Paradoxes of Sustainability
Alexey A. Voinov Institute for Ecological Economics P.O. Box 38, Solomons, MD 20688, USA.
E-mail: voinov@cbl.cees.edu IntroductionEver since it has been brought to the center of socioeconomic and environmental debate by the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED, 1987), the notion of sustainability has generated tremendous interest and an avalanche of publications, even though (or maybe because) it has never found an agreed definition. People tend to define sustainability in the ways that suit their particular applications, and often use the term with no explicit evidence and recognition of the exact meaning being implied. Just like biodiversity (Ghilarov, 1996) sustainability became more of a political issue than a scientifically supported concept. To a certain extent this may be because once scientific analysis is applied to the sustainability concept it turns out to be either redundant, or ambiguous. In this paper I attempt to focus on some of the problems and controversies of the goal of sustainability that emerge once it is treated within the framework of systems analysis. It seems to be especially hard to reconcile the concept of sustainability with such systemic categories as hierarchy and cycling. The renewal cycle has been recognized in many dynamic systems and the cyclic pattern in life histories of complex systems has been often considered as an adaptive mechanism that serves the needs of evolution. Hegel's dialectic viewed development of systems as a cyclic process of change where negation of a system was a prerequisite of synthesis. Cycles have been observed in numerous systems of very different nature. This cyclic nature of development is contradictory to the goal of sustainability, which is generally aimed at preservation, maintenance of a certain state or function. Sustainability in this case is a human induced process, that is imposed on a system as part of human activity and is totally controlled and managed by humans in order to preserve the system in a state that is desirable. When introducing the goal of sustainability, it is not properly recognized that within complex hierarchical systems sustainability in a certain level may be in conflict with sustainability of systems in higher hierarchical levels. If renewal is an adaptation mechanism, that provides flexibility and potential for change, then sustainability of a system borrows from sustainability of a supersystem and rests on lack of sustainability in subsystems. Therefore increased sustainability of a certain hierarchical level may impede sustainability of larger systems that potentially are even more important in the historical perspective . Numerous examples from both ecology, economy and social sciences seem to support this view. The only way to resolve this contradiction between sustainability and renewal in a hierarchical framework is probably to agree, that the biosphere as a whole is the only system which sustainability we are to seek. Sustainability vs. RenewalMost sustainability definitions originate from the relationship between humans and the resources they use. Wimberly (1993:1) states that "to be sustainable is to provide for food, fiber, and other natural and social resources needed for the survival of a group -- such as a national or international society, an economic sector, or residential category -- and to provide in a manner that maintains the essential resources for present and future generations". Norton (1992:25) argues that "sustainability is a relationship between dynamic human economic systems and larger, dynamic, but normally slower changing ecological systems, such that human life can continue indefinitely, human individuals can flourish, and human cultures can develop - but also a relationship in which the effects of human activities remain within bounds so as not to destroy the health and integrity of self-organizing systems that provide the environmental context for these activities". Costanza (1992:240) leans on the systems properties, stressing that "sustainability... implies the system's ability to maintain its structure (organization) and function (vigor) over time in the face of external stress (resilience)". Solow (1991) says that the system is sustainable as long as the total capital of the system is equal or greater in every next generation. Costanza and Daly (1992) argue that sustainability only occurs when there is no decline in natural capital. Whatever may be the specifics of different definitions, there is one common component in all of them. The words used may be different, the applications may vary, priorities may differ, but in all cases there is something about maintenance, sustenance, continuity of a certain resource, system, condition, relationship, in all cases there is the goal of keeping something at a certain level, of avoiding decline. However, this kind of behavior does not seem to be intrinsic of neither natural ecological nor man-made economic or social systems. Instead of maintaining a certain state or condition, living systems tend to go through a life cycle. This was observed for ethnic systems by Gumilev (1970, 1990). Holling (1986, 1992) generalized this cyclic behavior for ecological and socioeconomic systems. Thermodynamics of very much similar cycles in the cellular level have been documented by Zotin and Zotina (1993). In all cases, the renewal cycle assumes that a system goes through a series of stages, starting from growth, followed by conservation (inertia and homeostasis in Gumilev's terms), then release (obscurity) and finally renewal. Within the framework of the renewal cycle, sustainability may be interpreted as the goal of breaking the cycle, of extending a certain stage in the system life pattern. It is probably the growth or most likely the conservation stage that is to be extended - there is hardly any reason to prolong other stages of the system's life cycle, and it is the delay of release and renewal, that would be sought. Sustainability assumes extension of existence of a certain system. Renewal assumes the release phase, when the system components are disintegrated and set free to recombine. Therefore the goal of sustainability of a system contradicts with renewal. The phase of release is the end, the collapse of a system per se. It does not necessarily mean extinction of components or species, that make the system. But it implies that the systemic function that they perform is modified, at least temporarily. The released components may recombine to perform again as a similar system but the system itself will be different.
