Reconciling the Need for
Economic Development and Ecology
By Professor Mark Swilling
Editor's note: Mark Swilling, a social entrepreneur from South Africa, participated in a remarkable meeting – convened during the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) in Johannesburg – where social entrepreneurs presented practical, innovative ways of catalyzing social development for the poor while maintaining ecological sustainability. They demonstrated how to promote development by rethinking and re-engineering local systems to harness natural systems' biological productivity. Here, Swilling provides a perspective on the WSSD and some examples of his own work in sustainable development.
Even though the WSSD happened just a few months ago in Johannesburg (August-September 2002), it is impossible to find anyone who is prepared to celebrate the event as a victory for the cause of social or ecological justice, let alone both! Invariably, the answers depend on who you are, what you have to defend, and – of course – where your funding comes from.
And what baffles me most is how many initiatives and programs were "launched at the Summit." It is almost as if "the Summit" is code for an orchestrated convening of all humanity to witness the final manifestation of the greatest dream – or worst nightmare – of whoever "launched" their project at the Summit.
If you are a South African in the development business, the question most often asked of you is: "Did you attend the Summit?" Just being in the city of Johannesburg at the time qualifies you to say "yes." Somehow this anoints you with an aura of having witnessed some great happening of momentous importance for the future of us all and the planet.
In reality, we probably witnessed the most expensive launch of good intentions in human history. But for what, we need to ask – for what?
Canonizing "Sustainable Development"
In theory, the WSSD was originally planned as "RIO plus 10," that is a meeting convened ten years after the so-called Earth Summit held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. Like the Earth Summit, the WSSD was organized by the United Nations to record progress made over the past ten years, and to pass binding resolutions on a wide range of issues in order to secure a more equitable and sustainable world.
The Earth Summit canonized the term "sustainable development" and ever since it has been used to refer to some sort of messy coupling of environmental conservation and development. But not much clarity has been achieved about what this means in practice.
. . . the grand intentions for the Summit foundered on the rocks of a profound division . . .
It is arguable that in the ten years since 1992 both the environmentalists and the developmentalists have been disappointed. Biospheric resources (sources, sites and sinks) have continued to be depleted at alarming rates, and developing countries have seen very little development as measured in GNP terms. In short, both the poor and the planet have suffered since the Earth Summit, rather than the reverse.
In reality, and despite significant advances at the WSSD (e.g., the agreement on water and sanitation and the signing of the Kyoto Protocol), the grand intentions for the Summit foundered on the rocks of a profound division between a developed world emphasis on "green issues" (e.g., conservation, climate and energy), and a developing world emphasis on "brown issues" (poverty, water and land). This division, in turn, was rooted in an unresolved tension between two broad approaches to sustainable development, namely the environmental perspective and the social equity perspective.
Globalized Neo-Liberalism: Imagine an Alternative
Environmentalists regard growth-oriented development as the prime driver of environmental degradation. Their solution is zero-growth.
Not surprisingly, this triggers a heated negative reaction in developing countries where it is assumed that growth-oriented development is the key to eliminating poverty. But when developmentalists from developing countries talk about eliminating poverty through economic growth (and usually export-led growth), the environmentalists interpret this as a recipe for biospheric meltdown.
. . . imagine if there was an alternative conception of development that worked with rather than against nature, and which could also ensure real development for the poor . . .
In reality, both are wrong because they both uncritically accept a traditional concept of development that is urban biased, focused on industrial modernization, powered by fossil fuels, and export-oriented. It is a concept of development that has come to be referred to as globalized neo-liberalism and was institutionalized during the 1990s via the workings of the World Trade Organization, World Bank and the IMF.
But imagine if there was an alternative conception of development that worked with rather than against nature, and which could also ensure real development for the poor rather than the chimera promised by "trickle down" economics?
Well, now there is such an alternative. In a remarkable document issued shortly before the WSSD called The Joburg Memo: Fairness in a Fragile World an eminent group led by Wolfgang Sachs skillfully described a synthesis between the green and brown agendas. It is based on a genuinely post-industrial ecologically-sustaining conception of development that has the best chance of leading to poverty elimination.
