How sustainable is development?

The phrase "sustainable development" has become a sort of word-in-itself.  You can't talk about development without adding the word sustainable.

The trouble is that sustainabledevelopment is really undefined.  There have been noble attempts - everyone remembers the Brundtland story:

Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.

Great stuff, but completely useless - you can't dig up something to keep your world going, because that means future generations won't be able to dig it up. The resources of the world are finite, right?

Recently I mulled over the paradox that we never seem to run out of non-renewable things like oil, but we are always running out of renewable things like rhinos and whales and fish and elephant.  There has, of course, been a thesis that we should already have run out of oil - it was called "peak oil" and a man called Hubbard who had worked for Shell developed the theory back in the 1960's. 

 However, in 1945 the world had 25 years of known oil; by 1970 we had used up all that oil, but by then had 30 years left. By 2000 we had used up all the 1970 oil, but by then had 40 years left.  Today we have used up 15 of the 40 years, but we have 55 years left.  What gives?

My resolution of the paradox was that, yes, the renewable resources are indeed finite, but the non-renewable stuff is not measured by the resource but by the reserves, and reserves are something quite different.  They depend on price and technology, and technology is the measure of human ingenuity, so the reserve is flexible and potentially expandable, whereas the poor old renewables have to fend for themselves.

In exploring this in a full-blown paper, I was led to separate sustainabledevelopment back into two words, and ask just what was "sustainable" and just what we meant by "development".  When I tried to publish the paper, one reviewer sniffily reported that I didn't understand sustainabledevelopment, which was rather unhelpful, and another made some useful comments about my economics, but complained I had "merely" used some widely available data, so could not recommend publication.  I am still trying to get the paper published, but recognize how truly politically correct sustainabledevelopment has become.

Of course, its political correctness flows from its being blessed by the United Nations. There are regular conferences on the topic.  One, back in 2000, set up six Millennium Development Goals to be achieved by 2015. 15 years down the line, it is gratifying to be able to report on the success:

• Reduce extreme poverty by half - it has been reduced by over 70% already
• Achieve gender equality in education - achieved by 2012
• Halve the proportion of the population without access to improved drinking water - bettered; it has been reduced by 60%
• Reduce child mortality by two-thirds - only managed a 44% reduction by 2013
• Reduce maternal mortality by three-quarters - only managed to halve by 2013
• Universal primary education - up from 80% in 1990 to 92% in 2013

In September this year, there will be another such conference.  You would think that, buoyed by the success of the Millennium goals, they would see the merit of keeping things simple.  But no, this is the United Nations.  The September conference is to consider a new set of SustainableDevelopment Goals - 169 in all! Focused it is not. 

My hero, Bjorn Lomborg and his Copenhagen Consensus have tried to offer some prioritization. They have found 18 of the goals which have some hope of giving real value, mainly simple things like improving treatment of malaria, immunising more children against preventable childhood diseases and wider use of family planning.  

But far too many of the 169 are politically correct globspeak:

By 2030 ensure all learners acquire knowledge and skills needed to promote sustainable development, including among others through education for sustainable development and sustainable lifestyles, human rights, gender equality, promotion of the culture of peace and non-violence, global citizenship, and appreciation of cultural diversity and of culture's contribution to sustainable development.

As The Economist commented, "Try measuring that!" 

Just what IS “sustainable development”?

If there is one thing on which everyone agrees, it is sustainable development.  Yes, we all want development, and yes, we are all as green as each other and want development to be “sustainable”. But when you scratch the surface, you soon discover people talking past each other.  How can chopping down trees, or digging up gold, be sustainable? Suddenly you are guilty of deforestation or the rape of the earth. These are no longer innocent development pastimes.

It is a problem of definition.  Back in 1992, there was a great gathering in Rio, from which all manner of Declarations and Agendas flowed.  Sustainable development was based on the Brundtland concept - it was that which created no harm for future generations. Wonderful stuff, but totally impractical.  Leave the tree in the air or the gold in the ground so that your grandchildren may have trees or gold. Then they in turn will preserve them, so that their grandchildren may have trees or gold. Before you know it, the tree has died or the gold has been washed out to sea. Any benefit mankind might have had is lost. 

So when the great next gathered, in Johannesburg in 2002, they rethought their ideas of a decade earlier.  Now, they decreed, sustainable development was that which balanced social, environmental and economic development. That sounds wonderful.  But mankind likes black-and-white questions.  To ask people to find the right balance between red (social), green (environmental) and gold (economic) is just too complicated.

The result is a focus on just one of the three legs.  There are those for whom the environment is sacrosanct – you cannot possibly want to build more houses round the city, can you?  It would destroy a small wetland/the only known home of a butterfly/a pristine forest (choose one). But others want to build not just a few houses, but a whole village, complete with schools and clinics, because people need somewhere to live, don’t they? And just as the architect puts the final touches to his beautiful garden suburb, along comes the developer demanding office blocks and supermarkets and warehouses and flyovers.  The environmentalist groans and either turns his sights on the next piece of wondrous nature, or fights to have the wetland/butterfly/forest declared sacrosanct. Sustainable development is the loser.

There is a wonderful recent example of this phenomenon at work.  Most South Africans, and certainly all who receive electricity from our national grid, are aware that there is a shortage of generating capacity. There are power cuts, which the individual perceives as a grievous nuisance, and which the economist recognizes as a disaster. Every kilowatt-hour of power lost costs the economy about R75. What else can you make for 50 cents that is worth 150 times more to the economy as a whole?

