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BlindSpot policy proposals to the United Nations Economic and Social Council Forum James Greyson was invited in January 2008 to take part in a UN-led discussion on scaling-up and accelerating the international sustainable development agenda. Ideas from the discussion are intended to inform this year's Annual Ministerial Review, a UN meeting of Member States , UN System organizations and other institutional stakeholders, as well as non-governmental organizations, private sector representatives and academics. James' main contribution to the discussion, on 6th March 2008, is copied below. An earlier contribution, covering the responsibility of markets and economic growth,can be seen here.
Dear All Please accept my apologies for the length of this contribution. I've tried to be brief but a certain amount of explanation is needed to suggest the potential for a policy response which matches the scale and urgency of global problems. Please feel free to ask where more explanation would help. 1. How can the international community ensure that more funding for advancing sustainable development is made available on a predictable basis? What steps by which actors can be taken to facilitate, on a concessional and preferential basis, the transfer of environmentally sound technologies, especially to developing countries? This question is a good starting point but doesn't quite address the scale of funding needed for sustainable development. We don't need just more funding, we need to be absolutely certain of sufficient funding to achieve sustainable development globally - and fast. We don't just need technological solutions in developing countries, we need reforms at all levels, everywhere. In fact the whole idea of some countries 'developing' towards the dominant model of high waste and high energy use is obsolete. All countries should now consider themselves as (sustainably) developing countries. Countries without a large unsustainable infrastructure and deeply-entrenched expectations of unsustainable lifestyles may even have some advantages compared with so-called developed countries. In 1543 the Polish astronomer Nicholaus Copernicus challenged the view that the Sun revolved around the Earth, arguing instead that the Earth revolved around the Sun. His alternative model lead to a revolution in thinking, to a new worldwiew. Today we need a similar shift in our worldview from treating the environment as part of the economy to treating the economy as part of the environment. Strategically this means the economy should be adapted to support the environment (not the other way around). The absence of broad sustainable development over the past 35 years may be seen as society's failure to make this switch in worldview. I do hope that everyone can agree about the abundant evidence that the old worldview hasn't worked, either for protecting nature's capacity to support people or for creating stable markets that meet all people's vital needs. There are understandable misapprehensions that a new worldview would sacrifice economic success. As described in my 21st Feb post, the old worldview created only the illusion of economic success. The new worldview, if applied, would not need to prioritise ecological and social ahead of economic goals, nor would it seek to constrain the level of economic activity. All three goals can be integrated in a win-win-win strategy by adapting economics to make this possible. The outcome of this strategy would be to 'turn on the taps' of sustainable development funding. Today funding relies on small flows of voluntary contributions by industry and hand-outs from governments. The level of investment is totally inadequate compared to the vast investment flows supporting unsustainable technologies, infrastructure and lifestyles. There is only one adequate funding mechanism available - market economics, which can be adapted to make sustainable development an automatic consequence of future lifestyles and economic activity. Governments would be freed from (half-heartedly) promoting sustainable development to the more exciting role of overseeing this sustainable market transformation and other tasks which markets cannot do for themselves (eg international cooperation, land use planning, adaptation to climate change, wealth redistribution, etc). Due to the economic impacts of unsustainability (social, ecological and financial volatility) economic growth is no longer viable with the old worldview. But it is with the new - so a sustainable market is good also for business and the economy. In future people may wonder how it ever seemed to make sense to run the economy as a closing down sale.
2. What specific initiatives can ECOSOC promote to be launched to facilitate realization of the goal of sustainable development? How can we foster human and institutional competencies to execute supportive policies? Four specific initiatives that can be promoted by ECOSOC are given here. Given the urgency of a global sustainable transformation these initiatives should progress in parallel, rather than one at a time. A further initiative for environmental resources is given for question 3 below. (i) Correct the glitch in the 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm (see previous post). A new international treaty is needed to rebalance the unintended transfer of responsibility for sustainable development away from markets and towards nation states. No amount of regulation can make up for an absence of effective economic incentives. In accordance with the 'polluter pays' principle markets should remain fully responsible for their impacts. Nation States and the international community should be responsible for ensuring markets accept this responsibility, which is necessary for the protection of all people and the environment on which they depend. The old way uses a large volume of prescriptive regulation to achieve a small reduction in unsustainability. In the new way, very few regulations and very few economic reforms could stimulate unimaginably vast and rapid implementation of sustainability. (ii) Economic, ecological and social goals should be integrated by global adoption of the goal of 'circular economics', which is market reform that allows material resources to meet people's needs without systematically accumulating as wastes in the air, land and waters. The practice of 'linear economics' should be recognised world-wide as obsolete due to persistent undermining of the ecological, social and financial stability needed for humanity to survive and thrive. Most of the problems caused by linear economics can be prevented by a single new market-based economic instrument applied globally, which obliges producers to 'insure' against the risk of their product becoming waste. Premiums would be invested in environmental, community and industrial capacity to meet people's needs whilst joining up the resource loop. (Please contact me for the explanatory paper, which was developed in a European Advanced Research Workshop, or see a summary at http://www.blindspot.org.uk/briefing.html). (iii) International security and cooperation should be arranged by reversing a historical economic disincentive which causes national income statistics to undermine non-combative problem-solving. