We found a solution to our greatest fear and now we can’t be stopped. Our brains, hard-wired to live with scarcity allowed us to discover tools and through their use we discovered scarcity’s opposite– abundance.
The great abundance boom, coupled with food distribution imbalances has contributed to some disturbing facts– according to a 2014 Word Health Organization report, globally, more than 1.9 billion people are considered either obese or overweight, while 462 million remain underfed. Between 1971 and 1982 world agricultural output increased by 25% More food is produced per capita right now than at any point in human history, and in some countries as much as 40% is wasted.
Land clearance for agriculture has reduced natural habitats in arable land by over 50%. Habitat modification currently impacts more than 80% of threatened mammals, birds and plants. The effects of agriculture apply directly or indirectly to the ecosystems that species depend on. Fishing does this and also has direct impacts on threatened species due to regulatory loopholes, bycatch and illegal activity.
The abundance we have engineered is helping many, hurting many, leaving many by the wayside and causing potentially irreversible damage to the planet.
Food supply is fast emerging as a dominant issue in the debate around environmental strategy, but its not only about food. In a previous post I looked at how growth is driving us towards ever more resource extraction for everything despite innovations designed to turn the tide.
It is tempting to blame overpopulation but this is not the case. The problem is mostly linked to economic growth. According to the Friends of the Earth resource panel: “In the period 1970-2010 consumption has been a stronger driver of material use than population growth at the global level. And the richest countries still today consume on average ten times more materials than the poorest.”
In light of this it should be no surprise that attention has turned towards the personal choices we all make. In my work for Sealives a picture has emerged that includes a mix of asking people to make better personal choices and an evolving consumer landscape that empowers rather than disempowers people in their desire to make fewer and less-negative impacts as they go about their daily lives.
We need to reject over-packaged goods and repurpose more for instance– these are examples of personal choices that can be supported with improved strategies on the supply side. From a macroeconomic perspective the supply chain needs to be modified to automatically favour suppliers that adopt better strategies; who conform to these new consumer aspirations by supplying reusable goods with minimal packaging. Only if you do both can you expect a virtuous cycle of improvement.
We have also seen strong evidence that doing even this may not be enough. Expected growth will demand so much raw material and energy input that even large scale improvements on a per capita basis will result in no net improvement in the rate at which damage is caused.
Two recent reports bring this home in a big way. A European Environmental Bureau (EEB) report debunking the concept of green growth, and a new EAT-Lancet report that takes a realistic view on what our diets should look like in order to maximize health and minimize environmental impact.
The EAT-Lancet report supplies an action plan for improving both our diet and planetary health supported by data that supplies hope and terror in equal measure. It tells us what we should be eating, shows how typical diets around the world currently diverge from the ideal, and compares a variety of potential outcomes based upon how enthusiastically we embrace change. Change regarding what we eat, how much gets wasted and the chemicals that are used during production.
The result is sobering. If we do everything the report recommends, it says that by 2050 we can get greenhouse gas emissions and rates of cropland use under control. The same goes for water use (just), while rates of nitrogen and phosphorus use in agricultural processes will still likely exceed planetary limits by some amount. The projected impact on biodiversity by the same date is nothing short of catastrophic. EAT-Lancet don’t provide a specific number for their projected best case regarding biodiversity because they judge the range of uncertainty to be too large. The range of uncertainty projects out to impacts that may be 100x what the planet can sustain.
The EEB report doesn’t get into solutions very much. It doesn’t provide much hope either, it just cuts straight to the terror. It says that as far as their research goes we can have economic growth or we can have reduced environmental impact, but we can’t have both.
To many this will be a shock. It’s one thing to be told that it is too late to save everything; quite another to have it broken down in excruciating detail– to be shown the extent of change required just to stand still. It is clear that systemic change and technological innovation must be a bigger part of the solution to this darkening environmental picture– where else can the missing big-picture pieces come from?– but where does this leave us from a personal standpoint? How should we view the personal revolution in light of all this?
In a word, it leaves us looking not for growth, but for a much more slippery target. It leaves us looking for what is sufficient.
I’ve mentioned before that I live on an island. One of the larger islands in an archipelago of over two hundred that rise above the water from the edge of the continental shelf off Canada’s Northwest Coast. Living here is a privilege but as all island dwellers know, island life is not without its constraints. Life here is not exactly off-grid, but very close-to. Pretty-much all material goods and much of what people eat need to brought from off-island. Consumer goods and spare-parts– things that are relatively easy to get hold of on the mainland– are in short supply and more expensive often by a significant margin. To put it simply, most stuff is harder to get.
Early-on when I arrived here I got into a conversation about it with one of the locals. I asked him what people do if there is something that they need that they can’t get hold of, “We make-do” he replied.
