Our Common Journey. A Transition toward Sustainability

Citation

Simonis, U.E. (2002), "Our Common Journey. A Transition toward Sustainability", International Journal of Social Economics, Vol. 29 No. 4, pp. 335-340. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijse.2002.29.4.335.1

In The Netherlands, in Denmark, and elsewhere in Europe there have been interesting discussion forums focusing on the subject of sustainable development. We can now also report on an attempt from the USA.

A report, moderate in length, though far‐reaching in its intent, has appeared there under the title: Our Common Journey. The title quite consciously plays on the title of the epoch‐making 1987 report of the World Commission on Environment and Development (Our Common Future), seeking in some lengthy passages to pick up on again, and to answer, the questions at that time which were seen as fundamental.

The effort and commitment involved in the report must have been enormous: the 25 members of the Board on Sustainable Development at the National Research Council (NRC), and scientists from various disciplines, discussed for four years how we, the Americans and the citizens of the world in general, can be steered on to a path of sustainable development. This effort entailed evaluating 375 NRC reports and hundreds of other sources as well as holding workshops and symposia. Now the final report is available in book form. This is occasion enough for a broader, worldwide discussion.

The report claims to be reinvigorating the strategic relations between scientific research, technical development, and long‐term social interests. An attempt is made to forge links between critical ecological challenges with economic and social potentials. Three terms play a central role here: transition to sustainability, journey, and navigation. Sustainability is accordingly not an end product but a process; many, all of us, must set out on the journey; and here we have to rely on a good, reliable navigation capacity.

The Board is of the opinion (seen in the first part of the report) that the primary goals of the transition to sustainability should be to satisfy the basic needs of the growing future world population, by then far more (twice as?) numerous than at present; to safeguard the planet’s life‐support systems; and to overcome hunger and poverty. There are powerful counterintuitive trends working against these (high) objectives: urbanization, wealth disparities, wasteful consumption, power shifts in the wake of the growing globalisation of the economy. Yet even the most alarming of trends, the Board says, can experience transition – argued in a forceful, albeit somewhat naïve, section of the report.

The future scenarios are presented in the second part of the report. Here the Board focuses on three instruments for use in achieving the required advances in fundamental knowledge and social and technological capacities: integrated evaluation models, scenario techniques, and regional information systems. All that will be lacking then is the political will – and it (typically American?) is simply presupposed: Sustainability, it is claimed, can be achieved within two generations (that is, by the year 2050 or so).

A good part of the argumentation is devoted to environmental risks, with environmental reporting experiencing a positive reassessment. It is, the authors argue, necessary to come to a rapid consensus on indicators of success or failure, above all because they are at present not yet available (at least not in consensual form). Indicators on global, planetary systems, on regional and sectoral vulnerability, and on local stocks of robust systems are set out here as necessary categories.

If, and to the extent that we must aim for sustainability by means of trial and error, through social experimentation, we may find ourselves in need of strategies and institutions that link imperfect knowledge, flexible management, and social learning.

The highlights of the report’s most absorbing chapter can be given in a few keywords: developing a science of sustainability; preparing for emergency action; doubling and multiplying material and energy efficiency; advancing regional and local implementation strategies…

Conducted in Europe, a sustainability discourse would be likely to include more concrete categories of steps and targets: reduction, phase‐out, phase‐in, for instance. And it would tend more to be an analysis of constraints than options. That, after all, distinguishes Europeans from Americans. But Americans are also aware of their responsibility: “There is no precedent for the ambitious enterprise of mobilising science and technology to ensure a transition to sustainability. Nevertheless, the United States has a special obligation to join and help guide the journey” (p. 14). Exactly so, as the USA not only has a robust, powerful, scientific and technical capacity, but also is one of the greatest consumers of scarce global resources; and sustainably organised communities and cities, Agenda 21 processes, are still a rare phenomenon in the USA. So what is needed is modesty where it is appropriate, and resolution where it is called for.

This is a readable, stimulating, visionary report on our, as the title rightly puts it, common journey to sustainability.