Indicators and the Need for Values
Bedrich Moldan spoke of the Brundtland definition of sustainable development. This is well known and widely used but has been widely criticised. It has a number of key elements:
1. It is concerned about people
2. It has a long term view
3. It has an ethical base
Unfortunately it is quite a fuzzy definition.
Why is sustainable development desirable? The conventional wisdom maintains that sustainable development means a development of human society and individual human beings that is sustainable socially, economically and environmentally. We try to figure out what these three pillars consist of, find appropriate indicators, etc. These were defined qualitatively at first, but are moving more towards the quantitative. However, we should also ask not only what does it mean, but also why it should be so, i.e. questions about the desirability of sustainable development. Developing the indicators of sustainability also develops the value judgments of the people developing them. There are two basic assumptions on which to base a view on sustainable development:
1. There is a moral imperative to all people (including those not yet born).
2. We are in the Anthropocene - the era of total human domination of Earth. This comes with total responsibility for the earth.
DESD we can? Learning our way out of unsustainability
The UN Decade of Education for Sustainability gives a central role to education and learning in transitioning to more sustainable lifestyles, communities, organisations, businesses and systems. As we have crossed, somewhat silently, the mid-way point of this Decade, Arjen Wals asked the question whether we are beginning to make a dent in the tsunami of unsustainability that is rolling over the Planet. Is Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) able to turn the tide, and how would we know? We are part of a system that accelerates unsustainabilty. There are many examples of this. 426,000 cell phones are thrown away per day in the USA alone. Mothers with HIV in South Africa are given a weekly allowance. It is not used to help their children, it is used to charge their phones. Clean water is not available for all yet wireless networks are available across the globe.
Society is becoming gradually more educated about this. The word green is used more and more, but there is a danger that this is just greenwash. Civilizations have disappeared before by exceeding their ecological and technological boundaries. The difference today is that, if civilization goes down now, the whole world goes down.
Can we turn this unsustainability around? "We need a radical change in the ways we think and act in particular in terms of education and training" (Koichiro Matsuura). We need to be creative in coming up with ways of getting out of unsustainability. We need an integrated view of civilization building. Setting benchmarks to measure things is more useful for the measurers than it is to hand over to someone, as the act of making the measurements provides learning for those who are involved. Sustainability has appalling vagueness to scientists but an appealing vagueness to post-scientists as sustainability only acquires sense once put into a context. See powerpoint presentation (5.1mb).
Values: why do successful businesses consider them a competitive advantage?
In what mood do you walk into your office on Monday? What is your level of motivation as you sit at your desk, and how much of your complete self - talents, personality and skills - are you willing to dedicate to your company's objectives? Daniel Truran offered some examples whereby the nurturing of employees' values and their alignment with both the company and society's values brings about the most motivated and committed staff. This results not only in the retention of a company's best talent, but also having all the human resources totally committed to making the company successful.
It sounds like an oxymoron to have a business with values. But there are many examples where it works. The Lush anti-packaging campaign is one. Lush employees decided to join the get naked campaign to promote lack of packaging. What motivated this? Mainly it was because there was an alignment of the companies values with people's personal values.
Currently business targets only stimulate a tiny part of your being. Companies are not using their human resources to full effect. Wikipedia is constructed by people for free. Google develops new products as beta and sends them out for free; if the product is useful, development continues, if not, it is binned. These companies are tapping in to more unused potential of people.
The value of an organization is increasingly based on intangible things such as trust. Companies that are successful align society values, company values and personal values. Companies try to appeal to society's values, but if marketing is detached from company values, then you just get nonsense. What cannot be measured cannot be managed or improved.
The Earth Charter: Meeting a Need for a Universal Values/Ethics Framework
Rabbi Jeffrey Newman closed the first plenary by saying that humanity must choose its future, one of peril or promise. The Earth Charter emerged from a long process relating human rights to our responsibility for the planet and living creatures. In 1987, The World Commission on Environment and Development (known as "the Brundtland Commission") launched its report "Our Common Future" with a call for a "new charter" to set "new norms" to guide the transition to sustainable development. Following that, discussion about an Earth Charter took place in the process leading to the Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992. After the failure to get a text adopted at the Earth Summit, and a long bottom-up discussion involving thousands of people, the Earth Charter was formally launched in the year 2000. It is a shared vision of basic values, a declaration of fundamental ethical principles for building a just, sustainable and peaceful global society in the 21st century. It seeks to inspire in all people a new sense of global interdependence and shared responsibility for the well-being of the whole human family, the greater community of life, and future generations. This is critical because of the lack of attention paid to values, or ethics generally, in many global processes currently being developed. The hope was it would carry itself, but acceptance is still fragile. See powerpoint presentation (455kb).