You’d think problems of this kind would make the place seem a bit backward, a bit behind the times, but it doesn’t. Quite the opposite– it makes the place feel progressive in a very specific way.
There is no shortage of younger people here. A couple who live not too far from me are about to get married. I stopped by their place the other day just as a group of friends were delivering a wedding present to them; a medium-sized, used aluminum rowing boat. Handsome in its own way. A little beaten but entirely serviceable, the boat had been cleaned-up thoroughly and some fresh paint had been applied to the inside. All-set for island adventures– fishing and hunting included.
When you’re young and in love and beginning a new chapter of your life in a place that is as out-of-the-way and inspiring as this place can be, this is what making-do looks like. There are constraints, but life is about overcoming them with a little ingenuity, plenty of good humour and some help from your friends.
I’m not talking about self-sufficiency– the idea that one can live entirely off-grid and be completely independent from civilization– although that will doubtless be an attractive path for some. This is about sufficiency– a different concept that focuses purely on accepting constraints on material inputs into your life in the belief that good things will result for you and for everyone and everything else.
It is an attitude that is creative, more concerned with quality of life than the acquisition of status symbols. It doesn’t just deal with constraints but makes a virtue out of them. The goal: a life of material sufficiency leavened by a different kind of affluence born out of a clear vision for what a simpler life can look like. In a way it’s not such a new concept. Hippies and new-age travellers have been experimenting with ideas like this for half a century. There is something different about this group though– a bit less idealistic, a bit more practical, and a bit more capable. You look at these people and you know that they’re not just going to have a different life, they are going to have a good life– a life you might envy, whatever sports car you currently have in your garage, whatever brand of refrigerator your kitchen currently boasts.
Make the decision to live on an island and these constraints are forced upon you. Not everyone who lives this way is doing so for the betterment of humankind or the natural world, but more than ever it is becoming an attitude that may have huge relevance to our future survival as a species. In a place like this such a life also includes hunting, fishing and foraging for food from the wild– sustainable on a personal level if done with care and respect for the ecosystem, but not a way of life that can scale to feed seven and a half billion people.
Some people have been thinking about the idea of sufficiency in a bigger way for quite a while. Friends of the Earth Europe (FOEE) published a document digging into it in detail in 2018. More of a manifesto than a report Sufficiency: Moving Beyond the Gospel of Eco-Efficiency talks about decoupling environmental impacts from economic growth as though it can happen but takes as read that the two are at the end of the day mutually incompatible. From there it goes on to suggest ways in which societies and economies can move from a focus on growth to a focus on sufficiency. The tone is practical and upbeat. Key problems are identified. The solutions begin with proposals that don’t seem too difficult until you consider their ramifications, and end up in places that would make most supporters of the free-market cringe.
Regardless of where you stand on that last point there are some important takeaways.
FOEE points out that a personal revolution is required. Our concept of affluence must adapt from one of super-abundance, extravagant travel and traditional luxury to one that places higher value on simpler things. As I described above, people who live on islands are often forced to think this way. The FOEE recognize that planet earth is an island and that a similar attitude towards input constraints must be accepted by everyone who lives on it. This means caps on resource use calculated on a per-capita basis. Rationing in other words. Rationing to reduce resource use overall and as a mechanism to correct distribution imbalances.
Free market instincts say that this should be left to personal choice– that when people recognize the value of sufficiency over waste, their behaviour will change and markets will respond accordingly by providing less wasteful options. This is a persuasive argument as long as consumer aspirations change quickly enough– a huge challenge– but both the FOEE and the EEB point out that while the market may well provide more efficient products and services, this will not serve us in achieving reduced environmental impacts.
A phenomenon called the rebound effect dictates that savings in one area are spent in another. If a person saves money and resources by using energy saving lightbulbs for instance, it has been shown that they will go-on to utilize that money in some other other way that has an environmental impact all of its own. Similarly, if one person chooses to make personal sacrifices in the pursuit of sufficiency (you decide to not take that international flight for instance), market efficiencies simply find a way to sell whatever it was you rejected to someone else. Not using a resource because you want to reassign its value back to the planet and save the planet it’s impact cost only devalues it in economic terms for whoever is selling– they reduce its price accordingly and new buyers are attracted. Unhelpful subsidies for resource extracting industries only exacerbate the problem, propping-up supply even when it has become inefficient. The FOEE refers to the 2017 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Green Growth Indicators report stating that OECD countries increased fossil fuel subsidies at a higher rate than GDP growth from 2000- 2014. Subsidies for industrial fishing are having huge negative impacts.
