Feature

A site for a sore world

If sustainable development means different things to different people, all must have the opportunity to be heard – and new forms of global discussion and democracy are needed, argues David Seedhouse

It is impossible to be against sustainable development. Imagine a manifesto writer declaring: ‘Our party is deeply committed to unsustainable development’, or a government minister announcing: ‘Our aim is sustainable stagnation by the year 2005’, and the point is obvious.

But widespread consensus about anything of social importance usually conceals fundamental disagreement. The following typical citizens, for example, are all in favour of sustainable development:

The industrial capitalist: I am contributing to sustainable development by expanding my ‘affordable clothing’ empire (my company guarantees a sustainable supply of new clothes and, by selling them to a multinational market, helps develop the global economy).

The green politician: sustainable development depends on expanding the public’s awareness of environmental issues: without this, we will continue to act in ways the planet cannot sustain.

The dairy farmer: I can help secure sustainable development by farming larger herds and therefore achieving additional milk exports for my nation, thus boosting the local economy.

The neo-Marxist: the replacement of the capitalist system with post-industrial communism is a prerequisite for sustainable development.

The population campaigner: sustainable development is possible only if we can stabilise or reduce population growth.

The radical Catholic: sustainable development can be ensured only by trusting to God and to nature, and this requires that all people must accept that any form of birth control is immoral.

The visionary technologist: to achieve sustainable development we must build high-tech cities and computerised homes in the developed world. We must look to develop where best we can in order to push forward the boundaries of science and technology. Ultimately, this will be for the benefit of everyone.

The visionary environmentalist: real sustainable development is possible only if we return to a form of worldwide feudal farming. If we are to treat the planet as nature intended, we must establish a global network of organically farmed smallholdings, managed as small ethical businesses.

The market economist: sustainable development is possible only through manufacturing growth, fiscal growth, and year on year growth in gross domestic product. We must progress. We cannot turn back the clock.

The trouble is that not only is each view of sustainable development different, but each is achievable only at the expense of at least one of the others.

Ugly factories belch out smoky chemicals: sustainable development to the industrial capitalist and to the market economist, but wanton destruction to the green politician and to the neo-Marxist. Each cow on a dairy farm produces 14 times as much effluent as a human being, most of which finds its way into streams and rivers: sustainable development to the dairy farmer, but ecological disaster to the visionary environmentalist.

Protecting native plants and animals on unspoilt land inspires campaigners the world over: sustainable development to the green politician, but economic suicide to the diary farmer who requires speedy motorways to get the products to the customer efficiently. Delivering free birth control for everyone on the planet is a technical possibility: a prerequisite for sustainable development for the population campaigner, but a moral debacle to the radical Catholic.

It is tempting to say that only some of these versions of sustainable development are correct. If you are a passionate advocate of ‘greening the Earth’, rampant industrialisation cannot conceivably be described as sustainable. Equally, however, if you believe that industrial development is the only viable way to feed the world, a greener planet is likely to be of secondary importance.

It is impossible to prove that any one view of sustainable development is correct. To do so requires demonstrating that all the alternatives are either not really sustainable, or are not really development, or both. To attempt this is to sink instantly into a mire of disputed evidence, questionable predictions and conflicting values.

An intellectual and practical challenge

Human beings tend to act first and think later, if we think at all. When faced with such a baffling diversity of opinion and data about the meaning and importance of sustainable development, the temptation to act on our preferences and intuitions rather than explore the issues thoroughly can be overwhelming. Yet action inevitably papers over the intellectual and political cracks that we would be well advised to fix before doing anything.

Who should sustainable development be for? Should sustainable development projects benefit everyone in the world equally? Should they first help save the 30,000 children who die needlessly each day? Or should they primarily benefit the industrialised peoples who can expect to live into their seventies? Should sustainable development principally support the most endangered people, such as native Americans and Australia’s aboriginal people? Or should the priority be to target the most endangered species?