. . . there can be no equity without ecology, nor can there be ecology without equity
By doing this, they were able to argue that there can be no equity without ecology, nor can there be ecology without equity. Rather than posit the end goal of development as the way of life of the globalized middle class – which makes up 20 percent of the world's population and consumes the lion's share of the planet's resources – the authors of the Joburg Memo argue that we would need five more planets for everyone to live like this. Thus, the struggle for justice in the future is no longer just about curbing political and economic power, but also curbing the right of the rich (in both the North and the South) to consume the planet's environmental resources.
Where the Rubber Hits the Road
Although the Joburg Memo represents a cogent and powerful civil society alternative to the official outcome of the WSSD, it is still short on examples of practical action. For this, one needed to attend the meeting of Ashoka Fellows that took place prior to the WSSD.
The meeting site was a remote location outside Johannesburg that is a stone's throw from the famous "Cradle of Humankind" – a unique archeological site that has revealed the origins of the human species which, in the short space of 100,000 years, has developed the power to either nurture or destroy the planet that it has managed to conquer.
Although the Ashoka Fellows were from different disciplinary, educational and social backgrounds, we were united by a common ability to rethink and re-engineer local systems in ways that have a positive impact on the livelihoods of the poor while simultaneously harnessing the biological productivity of natural systems. We were not about stopping development for the sake of conservation. Nor were we about doing development at the cost of the environment.
Rather, in very practical and innovative ways, we all somehow seemed to be searching for ways to harness and work with – rather than against – natural systems in ways that catalyze social development processes. Examples included the sustainable harvesting of indigenous forests in Mozambique that simultaneously created livelihoods for local communities; a Biosphere Reserve in Mexico that has resulted in a local economic development strategy premised on the mobilization of communities around conservation and ecological resource use; the reorganization of farming techniques in Zimbabwe to reverse rapid land degradation (which negatively affects 1 billion throughout the world); and pollution reduction in Indian cities via the mobilization of poor communities around their right to a healthy environment.
The Sustainability Institute
My own work combines University-based educational work with grassroots development projects. I have been appointed as the Professor of Sustainable Development at a leading national University called the University of Stellenbosch (located 30 minutes inland from the city of Cape Town) and my wife Eve Annecke is the director of the Sustainability Institute, a local NGO.
The Sustainability Institute at Lynedoch
The Institute and the University (represented by the School of Public Management and Planning) have agreed to work as a partnership. The Sustainability Institute is based at a seven-hectare site that used to be a small  country hotel – the site is commonly known as Lynedoch after a Scottish mission that was started there in the 19th century.
We have built a school for 350 children who come from very poor farm worker families, a community hall, a center for the performing arts, and the classroom and offices of the Sustainability Institute. One business and two local projects demonstrate sustainability in practice.
- Land Reform: working with 15 black farmers who were denied access to land under apartheid,
 we managed to secure 100 hectares of
public land from the local municipality to mount a land reform project using organic farming methods. The farmers grow vegetables and raise pigs, and soon there will be vines, olives, and possibly hemp (after it is legalized next year). In a country where whites still own more than 80 percent of all the land, and 95 percent of the best arable land, this project is one of a few working models of land reform in practice.
- EcoVillage Development: after two years of hard work and much struggle, we have won the right to build a 120-unit EcoVillage for a socially mixed community.
 Using ecologically-sound building materials (e.g., unfired clay bricks made from clay extracted from the site), a unique on-site waste water treatment system (called Biolytix – see below), solar-powered water heating, water harvesting and re-use, recycling of all solid waste, and passive heating and cooling systems, we are able to build affordable houses with lower-than-normal electricity, water and sewerage costs for poor householders. In other words, we have designed and started building a physical infrastructure for a residential community that demonstrates in practice that ecological design can have a direct positive impact on the lives of poor families. We have also calculated that the total carbon-dioxide emission level will be one-third of the normal house of the same size.
- Biolytix Water Treatment: our work led to the formation of a business to market a system for on-site treatment of sewerage. Sewerage treatment is a major problem in South Africa because it involves costly capital works and water is a scarce resource. The challenge is to reduce capital costs and recapture the water for re-use to reduce rapidly rising water costs. After much research and experimentation, a system was developed that uses earthworms embedded in an
engineered ecology located in tanks. The worms and all the other microcosms deal with the solids, while the liquids drain through a set of natural filters for onward transmission into an engineered wetland. There is no sludge that needs to be taken out, and the effluent can be re-used for irrigation of orchards and nurseries. This aerobic system is far more efficient and uses much less space than the traditional multiple wetland system, or the many anaerobic alternatives that are coming onto the market. Once again, the solution to a social problem is found by harnessing the amazing self-organizing energies of nature – unsurprisingly, the slogan for the firm Biolytix South Africa (Pty) Ltd. is "ecology at work."
