By: Alyson Chin
Introduction
We all want to live as long as possible, to do so, the society we’re living in needs to be sustainable! Living in the 21st Century, we’ve realised that there are many problems we are faced with. From global warming to resource depletion and overpopulation, our planet’s in serious danger. At a time like this, we must quickly, as a society, try to reverse these effects before it’s too late. But how do we do this? To look into the future, we must first remember our past and present. There’s much we can learn from successful past and present societies to help us become more sustainable now.
In this report, I’ve investigated areas I think are necessary to build a sustainable society. I’ve used examples of past and present societies to create a model of a sustainable society.
Hypothesis
Original Hypothesis - I think a sustainable society is one that’s properly governed, where the population is working towards a common goal and is aware of and takes action against problems in society. To make a society sustainable, may also be seen as to prevent it from collapse, for, if it doesn’t collapse then it’s sustainable. Therefore, Jared Diamond’s Collapse Framework could be reversed to become a framework for sustainability!
Final Hypothesis and Model - The definition I shall use for a ‘Sustainable Society’ is: a complex society which has demonstrated a continuous and stable period of success lasting for at least 300 years to the present or having had 800 years of sustainability.
From my original hypothesis in which I decided a reversal of the collapse framework shall lead to sustainability as well as my belief that it needs to be properly governed, I’ve come up with four main factors for sustainability. These are: Environmental Sustainability which includes Forest Protection, Biodiversity and Waste Management/Recycling, Friendly Alliances/Minimal Enemies, Economic Sustainability including Self Sustainability and Government, which includes Law and Order, Good Responses and Corruption/Transparency.
To prove this hypothesis, I’ll discuss each of these factors as well as their sub-factors and provide examples of countries that have demonstrated sustainability. The countries/societies used are not necessarily sustainable in every way, just in the factor they represent. There’ll also be examples of societies who didn’t demonstrate these factors and the unsustainable consequences. Though it won’t be written as a topic on its own, I shall also talk about the importance of people’s attitudes within the factors.
Environmental Sustainability
Damage to the natural environment is often a major factor in a society’s collapse. Therefore, to remain sustainable, attention must be paid to conserving the environment. It’s vital to protect the environment as many problems we have today are environment based. Damage to the environment is damage to the society.
Forest Protection -Forests are an essential part of the environment as they prevent soil erosion, support a diverse range of creatures, collect and release water at dependable rates and especially important in today, transform carbon dioxide into oxygen. I wanted to emphasize the importance of forest protection because many countries today have the problem of deforestation and this is very harmful.
A country that has demonstrated sustainable forest protection is Finland. Finland is Europe’s most heavily forested country with 74.2% of its land area forested. The reason this can be seen as sustainable is that its forests annual growth rate exceeds the amount harvested. Finland protects its forests carefully and has been concentrating on sustainable timber production and the health of its forests for several decades now while recognizing the economic, social, ecological and cultural aspects of the sustainable utilization of its forest. This shows that the protection of forests leads to the welfare of other sectors of a society. Another great thing is that with its expanse of forest, it’s able to eradicate any polluting gases released by the industry as there’s enough forest to take it up making it environmentally sound.
The people of Finland have played an important part towards the protection of their forests. 60% of the forest is owned by private person/institutions and there are around 250 Forest Management Associations who help to advise these owners.
This provides our society with a standard with which we should attempt to adhere.
Biodiversity - Biodiversity’s important in the sustainability of a country as it shows the country’s ability to sustain many species and is thus an indicator of its habitat being mainly natural and environmentally friendly. Two countries I thought I could choose for biodiversity were Congo and Madagascar as, according to the United Nations, they’re two of the most biodiverse countries in the world. But after further research, I realised that though these and other biodiverse countries are so, not a single one of them is sustainable! For example, Madagascar: though it boasts great amounts of biodiversity, it certainly cannot say the same about conservation. In the past 40 years, the population has doubled and the result; a halving of the forest area . Today, there’s only about 10% of the original forest left with no major conservation efforts to be seen. It’s likely that the population will double again in the next 20 years, then what?
This example is much like many other currently biodiverse countries, without action soon, such biodiversity shall disappear. I kept this section in my report after being unable to find a good example because the fact that no country’s biodiversity is sustainable highlights the need for conservation.