Who should plan for sustainable development? Western politicians? The World Health Organisation? The World Bank? Microsoft? The United Nations? Expert scientists? Religious leaders? Everyone?

And who should pay for it? All nations equally? The richest nations? The poorest nations? Individual taxpayers?

The questions are endless, but there is no easy answer to any of them.

Should development mean more cars? Fewer cars? More farms? Fewer farms? More people? Fewer people? Longer lives? Better-quality lives? Economic growth? Economic shrinkage? Organic farming? Genetic engineering?

Does sustainability mean that our developments must last forever? Must we maintain a particular acreage of forest indefinitely? A static level of industry for all time? The same genetic stock forever? Or is forever too long? Is a hundred years more realistic? Two hundred years? How long is ‘sustainable’?

Computerised educative democracy

If we are to achieve sustainable development, we must first to decide what it is. At present, we are being cajoled by scientific experts and pressure groups into seeing the issue as they do. And, as governments and academic institutions entrust more and more authorities with implementing sustainable development projects, the opportunity for public input becomes increasingly restricted.

So far, no government or global organisation has seized the opportunity for participatory democracy offered by the world wide web. Yet there is no reason why the web should not be used as a means of involving all those who have access to it in decision-making about our future.

Accordingly, I offer a simple suggestion. First, that the UN set up a website called, for example, www.globalreferendum.org or www.peoplesreferendum.com. Second, since the fundamental questions about sustainable development are matters of political philosophy (a discipline that debates which rules and assumptions we should use to organise our social priorities), the website should explain these matters in a straightforward fashion.

For whose benefit should society be organised? What are the primary social goods? Is sustainable development a social good? Should social goods be shared equally or should they be retained by those who have worked directly to create them? Who should make these vital social decisions?

Until these questions have been answered it will be impossible to talk adequately about policies for sustainable development.

The website might outline the philosophical bases of various types of social organisation, and the consequences of adopting each of these philosophies. For example, the site might explain that legislating for sustainable development requires government surveillance and taxation, a legal system with punishments and deterrents for those who try to evade the rules, accountability among decision-makers responsible for spending public money, and so on.

Alternatively, a social system that awards people on merit requires that the most successful individuals are able to retain all or at least a large portion of their incomes, and are able to spend and invest as they see fit. Within this type of system sustainable development rests on individual choices and trade-offs rather than legislation.

Third, the site might then go on to enable users to vote for their preferred social arrangement. This would have to be done before voting on specific policy because the way we organise society defines and limits the sort of practical planning we can do.

Fourth, with this question democratically decided, the UN could educate us about the pros and cons of the various means that might be used to achieve sustainable development, and we could vote on a range of options.

Naivety?

Undoubtedly, there will be endless objections to such an idea. Not least is that these issues are too complex to be the subject of participatory democracy. Democracy is too risky: what if the public makes stupid or inefficient choices?

Objections would also be raised about the enormous cost of running such a website; that people are not interested in voting on these issues; that such matters are best left to the experts to decide; and that politicians are elected to make these decisions.

Inevitably, questions would also be raised about who would pay for the equipment needed to ensure people in ‘undeveloped nations’ had an equal say; whether the referendum would be binding; what would happen to governments who would not let their people participate; and how fraud could be prevented.

Naturally, there are plausible responses to all these objections, and I think it is realistic to suggest that we should at least debate whether or not we want global democracy for global decisions. Of course, the best and simplest argument in favour of using information technology in this manner is that we all have to live here, and increasingly a very few people’s choices are having an effect on the whole world.

Since we all have a stake in the future of our planet – and since the decision-making needed to ensure that there is any future at all is essentially political in nature – it seems reasonable to propose that all who want to have democratic input on deciding the planet’s future should be able to.

Democracy sometimes produces bad policy, but then so do all other methods of human decision-making. At least if we set up www.globareferendum.org we would have the chance to understand and think about the issues at the philosophical depth level they merit, and each of us would have at least a small say in our collective future.