Our flagship project is a new Masters Program in Sustainable Development. This is a Masters Degree accredited by the University of Stellenbosch. The curriculum comprises eight core modules plus a thesis that takes two years to complete.
The students live in the Lynedoch EcoVillage for the duration of their studies, and all classes take place at the Sustainability Institute. This makes it possible to link classroom work to daily involvement in grassroots development work.
The Sustainability Institute at Lynedoch
Our aim is to deliver one of the world's first Masters level programs in sustainability that is rooted in a developing world context. The eight modules are: Sustainable Development; Complexity Theory and Systems Thinking; Leadership and Ethics; Sustainable Cities; Globalization, Governance and Civil Society; Ecological Design; Biodiversity and Sustainable Agriculture; and Corporate Citizenship.
In all modules, the message is the same: there can be no ecology without equity, and there can be no equity without ecology. The focus is at all times on practical ways of making this happen. The case studies of the work of Ashoka Fellows is often the most useful material to use in this regard.
Making Changes in Daily Living
During the next two decades, the world population will grow from six to at least nine billion, oil reserves will expire, the majority of all people will be living in large megacities, and key resources such as water and food will be in severe short supply. The generation of today that finds itself in leading positions in all sectors has a responsibility that no other generation has ever had before in the history of the human species, namely to rethink and self-consciously change the relationship between human society and nature, and to reverse the process of ever-widening inequalities. If we fail in this mission, it is unlikely our children will have much of a future.
Whether we live in a shack settlement in a city or a middle class suburban house we can find ways of changing things at a local level
For most, the gigantic global dimensions of the sustainability challenge leaves them feeling too small to do anything, too overwhelmed by the mass media to think differently, and too disconnected from others to find like-minded people. However, the advantage of the sustainability challenge is that it cuts to the root of how we live on a daily basis.
Whether we live in a shack settlement in a city or a middle class suburban house we can find ways of changing things at a local level. We can live differently in our homes, join community organizations that are doing something about poverty and environmental destruction, and connecting to global initiatives such as the rising tide of social movement action from Seattle to Porte Allegre, Milan to Cape Town, Tokyo to Istanbul.
Local initiatives that prefigure a world to come are mushrooming all over the world
But we must guard against putting all our energy into words and signs without building local institutions that start to change things in practical ways at the level of daily living. Without examples of concrete alternatives, mass action easily turns into cynicism. But localized initiatives that are just about good works and which remain disconnected from mass actions to change the global system will rapidly decline into parochialism and even self-pity.
Local initiatives that prefigure a world to come are mushrooming all over the world. Driven mainly by citizen initiatives, either in opposition to or simply bypassing corporations and governments, we see local economies emerging where cooperatives and local currency systems start to decouple local economic life from unstable global flows.
There are major initiatives to build local organic farms linked to local markets so that farmers get more by cutting out the middleman, and consumers get healthier and more affordable produce from their immediate locales. City-wide initiatives abound, from some Japanese cities, to Curitiba in Brazil, or the sophisticated ecologically designed Dutch suburbs and towns that have emerged over the last decade.
There is a state like Kerala in India that has been governed for decades by a Communist Party that has focused on the empowerment of women and education for all, and where the Human Development Index is one of the highest in the world. There are also a growing number of small- and medium-size businesses (and even a few large corporations) that have successfully married the profit motive with investment in social and environmental sustainability.
We are all in communities and workplaces where there are organizations that want to do something. Being part of these means being part of the start of one the greatest revolutions ever witnessed, but with the difference that this one will proceed quietly in the hidden abodes of daily life, but break out occasionally in mass actions that will shake up the establishment.
Contact:
Prof. Mark Swilling
Sustainability Institute
School of Public Management and Planning
University of Stellenbosch
PO Box 162, Lynedoch, 7603
South Africa
+27-(0)83 4597417
Web: www.sustainabilityinstitute.net
Fax: +27-(0)21-8813294
Email: swilling@icon.co.za
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