Strøtanker om bæredygtighed

Det er ikke altid lige rar læsning, men igennem årene har Worldwatch Institute leveret en enestående dokumentation af klodens tilstand. Den nu foreliggende årsrapport State of the World 2008: Innovations for a Sustainable Economy er således en 25 års jubilæumsudgave. Hvert år har haft sit særlige tema, og State of the World 2008 søger at indkredse grundlaget for en bæredygtig økonomi, som er fordelagtig for både kloden og dens efterhånden mange indbyggere.

State of the World 2008 har i alt bidrag fra mere end 20 forfattere, som i 14 kapitler behandler forskellige aspekter af problemstillingen. Det er dybdegående analyser af økonomien, ikke bare på dens egne indre vilkår, men sat i forhold til biodiversitet, nord-syd-problematik, forbrugsmønstre, klimaproblematik og informel økonomi, blot for at nævne nogle få. Den brede kulturøkologiske tilgang gør det til yderst anbefalelsesværdig læsning.

Ud over den årligt tilbagevendende State of the World, som hvert år tager et særligt emne op, leverer Worldwatch Institute løbende en lang række andre artikler og publikationer, heriblandt Worldwatch Magazine, og Vital Signs. Der ligger en omfattende research bag publikationerne, så flere af dem kan kun downloades mod betaling. Men gradvist frigives store dele af produktionen til fri download, og af de fjorten kapitler fra State of the World 2008: Innovations for a Sustainable Economy er de første fire kapitler på nuværende tidspunkt frit tilgængelige som smagsprøver.

Jeg vil ikke her gennemgå samtlige rapportens 278 sider, blot lige opridse overskrifterne for de fire første frit tilgængelige kapitler. Kapitel 1, Seeding the Sustainable Economy (pdf), har rubrikoverskrifterne An outdated Economic Blueprint, Ballooning Liabilities samt Innovation Revolutonaries. Kapitel 2, A New Bottom Line for Progress (pdf), har rubrikoverskrifterne Economic Globalization and Genuine Progress: A Growing Disparity, Sustainable Development: The New Bottom Line, A Macroeconomic View, Five Microeconomic Objectives samt Fostering the New Bottom Line.

Kurven herover stammer fra side 43 i kapitel 3, Rethinking Production (pdf). Rubrikoverskrifterne er her The Solid Foundation of Eco-efficiency, Cradle to Cradle: Extending a Product’s Life samt Riding the New Wave of Innovation. Kapitel 4, The Challenge of Sustainable Lifestyles (pdf), har rubrikoverskrifterne The Math og Sustainability, The paradox of Wellbeing, Live better by Consuming Less, Competing for Status-and for survival, The “Iron Cage” of Consumption samt Living Well – and Within Limits.

En enkelt smagsprøve fra side 55: “Left to their own devices, it seems, there is not much hope that people will spontaneously behave sustainably. As evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins has concluded, sustainability just ‘doesn’t come naturally’ to humankind. But it is a mistake to assume that evolutionary motivations are all selfish. Evolution does not preclude moral, social, and altruistic behaviors. Social behaviors evolved in humans precisely because they offer selective advantages to the species. An important lesson from evolutionary psychology is that the balance between selfish and cooperative behaviors depends critically on the kind of society they occur in.”

Der er udarbejdet en diskussionsguide omkring rapporten, som sammen med indholdsfortegnelsen giver en form for overblik over rapportens struktur.

Worldwatch Institute præsenterer selv State of the World 2008 således:

To avoid economic collapse at the global level, the authors of State of the World 2008 call for major reforms of government policy to steer investment away from destructive activities such as the extraction of fossil fuels and toward a new generation of environmentally sustainable industries. Specific recommendations include making prices tell the ecological truth by reducing subsidies and adopting environmental taxes. The report also urges a full assessment and valuation of the “free” services that nature provides to the human economy and describes efforts to create markets to protect biodiversity.

“We have the tools today to steer the global economy onto a sustainable path,” say project co-directors Gary Gardner and Tom Prugh. “The task now is to bring them together and scale them up so that they become the norm across today’s economies.”

State of the World 2008 finds growing evidence suggesting that the global economy is now destroying its own ecological base. It quotes former World Bank chief economist Nicholas Stern, author of the acclaimed Stern Review on the economics of climate change, who describes the changes now under way in Earth’s atmosphere as “the greatest and widest-ranging market failure ever seen.”

“Continued human progress now depends on an economic transformation that is more profound than any seen in the last century,” says Worldwatch president Christopher Flavin. “We should be practicing a sustainable approach to economics that takes advantage of the ability of markets to allocate scarce resources while explicitly recognizing that our economy is dependent on the broader ecosystem that contains it.”