Bankruptcy of a company when employees are laid off, and assets
are sold (release) is the end of the company. It comes when this
socioeconomic system is no longer sustainable, it can no longer
extend the conservation stage. The components (human and material
resources) may recombine in the form of another company (renewal),
but that will be a different system. Ethnic systems as documented
by Gumilev (1990) also die, when their passion, vigor declines
and they loose the drive to persist. Eventually people recombine
as new ethnoi, but those will be different from the original one.
Forest fires release organic material and nutrients thus ending
a system. Forests may grow afterwards in the same place, but
those will be different forests: they may have a different spatial
and species organization. Hierarchical SystemsAt the same time renewal allows for readjustment and adaptation. But it is the next hierarchical level that benefits from this adaptation. Renewal in components helps a system to persist. Therefore, for a hierarchical system to extend its existence, to be sustainable, its subsystems need to go through renewal cycles. In this way, death of subsystems contributes to sustainability of the supersystem, providing material and space for reorganization and adaptation. Costanza and Patten (1995:196) looking at sustainability in terms of component longevity or existence time, recognize that "evolution cannot occur unless there is limited longevity of the component parts so that new alternatives can be selected". Companies appear, grow, prosper and die, however the overall economy persists and reorganization of each particular company usually contributes to persistence of the larger economic system. Forest fires burn down portions of ecosystems, providing nutrients and habitat for increased diversity of species that contribute to the development of the forest ecosystem as a whole. The local forest patch may no longer exist, but the enhanced variability, allows for adjustment to change in external or internal conditions. Systems are not static, but evolve as a combination of dynamically occurring renewals in their components. A system cannot be singled out as a closed domain delimited by certain borders. It evolves in space and in time, throwing out tentacles and constantly changing through the renewal in its subsystems. A system constantly "sacrifices" its components to endure its own persistence, sustainability. More sustainable will be a system made of components that are readily dissipated and reorganized, rather than the one made of durable and persistent blocks, that have no potential for such change in their organization. Evolution needs material for adaptation. In economic systems we may observe the renewal in subsystems when branches or departments are closed down or reorganized for the benefit of the company as a whole. Almost any recession in economy that needs restructuring or adjustment of businesses is accompanied by bankruptcies and layoffs, which is an indicator of subsystems going through renewal. By itself a layoff may be treated as a renewal in the individual level. The system benefits from renewal in its components. In this way the overall economic system adjusts and manages to sustain itself further, extending its conservation phase (sustainability). In social systems, the alternating parties or groups in power can be viewed in a similar way. Again a political party gradually grows gaining more members (capital) and support. It may eventually win elections and thus reach the acme of its development. Then there is usually a breakdown followed by release, another party or group takes the lead. A party goes through a renewal cycle, at the same time providing sustainability to the overall political system, that remains in place. If the political system has no provisions for renewal in parties, if there is no mechanism created to release capital, and one party or group tends to maintain its own sustainability indefinitely, the whole political system may go out of order resulting in social conflict, riots, revolution. Russian history provides at least two such examples already in this century. In contrast, Western multipartite systems seem to be much more durable in this context. Ecological systems display very much similar behavior, when components are renewed for the benefit of the whole system. In ecology there has been much attention paid to the concept of stability, which may be considered analogous to sustainability, if considered narrowly within an ecosystem. According to Botkin and Sobel (1975) stability is equivalent to system persistence, that allows change through time within defined bounds. This is fairly close to what sustainability would be thought of. Focusing on ecosystems we certainly loose an important component of sustainability, that is the human induced goal seeking activities within certain value sets and goal functions (Costanza, Voinov, 1995). However we may still want to consider ecosystems per se because they provide numerous and well documented examples of hierarchical structures in relevance to their stable or non-stable behavior. O'Neill et al. (1986) analyze the hierarchical structures of ecosystems and conclude that hierarchies contribute to system stability. They also note that the ecosystem concept allows dual hierarchical interpretation in two dimensions: population-community