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) currently includes weapons-related spending, which gives nations with high dependence on military 'solutions' higher economic growth and the illusion of greater economic success. Since a global culture of close cooperation and decreasing weapons spending is essential for sustainable development it is necessary to reform the way that economic growth is calculated. The international removal of weapons-related spending from GDP would provide a strong signal to politicians that lower military spending is desirable, without dictating how much they should spend. (Please contact me for the explanatory paper, which was developed in a European Advanced Research Workshop, or see http://www.grosspeacefulproduct.org.uk) (iv) ECOSOC could also promote an initiative throughout the UN and beyond to explore and define the characteristics of the revolution in worldview which is necessary for any serious attempt at continuing human habitation on this planet. The UN has developed a wealth of expertise on sustainable development and the UN would seem to be the ideal institution to finally make it happen, if it is to happen at all. However those in the UN should be aware that they are unlikely to be immune from the global sustainable development delusion - over decade’s humanity engages in a multitude of initiatives without any prospect of sustainable development actually happening globally. For example we can question whether incrementalism works; is less bad good enough? Can indivisible global problems really be managed by splitting them up into institutional compartments? Will humanity perish from complacency or will it explore the opportunity of a renewed worldview, renewed economics and renewed aspirations?
3. How can we promote equity in the distribution of benefits from environmental resources? Is it advisable to promote payment for environmental services? If so, what is/are the most effective way(s) to do so? The above initiatives would make a vast difference to the protection of ecological capital (non-renewable resources, biodiversity and the stability of ecosystems) and the distribution of ecological services (the 'revenue' from undiminished ecological capital). The material requirements of the economy would fall rapidly as material cycles were joined up (old resources becoming new resources rather than wastes). Producers who require the services of ecological 'sinks' to process the dispersed residues of their products would be responsible either for creating sufficient new ecological capacity or paying for its creation. These payments provide an opportunity to raise both social and ecological capacity simultaneously, in effect to create a pro-poor market for ecosystem services. The key to promoting equity is for these payments to be channeled not to wealthy land-owners but to communities who are helped to meet their own needs whilst working to raise ecological capacity (productive biodiverse areas). One approach to net positive impacts of communities is described here http://www.earthscan.co.uk/?tabid=4390. The new worldview, of human society and their economics adapting themselves to survive as a part of nature, carries an implicit message that we must live on ecological revenue, not capital. It is us who must adapt to nature, not the other way around. Since the planet is overstocked with people, it is imperative not just to slow the rapid loss of nature but to halt and reverse it. This would create more ecological services, supporting more people's needs and opening the possibility for future net negative greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. It's also a recipe for continuing economic growth. The latest scientific understanding of positive feedback dynamics shows that cutting emissions is no longer enough - the task for the future will be to cut GHG atmospheric concentrations. (See http://www.apollo-gaia.org/BaliandBeyond.htm). It should be clear to anyone familiar with biodiversity issues that existing instruments are ineffective against the scale of the challenge. The above proposed instruments create the necessary circumstances for international cooperation and large investment flows designed to support a reversal of the loss of nature. However some of those who control land and waters would continue to attempt to extract ecological capital and convert it to private monetary gain. Governments would continue to be susceptible to weak controls over such extraction. Unavoidably increasing resources prices will make this problem worse. All this suggests that a further instrument is necessary. In answer to the above question, the most effective way to protect ecological capital whilst promoting equity would be for all land, sea and non-renewable resource ownership title to be interpreted by international treaty as a title of guardianship of the ecological capital on behalf of future generations. No-one should own the right to destroy nature. All licences for access and use of natural resources would be interpreted as applying only to the renewable harvest, which neither diminishes ecological capital nor causes resources to accumulate as wastes. The remedy under international law for failure to safeguard ecological capital would be access to the resource being transferred to a community-based trust. This need not affect the ownership of the resource, though it would affect its market value. So this creates an economic incentive for resource owners to protect ecological capital, and a legal basis for communities to gain access to essential resources (in particular, to land) whilst expanding ecological capital and services. Resource owners and licensees which were interested in the resource only for the purpose of extraction could have the opportunity to bid for a proportion of available investment flows which would compensate them for the transfer of title to a community-based trust. This scheme could run as a 'Dutch auction' with lowest bids winning a share of available funds. An existing example of a bid is Ecuador's proposal for compensation to keep their oil in the ground (see http://www.chinadialogue.net/article/summary/1424-Ecuador-s-startling-oil-proposal-) See also: Want a world that works? | |
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