Sustainable development can mean different things to different people. Does it mean making sure that human civilisation can continue to expand indefinitely? Or that humans can indefinitely expand economic growth so that the nine billion forecast inhabitants of the planet by 2050 can be as rich as the top billion of today’s seven billion? Or that human population must mimic natural systems and become self-regulating in a steady-state relationship with the planet?
‘Sustainable’ clearly means indefinite maintenance of ‘development’, while development implies improvement to some better state. This does not necessarily mean quantitative growth, but an increase in quality. Quality, of course, is itself a subjective term, but one simple definition is ‘fitness for purpose’. Evolution can be seen as ‘nature’s purpose’ within which the basic purpose of all species is survival and avoiding extinction. Basic survival is determined by natural selection which requires success in adapting to, or ‘being fit for’, survival in one’s environment. ‘Sustainable adaptation’ seems to be a better term than sustainable development. Development has too many associations with ‘growth’ that, at the current exponential rates, is rapidly exceeding the earth’s carrying capacity of both the products of human activity, and of human population.
Biological adaptation involves new combinations of genes that bring about innovation (mutagenesis) in the characteristics of the organism through the mechanism of mutation. The equivalent process in human societies is innovation based on new ideas (or ‘memes’) that lead to adaptive change. In biology only a small minority of mutations lead to successful sustainable adaptation and the majority of mutations (negative mutations) have maladaptive consequences in terms of fitness for survival. Other mutations are neutral and do not change the adaptive capacity of the organic system in relation to its external environment. Adaptation for survival has allowed the human species to flourish thanks to many successful innovations, but the exponential growth of human impact on the planet, to a large extent made possible by energy from fossil fuels, is now crossing planetary boundaries. The human innovations that have allowed the survival and rapid expansion of human population and its capacity to transform the planet and its resources are now themselves changing their status from the equivalent of positive to negative ‘mutations’. Put another way, beneficial ‘memes’ are now themselves transforming into negative maladaptive memes. This redefinition stems from unintended consequences of innovations that originally enhanced the material well-being of human societies, but now have resulted in ‘overshoot’ of planetary carrying capacity. The sources of the current socio-ecological predicament include: medical science; industrial chemically-based agriculture; the exploitation of coal, oil and natural gas; the replacement of natural ecosystems with managed ecosystems - all now driving exponential growth. They might now be considered as negative memes due to their unintended consequences that threaten the survival of many species, including our own.
Human creativity and innovation in the field of technology have fuelled economic growth, population expansion and impact on natural systems based on the assumption that exponential growth was unlimited. The evolution of human societies cannot be infinite on a finite planet. In order to ensure survival, human innovations that develop human systems need to mimic the behaviour of natural systems that sustain themselves within the constraints of the nature and the planet’s carrying capacity. Biomimicry is an approach to design that mimics the natural forms, processes and ecosystems that have evolved over 3.8 billion years:
biomimicry is an innovation method that seeks sustainable solutions by emulating nature’s time-tested patterns and strategies, e.g., a solar cell inspired by a leaf. The goal is to create products, processes, and policies—new ways of living—that are well-adapted to life on earth over the long haul. [http://biomimicry.net/about/biomimicry/a-biomimicry-primer/]
If human innovations are the equivalent of biological mutations in the process of adaptation, then they need to be tested against their capacity for sustainable adaptation, not simply in producing short-term benefits. The assessment of the risk of unintended consequences of releasing innovations into human systems and their possible effects on natural systems needs to become a high priority. At present, market economics places no such constraints upon the innovation that is central to the ‘creative destruction’ that drives the capitalist system. There is a growing movement towards a fundamental rethink of economics for ecological sustainability, for example, the New Economics Foundation, Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy and the World Economics Association. ‘Circular’ (as opposed to growth) economics, in which renewable resource use and recycling mimic nature’s steady state, are central to the ‘new economics’. But these advocates currently have little influence on political life. As for education, if the accelerating human predicament is to be seriously addressed, then a critical stance should be encouraged to woolly notions about sustainable development. Human systems should be designed based on self-regulating nature systems and biomimicry. Sustainable adaptation of humans to the constraints of nature and planetary boundaries should replace 'creative destruction' that assumes that the earth has an unlimited carrying capacity for the fruits of human creativitiy .
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