and process-functional. Therefore it is not straightforward how to identify subsystems in the ecosystems hierarchies. In the population dimension it is noted that loss of a critical species, which may be interpreted as loss of sustainability in the particular subsystem, may result in destruction of the whole system. It may be then argued that system stability is based on stability of hierarchical subsystems. However it should be also noted that in many applications limit cycles are considered stable. And limit cycles resemble renewal rather than sustainability. Moreover renewal does not necessarily imply total extinction of a species, of a subsystem Forest fires, infestations, predators controlling prey populations - all act as mechanisms of release and renewal. Moreover there are numerous examples of systems deteriorating, if they do not undergo renewal in a timely fashion. Fires in the Florida Everglades are fairly frequent and they burn out huge areas (Gunderson, 1994). In several seasons the vegetation is usually restored to its initial biomass and species composition. However if a fire is delayed by some reason and abnormally high biomasses are accumulated, there is an increasing chance that once a fire eventually breaks out, its intensity will be much higher. As a result not only the vegetation, but the soil substrate as well will be destroyed, exposing bedrock, thus totally changing the function of the system. This is a negative effect not only for the particular landscape unit (subsystem), but for the whole regional ecosystem (supersystem) as well.
Holling (1986) reviewed 23 examples of managed ecosystems, that
fell into 4 major classes - forest insects, forest fire, savanna
grazing and aquatic harvesting. He concluded that any attempt
to manage ecological variables in attempt to maintain a certain
state, to control variability of a target resulted in a slow change
of the ecosystem, that eventually led to even more dramatic and
irreversible perturbations. When a normally fluctuating ecological
variable was bounded and artificially sustained, ecosystems became
more spatially homogeneous over the landscape scale. This led
to less resilient systems that were more likely to degrade under
disturbances that could be previously absorbed. "The very
success in managing the a target variable for sustained production
of food or fiber apparently leads inevitably to an ultimate pathology
of less resilient and more vulnerable ecosystems" (Holling,
1996: 8). Note that the collapse in these cases is usually observed
at the next hierarchical scale, over landscapes. Is there Sustainability without Renewal?There seems to be an internal contradiction in the sustainability concept. Sustainability of a system borrows from sustainability of a supersystem and rests on lack of sustainability in subsystems. This might be hard to perceive, because at first glance it seems that a system made of sustainable, lasting components should be sustainable as well. But in systems theory it has been long recognized that "the whole is more than the sum of parts" (Bertalanffy, 1968: 55), that a system function is not provided only by the functions of its components and therefore, in fact, system sustainability is not a product of sustainable parts, and vice a versa. This is especially true for living, dynamically evolving systems. This interrelation of sustainabilities in various hierarchical scales is important for many applications. Much concern, for example, is expressed about how to make economic activities sustainable in face of the deteriorating environment. It is observed that in some cases economic growth turns out to be beneficial for the environment (Arrow, et al., 1995). However it is hardly noted that the inverted U-shaped curve for environmental degradation as function of economic growth, advocated by protagonists of economic growth, pertains only to regional systems, where such trends, even when observed, cannot be extended to the global level. In the global level, the economic growth is clearly resulting in decay of natural capital and growing environmental degradation. The regional successes in the more economically developed countries, that seem to provide examples of quasi-sustainable systems, should rather cause increasing concern, than content. The achieved sustainability is a result of either decreased sustainability of other regional subsystems, or decreased sustainability of the global system as a whole, or both. This analysis would certainly benefit if there was a measure of sustainability that could be used to track the state of the system and compare it at various stages. However, while sustainability is not clearly defined and allows various interpretations and understanding, there can hardly be an unambiguous way to measure it. Sustainability is usually discussed in the qualitative level rather than quantitative. There is a considerable effort to develop indicators of sustainability (Moldan, 1995.), but the indicators are numerous, in many cases they are also qualitative and hardly help in defining a universal measure to evaluate and compare sustainability of systems. Nevertheless qualitative analysis is still possible and useful, especially when operating in the conceptual level. Besides, basing on other studies we can still try to quantify some qualitative measures to track the dynamics of system sustainability.
