"Sustainable development must be participatory development... Sustainable development is thus about the quantity and quality of empowerment and participation of people. Sustainable development therefore requires community mobilization, i.e., mobilizing citizens and their governments toward sustainable communities."
--Roseland, p. 27
Roseland ends his discussion in Chapter 2 by pointing out that change needs to begin at a civic level, with a bottom-up approach. I completely agree that in order to enact change of any kind, citizens need to become more involved with democracy. What is most interesting to me is how to get people to care enough about sustainability in order to become involved in the first place.
That is especially interesting to me, because I know that all of my classmates are interested in sustainability - or we wouldn't be in the class - and I know that most, if not all, students in SPEA would love to see a more sustainable world, but what about others?
For example, I come from an incredibly rural area. The population of my town is roughly 3,000, and it's surrounded by farms on each side of town. There has been little to no economic growth in the past 10 years, and most people commute to neighboring cities for their jobs, unless they live on a farm. I'm sure that people in my town generally care about breathing clean air or helping to foster economic growth within the community. But, there is very little being done to move toward a more sustainable city. Case in point, when I was younger, the city enacted an affordable recycling program. Then, a few years later, the prices rose to the point that people opted out because they felt it was too expensive. Even now, it's a rarity to see a recycling bin waiting to be picked up. And I'm sure that there are many other cities like my town.
I'm posing this question to you guys: How do we get people to change the way they think about the world, so they begin to think about long-term solutions, instead of only worrying about solving only the immediate problems?
I'm hoping that Roseland will offer, in subsequent chapters, ways to motivate people into mobilizing. I would love it if the next time I came home, I saw more recycle bins up, but there needs to be a strong push from citizens in order for that to happen.
I agree, the question about *how* to make people care about sustainability is quite important. I think one way we can do this is to make the results of a chosen sustainable action directly applicable and beneficial to the individual (or organization). Take composting for example: Fertilizer can be an expensive and unnecessary cost for the individual to incur. If proper composting techniques were taught to a community where home gardening was popular, perhaps the "free fertilizer" idea would be a motivator in helping individuals change their gardening habits. Expanding this thought, the idea of sustainability affecting the financial bottom line of a company is a great motivator for organizations to change their habits. For example: conserving energy through CFLs (energy-saving light bulbs) both helps the environment while helping companies save on their electric bill.
ReplyDeleteYour question is a good one and if there were an answer for it, it would likely be the only question regarding sustainability that needs asking. If everyone in the world cared about living sustainable lives and building sustainable communities and enjoying the equilibrium of living on a sustainable planet, there wouldn't really be any barriers to accomplishing those goals. We have the technology and knowledge to do that now. The problem is that we don't have buy-in from the world at large.
ReplyDeleteSo maybe the question we need to ask first is: Is it POSSIBLE to convince the rest of the world to care about sustainability and fully understand the long-term consequences of non-sustainability? I would posit that the answer to this question is, "probably not."
We, as a species, do not have a strong track record of seeing anything from a long-term, big picture perspective. We do what will get us the most money, power, or status in the short term and leave the consequences for another time or person. People who spend outside their income level, amassing huge amounts of credit card and other debt do this. CEOs who steer huge companies in less than sound directions in order to meet quarterly financial projections and gain obscene bonuses (only to jump ship a few years later leaving a mess for the next CEO to deal with) do this. Companies that drill for oil with no realistic plan for how to deal with accidents and spills do this.
Humans aren't good as considering the consequences of their actions until those consequences occur and come back to bite us. The growing push towards sustainability in the last few decades is even, in large part, a reactionary response to undesirable consequences brought about by our short-sighted actions.
So if we can't "make people care about being sustainable" maybe we can still make them act in a way that is sustainable. Maybe the caring comes later.
This is why I hate when people ("ahem" my father, for example) say that we need to rely on the market and everything else will fall into place. Ok, I may be exaggerating that belief, but my point is: the market system often clashes with what is best for our planet. Your town's failed attempt at a recycling program is a perfect example. If it is only finances under consideration, no one will want to pay extra for something they could just throw in the garbage. Since it is often cheaper to produce new materials rather than recycle materials, there is no incentive to encourage recycling. Another factor is the human tendency to think in the short-term. Perhaps the thought is that the people of the future will figure out the technology to clean up the mess that was left for them.
ReplyDeleteScott and Katie,
ReplyDeleteI completely agree. I think many people only think about shot-term budgets, just like when Daly (I think? I don't have my book with me, so it could have been someone else) pointed out in Wheeler that the majority of people only consider immediate problems. There is a definite need for a shift in the mindsets of people, so we begin to focus more on the long-term, but is that possible? I'm not sure.
Can we ever stop thinking about the short-term in favor of the long-term? Yes, but not any time soon. I have a friend who used to try and sell me on the idea of anarchy by describing a scenario in which people just spontaneously started governing themselves and, over a period of many, many years, the government would eventually just wither and die. I used to dismiss him as a hippy (which he is), but in some ways, that's what we're waiting for with the "sustainability" issue. Barring a sudden, cataclysmic overthrow of the economic and social system we've constructed over the last 300+ years -- which is not only unlikely but could produce more destruction than good -- all we can do is do what we can and hope it catches on in time. It is happening; you just don't see it every day. It isn't happening at a global or national level, so maybe one thing you can do is point out to your neighbors how their national and international leaders and systems have failed them.
ReplyDeleteI agree with what localsustainability says. I think it is hard for the general public to see the need to contribute to sustainability efforts unless they see a direct correlation between how it will generally affect them (and how it will affect them in a positive manner). Without this connection, many people do not feel it is worth their time, energy, effort and money to change their habits and behaviors.
ReplyDeleteSo for instance you give the example of growing up in a small town and the citizens of your town financially not being able to participate in recycling efforts. The city might then need to change the mechanism in which they are going about the program. For instance, Bloomington, Indiana has a pay-as-you-throw program in which it costs money to throw away trash. Thus, recycling (which is free) acts as an incentive to reduce the amount of trash that is collected. As a result, people see a direct correlation being that the more we recycling, the less trash we have and the less we have to pay to get our trash removed.
Another example of this could be with microfiber cloths. The big cost saver with microfiber cloths is that they can be laundered and reused multiple times. Thus when people replace conventional towels with microfiber cloths, they are not only doing a service to the environment but they are also saving money.
"How do we get people to change the way they think about the world, so they begin to think about long-term solutions, instead of only worrying about solving only the immediate problems?"
ReplyDelete"If everyone in the world cared about living sustainable lives and building sustainable communities and enjoying the equilibrium of living on a sustainable planet, there wouldn't really be any barriers to accomplishing those goals. We have the technology and knowledge to do that now. The problem is that we don't have buy-in from the world at large."
"Bloomington, Indiana has a pay-as-you-throw program in which it costs money to throw away trash. Thus, recycling (which is free) acts as an incentive to reduce the amount of trash that is collected. As a result, people see a direct correlation being that the more we recycling, the less trash we have and the less we have to pay to get our trash removed."
This blog post and discussion thread is central to this course! Great questions! Great comments! Keep these questions in your mind as we proceed. I think you will find some more answers.
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