Waste Management/Recycling - The careful management of waste is important. Today, our landfills are filling up fast and soon there’ll need to be more land to pileup our waste and as it is, we’re already short of land. The other problem is that we are wasting many resources that could otherwise be recycled and we are also running out of resources to use. We can only mine so much from the land, sooner or later we are going to run out, just like we are with petrol.
A great example of the way we can manage our waste efficiently is the society of Edo Japan existing from 1600-1867. During this time, Japan was basically closed from the outside world and therefore had to be self sustainable. Recycling was a part of their lives, and by doing it they were able to live sustainably on the resources in their country. An example of the extent to which they recycled can be seen from the recycling of just their umbrellas. Used umbrellas went to special warehouses where the old oiled paper was removed and became packaging material, the ribs of the umbrella repaired, covered in new paper and resold. Everything was recycled. Human waste was seen as a valuable fertilizer and if it was recycled, what wouldn’t be!
Compare this to Australia today where 800 000 tonnes of plastic is dumped a year. And that’s just plastic! There are a lot of other things that we landfill unnecessarily when we could do like Edo Japan and recycle. We have a lot to learn in being more sustainable from a society with much less technology and knowledge!
Friendly Alliances/Minimal Enemies
Good alliances and minimal enemies are beneficial as a country they then doesn’t have to worry about their enemies. While some may think that having a good, strong army is necessary, I believe that not making any enemies would be better- better to prevent than correct. I believe that the best combination would be no enemies and lots of good alliances, especially with strong countries.
Canada today can be acknowledged as a model country in this area as though they have a few minor disagreements with other countries, for example, entering into the war on terrorism would annoy some of the countries it enters (but another way of looking at this is that they’ve ensured a continued alliance with the current superpower, America). But this sort of little disagreement would not anger the other country so much as to want to destroy them. Canada has no major enemies. It also helps with many peacekeeping missions, giving it a generally positive outlook for the rest of the world. It’s also friendly with many influential countries, such as the aforementioned America.
A country who can be said to have, not necessarily bad relations, but unstable alliances, is China. I’m using China as an example because everyone knows about the current problems between China and Tibet as well as the human rights violations causing disagreements with many countries and even causing suggestions of the boycott of the Olympics! So as you can see, enemies cause problems for the society, problems which are unbeneficial to the society’s sustainability.
Economic Stability
The economy is what makes money. Money’s needed as a wealthy society is usually a sign of a strong society, which is therefore more likely to be sustainable. By economic stability, I refer to a stable GDP that should ideally be constantly around the same level, a level that’s profitable enough for the country i.e. positive. It should also have a stable and low inflation figure as well as a return on exports higher than the value imports. Though it would be delightful if I could give an example of this, Globalization has caused a country’s economy to not only be the economy of that country but to be a part of the world economy and so, a fluctuation in one economy leads to movement in all others. Because of this, I’m not sure if it’s even possible in today’s global society for such an economy to exist, but nevertheless I stick to the belief that if it were to happen, the society would be sustainable.
Self Sustainability - For the sustainability of a society I believe that it needs to be self sustainable to an extent, especially in terms of economy, so that outside influences don’t inflict major damage. Becoming too reliant on trading partners means that if the trading partner fell into crisis/collapsed, you would too.
Once again, I use the example of Edo Japan to demonstrate my point. It was extremely successful (as explained previously) in surviving self sustainably and may have continued on successfully for many years. But in a twist of irony, I turns out that though it survived perfectly well self sustainably, and though it’s debatable what really caused it to collapse, we can be sure it was outside influences (here I recommend complying to the Friendly Alliances/Minimal Enemies suggestions) so that nevertheless, its structure of self sustainability can be revered.
Government
The governing of a society is of course an significant part of it’s sustainability as governance has much to do with the outcomes of situations it’s faced with. It is the governing body that makes many of the decisions for the society.
Good Responses - The way that a society responds to crisis is the crucial element of its survival. To be able to sustain itself is by no means to be thought of as remaining purely constant. A society needs to be able to adjust to new circumstances (as the only thing that never changes is that everything changes) and still remain stable, only then can it be sustainable. A large part of this may be attributed to the way the Government is able to change policies and the like to suit new times.
