DEMOCRACY, CAPITALISM AND SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT: Renewing the policy agenda.
Naresh Singh
During the decade before us we will mark the 20th anniversary of the United Nations world summits on various dimensions of development including Education (Jomtein , 1990 ), Human Rights ( Vienna, 1991), Sustainable Development ( Rio, 1992) Women (Beijing, 1993), Population (Cairo, 1994) Social Development (Copenhagen, 1995) Human Settlements (Cities) (Istanbul, 1996), Food, (Rome, 1999); followed by the Millennium Summit with its millennium development goals, (New York, 2000). Half way through the decade in 2015 the targets of the millennium declaration are to be achieved. World leaders will gather at the United Nations and elsewhere to reflect on the progress the world has achieved and it will be viewed mainly through the lens of sustainable development or though one of its dimensions. The will likely conclude that the results have been mixed. We have made some progress but not enough. And they will seek new commitments, resources and strategies to accelerate progress. They are like to adopt existing strategies slightly modified at best, to achieve a new set of bold targets which they will call for in a loud and unified voice. They will not notice, or may pretend not to notice the huge gap between the weakness of their strategies and the ambition of their targets. They will also commit to be more accountable and to deliver on their promises, but the targets will not be reached in the time frames they will set unless the analysis of past performance is rigorous and hard hitting; and above all a new world view and radically different strategies flowing from it are pursued. This will demand political, business and spiritual leadership at a whole new level as the lynch pin of failure or success. This paper, prepared at the beginning of this decade seeks to frame the debate in context of capitalism and democracy as the dominant drivers of world progress and failure and suggests a brief agenda of what might be done differently to put the world on a sustainable development path.
The concept of sustainable development (SD) was introduced in the policy making literature at the global level in 1980 as part of the global conservation strategy of the IUCN. It is of course considered to have been brought into the mainstream international policy and political debate by the Brundtlant Commission which started its work as the World Commission on Environment and Development in 1982 and launched its landmark report, Our Common Future, in 1987,which provided the most commonly used definition of SD as development which meets the needs of current generations with compromising the ability of future generations to meet theirs. It was the perhaps the most brilliant political consensus ever achieved in the UN, between northern pre-occupations with increasing environmental concerns and southern concerns with increasing poverty. It was not that ecological degradation was not present in the south; it was just that their over-riding preoccupation was with poverty. Since the achievement of this consensus the world has been constantly reminded that a political consensus is not necessarily a formula that lends itself to easy public policy making either in content or in process. In terms of process SD has been subject to more public consultations than any other development concept, from international and global forums through regional, national, sub-regional, to village and community levels. It has acquired the highest levels of “ownership” becoming a household word, more so, than any other, to all people from all corners of the planet in just about 2 decades. In this regard it must be considered to have been the subject of the most successful policy consultations ever, leading to the most widespread ownership. In order to achieve this widespread ownership, however, the phrase had to be appropriated by each vested interest group to articulate their concerns. And so it became common place to apply the adjective “sustainable” to any noun in any context, without any regard to possible policy content contradictions. The substantive policy content in SD was early defined in terms of policy outcomes as economic efficacy, social equity, and ecological integrity achieved in an integrated and balanced manner. Political and cultural dimensions were soon added to this 3 pillar definitions to give a more comprehensive, but not necessarily a more useful policy definition. But making public policy with these goals has remained as elusive as ever.
The question then, to what extent has the world succeeded in moving towards SD, during the last 2 decades is, notoriously difficult to answer. One set of reasons for this difficulty is the challenge of measuring progress towards SD. Fortunately we have made considerable progress in this regard from the “how to” process issues which have been articulated in terms of systems thinking and post normal sciences, to indicators and indicator sets which are now in widespread use at different unit levels of analysis from cities to countries to landscapes. We also now have a range of global assessments such as the Millennium Ecosystems Assessment, the Millennium Development Goals, the State of the World, and several others. Overall these reports present a mixed picture of progress with deteriorations in freshwater, agriculture, fisheries systems and little progress in making industrial, transportation and energy systems more ecologically sound. While poverty has been reduced, the most significant reductions have taken place in China at high ecological costs. Even, where we have been fortunate to have local level improvements, the overall planetary systems, especially the climate, atmosphere, oceans and forests linked systems are severely challenged. Every time we have a global economic downturn, action on SD becomes even more difficult. Global political leadership from the US is not likely in the near future as the most promising leaders once in power (Al Gore as Vice President) and now Obama as President fail to deliver in spite of their best intentions because of partisan political interest in congress. The European Union would have seem to have this responsibility for global leadership on SD squarely on its shoulders, but we will have to wait and see how far it will be able to deliver. The United Nations in the mean time has been playing the role it does well, that of churning out international conferences and declarations with global political commitments to work towards SD.
