At present, leading international agencies, such as the United Nations Environmental Programme, are largely focused on what they claim to be ‘win-win’ scenarios of ‘sustainable development’ rhetoric. These combine social, economic and environmental objectives. However, as noted by the ‘Scientists’ Warning to Humanity’, environmental integrity is the essential precondition for the healthy functioning of social and economic systems, and thus environmental protection needs to be prioritized in policy and practice. Ecological sustainability cannot be reached without realizing that population growth and economic growth, with attendant increased rates of depletion of natural resources, pollution, and general environmental degradation, are the root causes of unsustainability. This article argues that to strategically address ecological unsustainability, the social, economic and political barriers to addressing the current economic model and population growth need to be overcome. Strategic solutions proposed to the current neoliberal economy are generic – namely, degrowth, a steady-state economy, and a ‘circular economy’. Solutions to demographic issues must be sensitive to the countries' cultural, social, political and economic factors to be effective as fertility differs from country to country, and culture to culture. As discussed here, Mediterranean countries have the lowest fertility in the world, while many countries in Africa, and some in Asia, South America have stable but consistently high birthrates. This is discussed using three case studies - Tanzania, Italy, and Cambodia, focusing on the "best case" policy practice that offers more realistic hope for successful sustainability. https://doi.org/10.1007/s41207-019-0139-4 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/helenkopnina/
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The ‘Grand Challenges’ of our times, like climate change, resource depletion, global inequity, and the destruction of wildlife and biodiversity can only be addressed by innovating cities. Despite the options of tele-working, tele-trading and tele-amusing, that allow people to participate in ever more activities, wherever they are, people are resettling in cities at an unprecedented speed. The forecasted ‘rurification’ of society did not occur. Technological development has drained rural society from its main source of income, agriculture, as only a marginal fraction of the labour force is employed in agriculture in the rich parts of the world. Moreover, technological innovation created new jobs in the IT and service sectors in cities. Cities are potentially far more resource efficient than rural areas. In a city transport distances are shorter, infrastructures can be applied to provide for essential services in a more efficient way and symbiosis might be developed between various infrastructures. However, in practice, urban infrastructures are not more efficient than rural infrastructures. This paper explores the reasons why. It digs into the reasons why the symbiotic options that are available in cities are not (sufficiently) utilised. The main reason for this is not of an economic nature: Infrastructure organisations are run by experts who are part of a strong paradigmatic community. Dependence on other organisations is regarded as limiting the infrastructure organisation’s freedom of action to achieve its own goals. Expert cultures are transferred in education, professional associations, and institutional arrangements. By 3 concrete examples of urban systems, the paper will analyse how various paradigms of experts co-evolved with evolving systems. The paper reflects on recent studies that identified professional education as the initiation into such expert paradigms. It will thereby relate lack of urban innovation to the monodisciplinary education of experts and the strong institutionalised character of expertise. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-63007-6_43 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/karelmulder/
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A Manifesto The group of some 17 participants interrupted the UDHR text in real time, infusing it with inclusive terminology, queering its binary language and expanding its gaze to other lifebeings, making it a manifesto for a new world. The newly formulated Universal Declaration of Human and More-Than-Human Rights and Responsibility for a New World would be the manifesto for an alliance of those who insisted on an end to capitalist practices and their destructive effects on the planet.
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