Describing the renewal cycle, Holling (1986) proposes to look
at capital accumulated by the system and notes the cyclic pattern
that this variable follows. Starting at low levels, the system
gradually accumulates capital, reaching a maximum at the end of
the conservation stage, after which the release of capital begins.
The cycle starts again after the renewal stage. Gumilev (1970)
describes the dynamics of passion, which he views as a driving
force for the development of an ethnos in his theory. Similarly,
passion grows at first, reaches the acme and then gradually declines
as the system turns to homeostasis and then obscurity. Peak of
passion in Gumilev's terms or vigor in terms of Costanza (1992),
as a measure of system activity, metabolism, productivity, tends
to precede the peak in capital. Generalizing these measures we
may try to measure sustainability in two dimensions. Capital
will present the stock of material accumulated in the system.
Depending upon the type of the system this could be biomass,
population numbers, financial capital, etc.. Vigor will be the
potential for growth, growth rate, net activity of a system unit.
This parameter is yet harder to define and measure. For cells
Zotin and Zotina (1993) were measuring the thermodynamic potential.
It is not clear how to measure Gumilev's passion, but some indirect
estimates, like the amount of volunteer work performed in the
society, could probably be useful. We may chart these two variables
(Fig.1) and find numerous examples of systems which dynamics approximately
follow the patterns shown. Smith and Voinov (1996), for example,
observe this pattern for capital in forestry and vigor in fishery
systems. In these terms the sustainability concept can be then
introduced by extending the period of the higher values of both
vigor and capital beyond those that would be reached within a
renewal cycle (broken line in Fig.1).
Figure 1. Dynamics of vigor and stored
capital in different phases of the natural renewal cycle (modified
from Gumilev and Holling). The sustainable development trajectory
(shown in broken line) tends to maintain the level of vigor and
stored capital.
There is a staggering resemblance of the sustainability concept presented in this form and the variations in the thermodynamic potential measured by Zotin and Zotina (1993:42) for some abnormally developing cells. In both cases systems tend to be sustainable in terms of going through the stages of birth and development and then maintaining higher levels of vigor in the conservation phase instead of declining. Noteworthy, the cells that displayed this type of life cycling in the observations of Zotin and Zotina were the cancerous cells. It is well known, what is the effect of their "sustainability" on the well being of the supersystem, which is the whole living organism in this case. One way to resolve this contradiction between sustainability of a socioeconomic ecological system and its components is to agree that there is only one system which sustainability we are to seek, and that is the top level system, the biosphere as a whole in our case. The global scale in this context seems to be the maximal that humans can influence at the present level of their development. It is also the scale that affects the humanity as a whole, the system that is shared by all people, and should therefore be of a major concern to all. But then again we should realize that sustainability in lower hierarchical levels, in subsystems of the global system may work against sustainability of the biosphere. Achieving sustainability at some regional level, we may decrease sustainability of the biosphere by reducing the potential for change and adaptation. The more sustainable the regional systems are, the less the chances for a sustainable global system. Unfortunately, the global level is still very difficult to analyze, predict and interpret. Among decision and policy makers of today there is not much understanding of this interaction between local and global sustainability. The local or regional levels seem to dominate, being easier to percieve and to "sell" to the public and the electorate. There are numerous citizen groups that are developing plans of sustainable development for their regions and communities. People tend to become much more easily involved in the well-being of their neighborhood, than in the future of more remote and abstract systems, like the planet Earth. Examples are numerous. Plans for sustainable development are drawn for counties (Jaklitsch, 1996), watersheds (e.g. the Rio Grande/Rio Bravo basin or the Chesapeake Bay), countries. In Russia, where ironically "sustainability" has been translated into Russian as "stability", bringing a totally different flavor to the concept, the notion of sustainability has reached the highest echelons of power and became an issue of a 1994 presidential decree on "Stable development". Again according to that decree all regions were supposed to come up by the end of 1994 with a regional plan of stable development for their particular region. Naturally it was assumed that such "sustainable" regional development will result in sustainability in the national level as well.
