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. TIMEFRAMES FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT X/
Carl-Göran Hedén
Prof.em., Stockholm Project Office, Biofocus Foundation. Sweden.
When I looked back over the last decade one relevant quotation popped up: ”Happiness comes from doors which you didn’t even know, that you had opened”,
This is now quite relevant, because I could hardly foresee the consequences of the feasibility study, which I once carried out for the United Nations University. It concerned Gunter Pauli’s "Zero Emission Research Initiative”, but I could not predict that my recommendations - far from opening a door – actually opened the floodgates for a torrent of technology transfers and global entrepreneurship.
Like most successful entrepreneurs who invent new approaches to technology transfer, Gunter Pauli not only lives in the future, but also in the air and on the road. Consequently we have often had brief but also very stimulating talks about ZERI’s long term goals. This can be illustrated in various ways, where I like to show how ZERI has climed up the staircase of many other social innovations
(Fig 1)The notices we read, and the pictures we see on TV every day (the Middle East, the Darfur Province in Sudan, Nepal, the situation around the Big Lakes and in some coastal areas of West Africa) - all this gives us much food for thought.
We are for instance reminded about how ZERI can now serve as a stepping stone for the next step, which I think must be called ZERO CONFLICTS if we are not to be overwhelmed by pessimism. To take this step we must now RETHINK. Taking this step we must now move our weight from one leg (narrowly focused inventions) to the other (transdisciplinary social innovations).However, to come up with suggestions for anticipatory social innovations we must of course first define the threats which lie ahead for sustainable development. In my view they emerge in three interacting shortages.
THREATS TO SUSTAINABLE
DEVELOPMENT
1. shortage of imagination,
2. stortage of energy, and
3. shortage of water and minerals.
Fig.2With regard to the first shortage, I will now show a provocative diagram, and then I will give a couple of examples: which illustrate a complexity which come from a multitude of technological interactions. One concerns energy and IT, and the other is related to geological shortages.
Since I am just an old bioengineer, who is not burdened with a formal training in economics, I will now try to exercise the reader’s imagination by illustrating my mistrust in economic measuring rods. After all, if engineers would use measuring rods made of latex, when they build bridges, nobody in his right mind would of course dare to cross them. However, if economists build bridges into the future on the basis of GNP/cap, we don’t hesitate to follow them across. Obviously we must contionue improvements like ”UNDP’s ”Human Development Index” (UNDP 2001) if we want to strive for modernization. However, environmental and demographic challenges may well, in the long term, lead to much more radical measures of modernization, largely based on a synergy between advances in communication-and computer science.The diagram (Fig 3) shows two ”modernization-pyramids” : one, like ZERI, standing upright on the solid ground of ”Economy of Scope” (=synergistic networking of locally defined activities), and the other one standing on its head, illustrating how technological advances is moving communication distances and transaction costs from big to small numbers.
Fig.3
As you see, the lefthand pyramid illustrates a move from centralized power to systems which are decentralized but
still maintain power through central coordination. Finally their vulnerability paves the way for UNCENTRALIZATION, a fundamentallyt important word which I once learned from Harlan Cleveland, former president of the World Academy of Art and Science. Now, let’s move to the righthand modernization pyramid which is as unstable as all upside-down pyramids tend to be. This is simply because of the combined energy and environmental costs that we have to pay for all the air- road- and ship tranports that are required to cover local, then regional and finally global distances. This is where ZERI and EC’s ”Integrated Product Policy”(Wijkman, 2004) come in, buying us the time needed also for transaction costs to drop to a level when all money will be electronic.
This is a level which R.J.Schiller, professor in economics at Yale University, thinks might prove to be just as revolutionary as when coins were invented. In a sense it will actually mean a return to early times in the history of ”Money”, when merchants had to carry balances and weights in order to measure metals, precious stones, shells etc. Now it will be biometrically secured pocket computers and smart cards (for very small transactions) that will be the instruments for reducing transaction costs.
This has an interesting but overlooked consequence, namely that IT:s extraordinary potential will make it possible to switch from a fictive and dangerously volatile valuebase, to one that is based on energy analysis.