Why is progress on SD so intransigent? A summary of the challenges or barriers to change would include lack of a collective sense of Agreement on what is to be sustained, shared Knowledge of how to solve these problems, broad access to the required Technologies, the Economic ability to pay for the changes, the other Social priorities and cultural norms that need attention and finally the Political will to take action. These we can call the AKTESP barriers to change after Trudgill (1990). In the face of these formidable barriers, we naturally turn to our democratically elected governments to show leadership and take action for change. Overcoming these barriers however need long term commitment and investments, which short term 5 year elected governments who will be seeking re-election and must have results to show at the end of 5 years, will not be motivated to undertake. Fortunately, this expected myopic behavior has been overcome in many ways, and governments have established national Environmental Protection Agencies, Wildlife Agencies, signed on to international treaties of various kinds, established social safety nets and welfare programs, and when the economy is doing well has periodically shown the kind of enlightened public policy leadership necessary for SD. As such, a slew of “command and control” policies in which pollution control or other environmental standards have been established, and are monitored and enforced to various levels of efficiency. Similarly a wide range of market based instruments such as trade-able emission permits, or the more recent carbon trading mechanisms and markets have been established. On the other hand win-win policies that are both good for poverty reduction and for environmental conservation have been established. (UNDP, World Bank, UNEP, EU). On the side of the Private Sector, many corporations have come to see the green economy as a new business opportunity and seeking to exploit various niches in their areas of business and many are reporting on triple bottom lines going beyond profitability to include social and environmental accountability. The biggest success in SD policy making has come from heightened awareness of people across the globe and the sharp rise of civil society activism holding both governments and private sectors to account for their actions or lack thereof in guiding the planet to a more sustainable future. So there has been intense activity over the last 2 to 3 decades in the making public of public policy for SD. And yet it seems to many who have been involved from the beginning that nothing much has changed. In the BBC world debates (Sunday, February 28, 2010), Nobel laureate Wangari Matthai was a member of the panel when the moderator did a flash back to a speech she had given on BBC in 1982. She commented that same speech is as relevant today.
The real challenge to democracies dealing with SD public policy dilemmas is not their short term elected office, as much as is it is the interface between democratic decision making and the capitalist mode of production and distribution of goods and services and which of these is in control. In all countries of the world today the idea of progress is measured principally by the economic growth rates which are of course driven mainly by increased consumption. Indeed quality of life and level of consumption are considered by many to be synonymous. In the rich countries of the world their capacity, and desire to produce and consume more and more have gone completely out of control and entered a phase which Robert Reich calls “Super-capitalism” in his recent book by the same name. Gandhi had said that world had enough for everyone’s need but not enough for a single man’s greed. What we have today is a collective greed that knows no bounds. On the other hand the capacity of these countries to make collective decisions and public policy to achieve the things people they say the value such as clean air and water, good education for their children, health care for all, more family time and less hours of work , peace and stability and reduced poverty and inequality, is way behind. In other words while capitalism is excelling at its role in the blind production of wealth which is increasingly concentrating in the hands of the few, democracy is failing badly to keep pace. Collective decision making and public accountability is failing badly both within countries whether in North America or Western Europe or in China, India or Sub-Saharan Africa; or among countries in international forums, where individual country opportunities for trade benefits and wealth creation drives all else. This is the harsh reality of the world we live in and the trend is more super-capitalism and less collective decision making and public accountability in the other interests of society; at least in relative terms.