But there is a little corner of our land where the shortage of generating capacity is not seen as an economic disaster.  It is our Department of Environment Affairs, which chooses this moment to declare that some of our generating capacity is putting too much dirt into the air. Eskom must shut down the power stations to fix the problem. It is not quite irrational for the Department to suffer from this manic focus on the environment, but their actions certainly demand analysis, psychological or otherwise.

It transpires that in a Gilbert-&-Sullivan kind of way, they have a little Act. The Regulations under that Act empower the Department to decree that a pipe may not emit more the X particles per unit volume of air. 

Posed in this way, you can immediately see two difficulties. First, what kind of pipe? Not one that you fill with tobacco, light and stick in your mouth. That is purposely designed to put lots and lots of particles into the air. Do they mean that pipe with holes in its side, stuffed with big lumps of coal, and clouds of smoke billowing into the air? Equally clearly not – that is a traditional polluter, called an mbawula, protected from modern legislation like all declared traditions. No, they mean a pipe belonging to Dirty Industry, because Dirty Industry is obviously the problem – if you have forgotten what sustainable development is supposed to mean.

Secondly, why is X a problem? This actually requires more careful analysis, because it seems obvious that X must be a problem because the Regulations say it is.  Think deeper, and this argument becomes very circular.  And if you go really deep into the question you discover that X is a problem because some American bureaucrat with his own little Act declared that it was. We obviously have to follow the Americans slavishly, don’t we? The American is armed with several roomsful of paper in support of X.  He had argued his case before American legislators like all bureaucrats in a democracy should be made to do. So X is good for America – but is it good for us?

The answer is probably not.  We don’t have years of data and thousands of diligent scientists to create roomsful of paper in support of our Act, let alone a parliament packed with skilled jurists able to hold bureaucrats in check.

What should we be doing, if we care about the environment and our society and development? Perhaps we should adopt a different model, one more in keeping with our status as a developing nation. Let us look to Britain rather than America. After disastrous smogs in the early 1950’s, Britain introduced the Clean Air Act in 1956. It required many industries and homes to burn smokeless fuel. In due course, it established smoke control zones, within which no smoke was permitted, and banned the emission of dark smoke everywhere. No roomsful of paper, just no visible smoke.  And the result was dramatically cleaner air, which was the desired environmental outcome. How simple! How easy to implement! How easy to police!

There is no need to call for straitjackets for our Department of Environmental Affairs.  Their insanity is purely temporary.  Let them sit down at their desks and rethink the way in which we achieve clean air – and sustainable development.

FFFFracking again!

Saliem Fakir, the head of the Living Planet Unit at the World Wildlife Fund South Africa, hasn't wasted a moment. Shell has just announced release of its environmental management programme for its drilling for shale gas, and the unshaven one is out there with his usual list of "could"s and "might"s and "legitimate concerns".

What it adds up to is another step back into the dark ages, yet another potential source of energy and wealth doomed to the gloom of GREEN. When will these Job's comforters wake up to the fact that nothing we do is without risk? Risks can be managed - that is what engineering is all about.

In this case, fracking will be about 1000m deep, way below the water about which WWF is so concerned. Yes, a pipe containing chemicals will pass through the valuable aquifer, but that does not mean it will contaminate the aquifer. Yes, there is a risk the pipe might break, but that is remote if it is properly engineered. Yes, fracking will involve the use of some water - but if successful, it could create billions of rand, which our country needs, as well as giving us a source of energy which is far cleaner than coal.

So all the "could"s and "might"s and "legitimate concerns" are postulates which have to be offset by the far more important postulate, that this could be a source of wealth for all our people. Whom should we believe? asks Fakir. What do you want, and what are you prepared to risk? That should be the question.

What the frac?

There are calls for a moratorium on exploring for shale gas in the Karoo.

Does the rent-a-mob have a clue what they are talking about? Do they know the depth of the shale, and have they worked out what that means? Do they understand that not much deeper, the rocks start to glow? Are they not worried that 'fracking' might bring all that lava to the surface?

Seriously, though, at the depths we are talking about, the problem is not the damage done by fracking, but how to keep the cracks open while the gas comes out. As soon as possible, at the pressures 1000 or more metres down there, the cracks close up and the miniscule risk of the water from the upper aquifers getting contaminated goes for ever (and anyway, the mechanism for water to move up and down in the upper layers of the Earth's crust is not obvious).

The other thing about this bunch of do-gooders is that they preach 'sustainable development' of the Karoo. That requires some additional source of wealth. All that I have seen is regrowth of the villages by city dwellers anxious to get away from it all. This is hardly sustainable. New wealth to sustain development would flow if gas were discovered in large quantities.

How sad that the producers of that cheap trick called "Gaslands" failed to get the message across in the USA, which has just increased its gas reserves by 500 million tcf due to shale gas. This has probably saved the US economy. The Gaslanders have come here in the hopes of more bounty than they could get at home - and some of us have fallen for it. The wealth that shale gas in the Karoo could create is almost immeasurable - and the anti-fracking mob think it is worth throwing away. Does 'fascist pigs' fit the bill? It does if you are struggling to make ends meet in a distant dorpie.