Similar examples of a local approach
to sustainability can be found worldwide. These local efforts
may be certainly benefitial in the sense that they generate public
involvement and awareness, but they are hardly feasible, taking
into account the interconnectedness and, eventually, mutual dependence
of all the subsystems and their dependence upon the higher hierarchical
levels. The limited scope of these efforts is not duely exposed,
while the analogy with the cancerous cells is too close to be
neglected. By extending the longevity of subsystems beyond their
natural life-spans, the systems of higher levels are deprived
from potential to adapt, they become brittle and are more likely
to fall apart. The failure of the higher level systems is very
likely to result in major perturbations, if not death, for the
subsystems as well. ConclusionsFostering sustainability at local and regional scales may be detrimental to global sustainability. The function of the biosphere is more than a sum of functions of continents, countries and regions, local and regional goals and priorities may contradict to the global ones and therefore we cannot envision the sustainable global design as a hierarchy of sustainable subsystems. There are external and internal factors that change and that the global system has to have potential to adapt to. Actually there are not many regional systems for which sustainability can really be the issue. Systems in transition in the developing countries or Former Soviet Union are hardly interested in becoming sustainable, because by definition they are apt to change and transition rather than maintenance. They are either in the release or renewal stages, that no one would want to sustain, or have just entered the growth stage, when it is still hard to start thinking in terms of stable state economy (Daly, 1977) and sustainability. Economic transition assumes wide shifts in social and political institutions. These shifts, adjustments become possible as a result of discontent and rejection of the status quo by the majority of the population, while sustainability is based on social content and agreement. Sustainability is certainly enticing for the developed economic systems, which have reached the conservation phase, and would prefer to endure this stage for as long as possible. In this case there is a clear goal for maintenance and sustainable development seems to be desirable and realistic. Unfortunately there is little awareness of the fact that in most cases sustainability can be ensured only by borrowing energy, resources (capital) and adaptive potential from outside of the system, or by decreasing the sustainability of the global system. Sustainability of a subsystem is achieved only at the expense of the supersystem or other subsystems. Therefore in the development of proper institutions that are to maintain life support systems on this planet we certainly need to emphasize the global priorities and first of all test policies and strategies against the sustainability of the biosphere, rather than the regional or local interests of stakeholders, representing particular localities, communities, districts or countries.
Interestingly, in the report "Our Common Future" (WCED,
1987), the document that has paved the way for the term sustainable
development and which actually generated so much attention to
the issues of sustainability, we can hardly find any discussion
of types of sustainability other than the global one. The whole
purpose of the report was focused primarily on designing scenarios
of global sustainable development, recognizing that the local
level is no solution to the global problems, and even while most
of the action is available in the local level it is the global
level that should be of major concern and be the ultimate goal.
The original essence of the concept seems to be in the unified
vision of the development of this planet as a whole, and it would
be a pity for this integrating mission of sustainability to be
eventually torn apart and grounded in local declaratively "self-sufficient"
and "self-centered" efforts. Probably other terminology
would be more adequate for the local and regional levels. It
could be harmonic development or harmonic systems, while sustainability
should be reserved for the global level, for the biosphere as
a whole. Acknowledgment
My thanks are to Courtland Smith and Alexei Ghilarov for stimulating
discussions and useful comments. References
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