The relationship between democracy and development remains tenuous by most recent accounts, which cannot conclude that democracy is either helpful or necessary to development , whether defined as economic growth or more broadly, (Przeworski et al, 2000, Rueschemeyer et al 1992, Ringen, 2007.) Many are prepared to say however that democracies have a much better chance than autocracies or dictatorships at promoting development. In terms of economic growth it seems that democracies are stable above a per capita income of about US 6000; (Przeworski et al, 2000). Can we arrive at a societal consensus that per capita incomes above a certain threshold, for example US20, 000, is economically unnecessary and maybe ecologically harmful? It is of course important to note that there are different types of democracies including open access competitive democracies and closed access societies in which there is a rent seeking relationship between economic and political elites(North et al. 2009; Sorensen, 2008; Ringen , 2007) as there are different types of capitalism including good and bad capitalism (Baumol et al 2007). In any event it seems abundantly clear that democratic governance as we know it today is not by itself going to help us significantly to generate or maintain economic growth nor will it have a significant impact on moving us to a SD path. Indeed many scholars see an incompatibility between democracy and economic growth for both economic and political reasons, (Sorensen, 2008). On the other hand it is hard to see how we will get there without some form of democratic governance. To resolve this conundrum, we will have to go below the veneer of apparent homogenous democratic societies, down to a class analysis of the rich, middle and poor segments of society and their interests and roles in possible social transformation. A lot has been written in the poverty and sustainable livelihoods literature on the importance of poverty reduction to sustainable development. Similarly there is ample literature on the importance of a prosperous middle class to poverty reduction and indeed to viable democracies (Ringen, 2007). Most recently the role of the super rich in social transformation has been described in ways that could be of significant value in the pursuit of SD. (Nader, 2009; Rothkopf 2008)
How then can we make public policy for SD in today’s world and indeed that of the foreseeable future? How can the democratic initiative seize the upper hand so as to put capitalism at the service of society as a whole and support sustainable development without losing its unmatched efficiency at producing wealth in the form of goods and services which people value? The following action agenda is suggested.
1. We need to reiterate what is at stake and what is we want to sustain. At stake are the very planetary conditions which allow the human species to be dominant among biological species alive today and to have the potential to live in unmatched freedom, peace and stability for generations to come. What is to be sustained are diverse and resilient options for livelihoods for all. The SD enterprise is not about people having the luxury to love and protect their environment or giving charity to the poor, it is about a common human endeavor to protect the essence of human survival as we know it and would like to assure its future evolution. It is about what we do today to identify, nurture and sustain the options for lasting global peace, prosperity and creativity.
2. The need for a paradigm shift from the Newtonian clockwork universe in which we would by reductionist science be able to explain all phenomena around us and be able to determine and achieve desirable future states of the world by the application of resources, knowledge and technology; to one which is co-evolving and self-organizing in inherently unpredictable ways, has long been articulated. The evidence and urgency for this shift has increased significantly over the last 2 decades and needs to be consolidated and widely communicated so that the shift can be accelerated. This paradigm shift is really a world view shift in which the way people make meaning of the world around them, the values they cherish, their vision of the sacred, right through to the what and how we teach in schools and universities, what is rewarded in the workplace, what constitutes a successful individual, what are the most desirable social virtues, how we make public policy and what we demand of our elected governments will shift dramatically. Stuart Kauffman, a world class evolutionary biologist and one of the fathers of complexity theory (2008) provides a comprehensive analysis of the evidence defining the limitations of the reductionist physicist’s view of world and the evidence in support of a biosphere that is a co-constructing emergent whole that evolves persistently. The evolution of the universe, biosphere, the human economy, human culture and human agency and action is profoundly creative and cannot be reduced to or explained by the motion of elementary particles. Kauffman offers a profound new world view of a secular sacred that we can all share regardless of religious persuasion : “ Agnostic and atheist ‘secular humanists’ have been quietly taught that spirituality is foolish or at best questionable.” p 8. “ If we are members of a universe in which emergence and ceaseless creativity abound, if we take creativity as a sense of God we can share, the resulting sense of the sacredness of all of life and the planet can help reorient our lives beyond the consumerism and commoditization the industrialized world now lives, heal the split between reason and faith, heal the split between science and the humanities, heal the want of spirituality, heal the wound derived from the false reductionist belief that we live in a world of fact without values and help us jointly to build a global ethic. These are what is at stake in finding a new scientific worldview that enables us to reinvent the sacred.” P9.
