed people first, but
  rather one ought to sometimes save nature.

7
Protecting Nonhuman Nature Some Problems

• Failure to actually protect natural areas because
  local people exploit natural resources, kill
  animals and plants, encroach upon habitat, and/or
  denude or destroy habitat.
• Worries that local people will put their own
  interests above the goal of protecting local
  natural areas.
• Worries that local people will make bad
  management decisions about how to protect natural
  areas.
• Ironically, attempting to protect natural areas
  might hasten their demise.

8
Nature as Community The Convergence of
Environmental and Social JusticeGiovanna Di
Chiro

• Traditional environmental groups (TEGs) have
  focused too heavily on wilderness preservation
  and protecting endangered species and too little
  on urban and rural environmental problems.
• With their focus on protecting nature
  (wilderness) and species out there in the wild,
  TEGs have denied human-nature relationships and
  perpetuated past colonial injustices by
  alienating people from nature.
• TEGs typically advocate top-down nature
  management at the expense of local communities.
• In terms of their leadership and concerns, TEGs
  have practiced discriminatory environmentalism.
• Therefore, TEGs have contributed to injustices
  suffered by marginalized urban and rural peoples.

9
Protecting Nonhuman NatureSome Problems

• Forced removal of local people to create
  protected areas.
• Torture and intimidation of local people to
  enforce protection policies.
• Restricting access of local people to local
  natural resources.
• Excluding local people from participating in
  decision-making and management of local protected
  areas.

10
Solving the Dilemma of Sustainability? Subaltern
Environmentalism

• Focus on livelihood issues A local communitys
  struggle to gain access to and control over
  natural resources to support itself.
• Provide critiques of modern, capital-intensive
  developments that increase export revenues,
  displace local people and knowledge, and usurp
  subsistence production.
• Combat structural forces that marginalize and
  subordinate people and that produce environmental
  degradation.

11
Caribbean Barbara Deutsch Lynch

• The Green and the Brown
• International tourism requires a supply of iconic
  island landscapes the development community
  seeks to maintain the renewable resources and
  ecosystems of the region. Residents worry about
  natural disasters urban services water
  pollution from military, mining, and
  manufacturing activity the health effects of
  pesticide-intensive agriculture urban sprawl
  and access to land and resources. The locus of
  environmental decision making also is contested.
  (p. 130)

12
CaribbeanThe Green

• Tourism requires an endless supply of
  pristine beaches, untouched coves, and
  emerald pools, whereas many islands struggle
  with the water and sewage demands of the hotel
  industry. Ecotourists want to visit national
  parks that have lush vegetation, well-marked
  trails, and folklore displays but are free of
  local human economic activity. The United
  Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) and
  international non-governmental organizations
  (NGOs) emphasize biodiversity and forest and
  coral reef conservation. This preference is
  reflected in the ornithologist Jared Diamonds
  Collapse (2005), which argues in favor of the
  repressive forest policies of the former
  Dominican president Joaquin Balaguer, which were
  condemned by human rights and environmental
  justice groups. (p. 131)

13
CaribbeanThe Brown

• In contrast, brown issues such as waste
  management and pollution often top local
  agendas. Real estate markets consign poor
  people to polluted areas. Pollution is
  aggravated in countries where cars, busses, and
  trucks run on dirty petroleum fuels. Land
  markets also encourage sprawl, which raises the
  cost of urban services and takes land out of
  agricultural production, making it harder for
  families to find affordable food. (p. 132)

14
Discussion

• Protecting Environmentally Sensitive Areas and
  Promoting Tourism in The Back Patio of the
  United States Thoughts about Shared
  Responsibilities in Ecosystem and Biodiversity
  Protection by Colin Crawford
• The Rich, the Powerful and the Endangered
  Conservation Elites, Networks and the Dominican
  Republic by George Holmes
• One Island, Two People, Two Histories The
  Dominican Republic and Haiti by Jared Diamond

15
Colonial District, Santo Domingo
16
El Cercado
17
Who are these guys?