The above also applies in general. Greater efficiency in the system does not constrain resource use, it promotes it. Energy saving vehicles will not result in fewer vehicles or reduced vehicle use. The FOEE points out that this does not mean that increased efficiency isn’t something we should strive for, but it does make the case that while efficiency has the potential to result in reduced impact it can only do so within a structure of constrained resource inputs.
So how should input constraints be implemented? Rationing– a cap on resource use– limits demand but how will the supply-side be brought into balance? The FOEE calls for strict caps here as well– caps on resource inputs into the supply chain. In this way, argues FOEE, the most important goal becomes the principal point of constraint in the system. There is a great deal of clarity and logic to this– if reducing environmental impacts to within planetary boundaries really is our first priority then the idea seems to have a lot of merit. But that’s just it– it only makes sense if reducing environmental impacts to within planetary boundaries truly is our first priority, individually and collectively.
Above all, it requires us to let our goals as a society drive innovation in technology and socio-economic systems, not the other way around. Technological building blocks are strewn around us like so many legos. We must assemble them with intent to drive the change we actually need. This is non-trivial– it requires fundamental change in how we have shaped society for much of human existence. Countries that have experimented with putting the goals of the collective over the goals of the individual have failed because they are oppressive. China has thrived only because it has allowed capitalism to flourish within a non-democratic system. Progressive free-market economies have installed large-scale social safety-nets, healthcare systems and other innovations for the common good, but they survive because personal freedoms are also strenuously upheld.
As the FOEE proposal gets into the detail of how to implement its fundamental ideas, the picture becomes more challenging to those of us who have long held that in the great 20th century experiment that pitted capitalism vs communism, capitalism won-out. Unrestrained growth and the emphasis on personal attainment has resulted in prosperity for many but has also caused much damage. Some of the ideas that would be required in a zero-growth economy, ideas like basic minimum income and a reduced work-week are not far from the mainstream for many. The massive redistribution of wealth required to support this in a zero-growth context and the methods by which that might need to happen (e.g. salary caps) might not be so easy to embrace by anyone who relishes the incentives that the current system provides.
But ultimately that is the point. The current incentives have been shown to incentivize the wrong things in terms of environmental impact. As the FOEE report puts it “consumer capitalism is based upon the ‘Forever More’ aspiration”. This means that for many, the meaning of modern living is tied to consumption, but if decoupling environmental impact from economic growth is all but impossible, the next logical step is to ask if our ideas of well-being and prosperity can be decoupled from economic growth instead.
There are other innovations suggested by the FOEE document, including tradable resource quotas (the ability for individuals to sell portions of their ration entitlement to someone else). This strikes me as a terrible idea that would ultimately lead to much of the resource allowance flowing to those people who are better placed, by money or influence, to game the system. If the idea is to commoditize restraint then why not reward people not for selling their quota but according to how much they are able to beat it? Maybe using less than your quota could result in credits towards some environmentally benign benefit, time off work* perhaps? Credits that you could either use or sell.
Our personal decisions do matter. They matter because our lives help to shape the lives of other people we encounter and the communities in which we live. Ultimately, we can only steer things towards true sustainability by establishing system-wide goals. Accepting system-wide constraints would be a big step for many but this may be the only way to get to where we need o go.
The good news? It is still early enough for sufficiency to be a a matter of personal choice– to get the style and flavour of sufficiency that you want. Social structures built to enforce sufficiency as a matter of survival may be just as fun but that is not yet assured. Its possible to imagine that for many people the space between the ‘floor’ of a good, basic life, and the ‘ceiling’ of a life that makes use of the maximum allowable resource use per capita within planetary boundaries provides plenty of room for personal growth and happiness. A world of freedom, just not total freedom. For some in the developed world it may not seem that way.
In the words of one of the FOEE document’s authors “To be honest, we still do not have a concrete idea of what really sustainable consumption or sustainable lifestyles and livelihoods could like like.” We must somehow find inspiration in self-imposed scarcity, but I look around me and I see real examples of how good life can be in a world with greater resource constraints. To be clear, this is not a life that I myself lead at this point. It is something I have seen hints of– an idea for a life. Parts of a potential future.
In this future, the planet is an island, and in your island life, that used rowing boat looks as beautiful as a new stereo, or that luxury SUV.
* From FOEE: “Recent research supports the claim that reduced working time has a positive impact on the environment. It has been sown for example, that if the United States followed the same pattern of working hours as the EU-15 (member states before 2004), it could reduce its energy use by 20%. There is significant correlation across the OECD between national and ecological footprints and average hours per employee: indeed, calculations show that a 1% reduction of work hours per employee will reduce their energy, environmental and carbon footprints more than proportionately– by between 1.2% and 1.3%”