3. Some of the consequences of this new world view are now being teased out by current research leading to insights with important policy implications and practical application. This includes the recent work at Harvard’s Center for International Development led by Ricardo Hausmann on some new dimensions to economic growth theory in which they reveal how the density of product and capability spaces in a country explain economic performance in a manner different from the general equilibria models in common use and builds on Kauffman’s (2008) theories of webs of economic growth. The importance of this work is that sets the stage for a better understanding of the relationships between economic and ecological systems in way that will be useful to policy makers. Work in behavioral economics, which has now become mainstream, in areas such as choice architecture in which the way people make choices can be socially engineered (Thaler and Sunstein, 2008) ; and in the measurement of happiness as distinct from per capita incomes (Frey, 2008) are opening vistas of tremendous promise especially the possibility of conceptually delinking quality of life from consumption. Other recent work done by Geoffrey West and his colleagues at Santa Fe Institute point to a number of similarities between all living complex systems where simple power laws explain complex connections. They are now extending this work to explain how cities grow and behave. Others have now gone even further to crafting concrete tools and guidelines for making policy in a complex, self organizing uncertain system. Emery Roe (1998) in his book ; Making Policy in the Face of Complexity outlines a practical tool he calls triangulation in which orthogonal policy making tools such as cost benefit analysis, narrative policy making, local justice systems etc can be used together to bring different perspectives of a complex system together. Swanson and Bhadwal (2009) have produced a primer entitled: Creating Adaptive Policies: A guide for policy making in an uncertain world. The suggest for example that “ Adaptive policies anticipate the array of conditions that lie ahead though robust up-front design using (1) integrated and forward-looking analysis; (2) multi-stakeholder deliberation and (3) by monitoring key performance indicators to trigger automatic policy adjustments. But not all situations can be anticipated. Unknowns will always be a part of policy making. Adaptive policies are able to navigate towards successful outcomes in settings that cannot be anticipated in advance. This can be done by working in concert with certain characteristics of complex adaptive systems, including (1) enabling the self-organization and social networking capacity of communities; (2) decentralizing governance to the lowest and most effective jurisdictional level; (3) promoting variation in policy responses and (4) formal policy review and continuous learning. Designers and implementers of adaptive policies embrace the uncertainty and complexity of policy context, and consider learning, continuous improvement and adaptation of the policy a natural part of the policy life-cycle.”p15.
4. While the arguments above demand a radical departure from business as usual, we are where we are and must continue to build on the successes we have achieved and on the on-going initiatives we are currently undertaking at international, national and local levels. We have over the years developed a formidable body of international environmental law, conventions, treaties, standards, protocols, guidelines and commitments. These need to be enforced. To do this more effectively a world environmental organization with powers similar to the WTO, which has been under discussion, should be established. In developing countries national conservation strategies, poverty reduction strategies, national sustainable development plans, and local agenda 21, should be integrated in a bottom up way and reinvigorated with adequate resources. They should now be shaped as part of the social contract between citizens and their governments in which they undertake to be mutually accountable for the welfare of the people and the environment now and for the future. The most powerful tool available to countries and the international community in this regard is the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. The challenge here has been the weak attention given to economic, cultural and social rights. The recent work of the Commission on Legal Empowerment of the Poor has now provided a compelling synergy between human rights and markets and this has great potential of serving to strengthen the rule of law for all and the application of human rights based approaches to development. Perhaps the greatest success that we have achieved in the field of SD over the last few decades has been the meteoric rise in awareness of environmental and SD issues. This awareness can now be combined with social media technology and appropriate leadership from youth groups and influential people such as entertainment stars, Olympic athletes, Nobel prize winners etc. to create a new wave of awareness , possibility and hope to usher in the new world view described above.
5. To conclude, let us recognize some existing areas with the greatest potential for change towards SD. For convenience these are described at the physical, socio-economic and human levels, but it is recognized that they involve the ecological, cultural, political etc.
• At the physical level of the world is the movement to a lower energy consumption pathway which would include but not be limited to renewable and nuclear energy options; and would extend to a way of life and use of technologies through which we actually use less energy and matter while improving the quality of life for all, but especially the disadvantaged
• At the socio-economic level are the movements to generate economic growth which has a smaller economic footprint and fair rather than free trade, but perhaps more important is the emerging area of social enterprises and social entrepreneurs in which private sector businesses are in business for producing profits aimed at meeting all the costs of doing business but beyond that at poverty reduction and environmental value added. This requires changes in tax laws which will allow new integrated models of charities and businesses. Many developed countries such as Canada and the UK are examining options of how best to this.
• Finally at the human level is the movement to recognize the spiritual nature of humans, the understanding that humans are spiritual beings having a material experience, and not the reverse. A first and perhaps easy and palatable step especially for secularists and atheists is the embrace of a secular spirituality or sacredness in the ceaseless creativity of the universe which is all around us and for which scientific evidence abounds. This cuts across and has nothing to do with organized religion.
Renewed investments, entrepreneurial energy and reinvigorated leadership in these domains will produce the best returns for SD in the years ahead.
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