An example that covers the good and bad responses possible for a society is the island of Hispaniola. On it, there are two neighbouring countries, The Dominican Republic and Haiti. Both of these countries, being on the same island, started off with similar situations, with similar resources and economies. Both of them deforested much of their land for timber and to clear new land for agriculture, one of their main exports. Both had bleak looking futures at a certain point in time, with the amount of deforestation becoming more and more severe. So what happened? The Dominican Republic was able to acknowledge this problem and started conserving its forests, setting up new schemes to prevent the further loss of forests as well as trying to reforest. The result today is that though it still has a way to go, around 14% of it is now forested. Compare this to Haiti. Their Government didn’t recognise the major problem it had and the country continued to be deforested. Today, Haiti’s forests cover less than 1% of the total land area and this is still being depleted. The Government has now realised the problem, but instead of quickly taking action to change this, Government officials are still arguing how it should be solved and while they are doing that, the country’s situation worsens.
This shows how two countries facing the same situation can respond differently and the outcomes of this. We must aim to recognise and respond positively to any problems that occur.
Law and Order - Law and order in a society is a basic part of any functioning society and therefore extremely basic for a sustainable society. A society to be seen as a good example of law and order is current day Singapore. It’s a country where everything runs smoothly, from the MRT (Mass Rapid Transport) to the way it’s citizens follow laws- the Government found the right balance in the law system. This is not to say that we should all ban chewing gum and invoke capital punishment, the point is, it works for their society, so society’s need to find laws that work in their culture.
Corruption/Transparency - Corruption is something that simply seems to occur in our human run governments. But it’s possible to control and minimize it. According to Transparency International, a non governmental organization, Finland is the least corrupted country in the world. Calculated by the ‘Corruption Perception Index’ which uses “freedom of speech, open administration, transparency in political institutions, and consensual political system which emphasizes common problem solving” to judge. Since the Corruption Index was first published in 1995 Finland has always been one of the top countries in terms of least corrupt so it is safe to say it shall sustain.
The following Guidelines for a corruption free society is taken directly from Transparency International and is shown below as it is directly relevant to how we can prevent corruption from entering the Government. These guidelines are based upon the least corrupted European countries’ system of being corruption-free and can therefore be seen as the path to a uncorrupted and transparent society.
The Nordic philosophy for a corruption-free society
A culture of ethicality - Corruption and falseness are strictly not tolerated in the Nordic society. Individual cases of corruption are very rare. Rules are clear, taken seriously, and the price of being excluded from the normal circles of society is exceptionally high.
Transparency and openness - The public administration is really public: it is elected by us to serve us and therefore it is open for criticism by other citizens, civil servants, and media. All diaries and records kept in the public administration are open to everybody, without exception.
Public argumentation for the reasons behind a decision - The Constitution guarantees the right to be heard, the right to receive a reasoned decision and the right of appeal. Again the principle that public administration is really public, elected by us to serve us. Our politicians are elected and given their jobs to represent us.
Collective decision structure - Corruption and bribery are made easier when the decision maker is only one person. Decisions are therefore made by a collegiate body so ideas can be debated and group bribery is made more difficult.
Low hierarchical structure - Civil servants are responsible for doing their work without the intervention of superiors and have to inform others about their actions and duties. An administration with a low hierarchical structure, transparency, and a high degree of individual and collective responsibility does not foster corruption.
Scandinavian Welfare: an egalitarian society - A well educated society is one of the pillars of the Nordic Welfare system. The Nordic countries believe in a democratic and egalitarian society where the ideal is to achieve the welfare of all the country citizens. The civil servant reflects these values, a democratic mentality and high standard of education being dominant in the civil service.
Conclusion
In conclusion, it’s my belief that if a country was able to follow this model, they would be well on their way towards becoming sustainable. Though perhaps my model is not the definite pathway to success (it would take a lot more research and a novel to do that, perhaps Jared Diamond’s next project :) ), it’s vital that we, as a global society and as individual countries, take action to correct our faults and become sustainable. Seeing as we have the tools and knowledge that past societies didn’t, we should utilize them to the fullest and learn from past and present societies to become sustainable.