Given the weight of all the metals, plastics and textiles in a modern car a ”ZERI-computer” could for instance easily tell us how deep a cut in our personal energy budget (measured in Joules) that it would mean to buy a particular car. For the macroeconomic aspects of those ideas I refer you to the book ”Not by money alone – Economics as Nature Intended” by M. Slesser and J.King (Slesser and King, 2002) They for instance discuss the rising energy costs for extracting dwindling supplies of oil, and for producing metals like copper from rich and from increasingly poor ores.
The latter of course has a bearing on how a technology switch, say from copper wires to optic fibers, make it necessary to keep the memory of our ”ZERI-computer” constantly updated, so that it can be used any time that we want to acquire an artefact.
Obviously it would of course contain the energy costs for extracting, refining and forming metals, for making plastics and for producing and weaving fibers. But it would also add the energy costs for the water used in the manufacturing process, for all necessary transports and for achieving zero emissions. Add to this the computer would also present the energy costs for moving the weight of the artefact (say a cityjeep or a Toyota/Prius) at different speeds, and with different fuels, over its entire lifetime adding on the energy cost for disposal.
Eventually you might then find the best use for your personal energy budget might be to opt for increased freedom by building an energy capital by investing in devices for trapping solar energy (Bioenergy, PV, wind-and waveenergy etc.).
It is easy to argue for the educational impact of energy analysis, and I would not be astonished if Pauli, who has had such a remarcable success with his environmental microbooks for children, will eventually follow up with computer games of the SIMS 2 type, but geared to imaginary societies where consumption would be based on energy analysis.
My guess is that such games would then revolve around the creative handling of various shortages yielding results that eventually would penetrate also mom’s and dad’s consumer oriented urban minds. Energy analysis of the water and oil situation in the Middle East could certainly provide a dramatic flavour to such games, but there are many, many others.
Take for instance the phosphorous situation (Rosemarin:, 2004) which is not only essential for our food supply but also lends itself to substitutions much less easily than oil.
90 % of the phosphorous actually ends up in fertilizers and animal feed supplements, and the rest goes to the chemical industry. The US will deplete its commercially viable reserves within 30 years, and in fact only has 5-6 % of the 18.000 megatonnes phosphate rock in the world. This is against China’s 37 % and Morocco/Western Sahara’s 32 %. But China’s export is wisely conservative, so the present stand-off between the Polisario guerrilla and Morocco would seem to make for a labile geopolitical situation.
The time may come when deep-sea mining for phosphorous will be viable, but in the foreseeable future ZERI’s recycling philosophy, composting, sewage sludge upgrading, ecological sanitation and sustainable agriculture seem to be the best choice for a country like India, the lead importer of phosphorous.
So, I come to the end of this little intervention by repeating my conviction that the Zero Emission concept is indispensable for the governance of our small and shrinking planet (Cleveland,1993):THE CORE FUNCTION OF GOVERNANCE IS THAT OF COMMUNITY LEARNING AT THE WORLD LEVE, OF ORGANIZING AND FACILITATING THAT LEARNING. AFTER ALL THE LEARNING CAPACITY OF A SOCIETY DETERMINES ITS ABILITY FOR SUSTAINED PROGRESS AND DEVELOPMENT.
Knut Hammarskjöld, 1990
References
Cleveland, H.”Birth of a New World”. Maxwell MacMillan, New Yoek, 1993.
Rosemarin, A. ”The Precarious geopolitics of Phosphorous”, Down to Earth, p.27-31, June 30.2004.
Slesser, M.and King,J. ”Not by money alone – Economics as Nature Intended” Carpenter Charlbury, Ox.UK, 2002.
UNDP ”Human Development Report 2001”United Nations Development Programme, Oxford University Press, New York, Oxford. 2001.
Wijkman, A, ”Betänkande om medelandet fron kommissionen till rådet och Europaparlamentet – Integrerad produktpolitik – Miljöpåverkan ur livscykelperspektiv,”. Final version: A5-0261/2004 of report from the Committee on the Environment, Public Heaalth and Consumer Policy. April 8th, 2004.
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X/ Background input for Biopolicy Seminat: ”Social Innovations for Development – A Case for Biopolicy” at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, Octiber 27th 2004. The input is based om the paper:”The Critical Importance in the Creation of the Zero Emission Concept” presented at the United Nations University in Tokyo on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of ZERI, Sept.15th 2004..
