Getting the Goods

International news and views on sustainable production and consumption

February 2004

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Burning down the house: A view from France

"Our house is burning and we are blind to it. Nature, mutilated, overexploited, can no longer regenerate itself and we refuse to admit it". These were the opening words of France's President Jacques Chirac at the World Summit on Sustainable Development a year ago. These words, spoken by a Head of State of one of the world's great economic powers, demonstrate that the world's problems have reached the highest political spheres, and the urgent necessity to change our unsustainable production and production patterns. Numbers, statistics, and trends of all sorts abundantly demonstrate to what extent our development path—one that is based on neoliberal economic policies which favour open markets and free trade, the privatisation of services and natural resources, and rampant advertising-fuelled consumerism—is diverging from sustainability. Indeed, the United Nations Environment Programme's Global Environmental Outlook 3¹ report makes a global environmental assessment over the last thirty years, and concludes 297 pages later in a formidable understatement, that "the state of the environment is much more fragile and degraded than it was in 1972". More data and analyses are made available by the World Watch Institute² and the World Resource Institute³, environmental think tanks and research organisations whose quality of work is world renowned. Even institutions such as the OECD⁴, the IMF, and the World Bank recognize global ecological and social problems and concede that current trends are unsustainable.

Today's great challenge is facing climate change, the magnitude and devastating effects of which remain virtually unmeasurable. We often hear of the costs of changing our behavior and reducing our greenhouse gas emissions, but what of the vastly greater costs associated with the loss of human life, the great suffering to come, and the destruction of ecosystems if we fail to act? Clearly, the impacts will be serious—at first for the low-income countries, for they will not have the means to adapt (e.g., build
dikes to protect themselves from a rise in sea levels, have access to clean drinking water, protect themselves from more extreme temperatures, obtain medical treatment); then, by rich countries, since the impacts (e.g., violent storms, diseases, mass migrations) will, in time, affect them as well. Although it may not yet be possible to link it directly to climate change, the heat wave that devastated Europe during July and August 2003 and killed an estimated 14,000 elderly and other people in France alone, offers a glimpse of what summers may be like in the decades ahead.

Over the last ten years, an indicator known as the Ecological Footprint⁵ has been developed to measure the human impact on Nature. This tool, whose reliability is recognized by the United Nations and other organisations, gives an estimate of the biologically productive surface area necessary to produce indefinitely, using prevailing technology, the resources consumed by a given population—whether an individual, a city, a region, or humanity as a whole—and to absorb its waste. The calculations offer some surprising results: on average, each Human uses some 2,3 hectares⁶ to sustain her or his activities. If we divide the Earth's ecologically productive surface by the world population, we discover that 1,9 hectares are actually available per capita. The conclusion is obvious: we are living off of nature's capital, rather than its interest; as a
species, we have surpassed the planet's long-term carrying capacity.

In the end, what we call "environmental problems" are not so much problems having to do with the environment, but are in fact "human behavioral problems", where "environmental management" should actually be "human management". Why is wealth being concentrated in the hands of an increasing minority? Why are the water tables polluted or depleted? Why is the food chain contaminated with toxins? Why is biodiversity declining 10 times faster than what is considered to be the "background rate"? Why does a third of the world's population still not have access to modern energy services, clean drinking water and sanitation? These are not due to random and unforeseen circumstances; a whole mechanism (economic and political) is in place which make things just so. Indeed, our house is burning, and we are still blind to it. It is not that we do not see the flames; we simply refuse to acknowledge them. The evidence is clear, though, and we will not be able to claim that we did not know! It is up to all of us—citizens of the world, states, and corporations—to change our behavior, because if we do not, it is Nature that will impose change upon us. —By Emmanuel Prinet, Association 4D, France.

Footnotes

¹ GEO 3 can be downloaded on the following website : http://grida.no/geo/geo3/english/pdf.htm

² See http://www.worldwatch.org

³ See http://www.wri.org

⁴ See, for example, the OECD Environmental Strategy for the Fist Decade of the 21^st Century. Adopted by the OECD Environment Ministers. May 16, 2001.

⁵ See Wackernagel, Mathis and William Rees. Our Ecological Footprint. Gabriola: New Society Publishers, 1995. A recent global and sectoral Footprint analysis for each country in the world is available on-line: http://www.panda.org/downloads/general/lpr2002.pdf

⁶ 1 hectare = 100m x 100m