Blog: NIMBI - Not in My Backyard
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If there is something that is widely agree upon it is that we have a looming environmental crisis. Actually, that is not true! What we have is a dire human crisis. Notwithstanding the global attempt to remedy the situation by way of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG’s) set in 2015 the UN 2021 report issued a Code Red warning that we are entering a non-return crisis. A recent scientific study (Dearing et.al., June 2023) based on software from more than 70,000 different simulations, points to the large ecosystem collapse that could happen as soon as in the next decade, i.e. 2030!
When environmental stresses can no longer be absorbed the ecosystem, which is currently gradually deteriorating, will abruptly passes a point of no return — the tipping point — and collapses.
It is indeed disconcerting that King Charles of the UK said at COP28 (Dec. 2023) that the people of 2050 will not be asking what has been decided at the conference; they will be looking for survival. Even should we succeed in avoiding the sudden collapse in the near future, living conditions will continue to deteriorate. According to Hugo & Hugo (2024) senior citizens of the year 2050 would be those who would be able to recall the days before the sea level rose to engulf the sewerage systems of coastal cities like Cape Town; the times when you could still go on a hike in indigenous forests and see animals in the wild.
Photo: The systems supporting life on Earth are hanging in the balance and will soon reach a pont of no-return
The days before sunbathing was fatal; when you could drink water from a stream; when children could go to downtown schools without security guards and oxygen masks; before the drying up of the Colorado River, and the Euphrates River system. The times when governments fought election on political and economic issues instead of ecological scenarios.
The times when governments fought election on political and economic issues instead of ecological scenarios.
Photo: …times when you could stil drink water from the stream…
How did we position ourselves in such an unenviable position?
The essence of this is that, in Nature, energy from the sun flows through the system via Trophic levels 1 to 5. Just enough energy is delivered by the sun to provide food for all trophic levels. Growth continues without any pollution;thus the system stays healthy, alive and in balance.
Photo: Energy from the sun is passed down from one trophic level to the next
Photo: Energy from the sun is absorbed by plants, used by herbivores consuming it, and passed on to carnivores.
Nature also determines that although there is only so much matter available, and nothing more (thus, the so-called “spaceship” analogy) the system keeps on producing resources, and yet stay in equilibrium as there is a perfect system of recirculation of matter. Nothing is discarded. Although new matter cannot be created, there is, and will, always be enough for all species. A sustainable system.
Photo: Monocultural crops may ield higher amounts of certain crops, but it often decreases soil quality and increases reliance on pesticides
But we ignored Nature’s laws and replaced it with our own “intellectually advanced” initiatives. Shortage of resources have in the past been overcome in non-sustainable ways e.g. by increasing energy by using fossils fuels, raising crop production above the normal capacity of nature
Photo: Genetically modified organisms can improve taste and resilience. However there are concerns over their safety
by way of monocultural agriculture, spraying herbicides, temporarily increasing soil fertility by chemical fertilizers (killing ground organisms), etc. By following nature’s directives of regenerative agriculture, it is possible to feed a growing global population without killing the ecoservices.
We thus did not follow the guidelines of nature to use what we have in terms of energy and resources. We “developed” by virtue of statements such as by David Sarnoff: “There is no longer any margin of doubt that whatever the minds of people visualize, the genius of science can turn into functioning fact” (Southwick, 1972:51).There is according to him and many other technocrats, no limits to growth. They proclaim that the ultimate choice is simplistic: either growth or poverty.
Photo: Technocrats believe that new innovations will improve existing products, services and and technologies.
Can technology really fix the situation? Through science and technology humans have indeed, by their ingenuity, succeeded in accessing massive extra energy (coal, wind, solar, hydro, geothermal, nuclear, etc.) and infused it into the system to extract more resources than we need for survival, whist partially ignoring the necessity of a circular economy where matter is to be constantly re-introduced into the production system if sustainability is to be achieved. Human’s surplus matter is dumped, not to be made available again.
New fresh resources are then extracted from the limited resource base, at great energy cost. Adding insult to injury, resources such as the soil, air, and water is polluted, thereby losing their capacity to act effectively as ecosystem services.
This is not to imply that recent research has not come up with amazing eco-friendly technological innovations. Biotechnology in the form of the infusion of renewable energy, recyclable products, regenerative farming practices, electric cars, carbon sequestration processes, and many more, are positive developments and can play an enormous role in sustainable living. Some, however, also degrades the resource base and much still must be done by redirecting technological development.
Photo: By means of gene editing specific DNA sequences can be manipulated to enhance or inhibit specific characteristics of an organism.
The issues of GMO’s, cloning, artificial intelligence and CRISPR (a genetic engineering technique in molecular biology by which the genomes of living organisms may be modified), pose some disconcerting questions. Can we look at humans’ ingenuity to develop technological fixes for survival above that (better than) what nature can provide by itself. Van Diemen (2021) reported that: “Whether it be flying electrically charged drones to make it rain or releasing sulphur dioxides into the atmosphere to reflect sunlight, (we) are increasingly looking to geoengineering technologies to save humanity.” But is this the license to carry on experimenting and exploiting non-renewable resources in anticipation that it will (might) “deliver the goods”? Or is there another way to implement another type of technology?
Once eradicated, can we replace the role of bees and other pollinators?
Photo: A bee and a buttefly polinating flowers
Can we replace organic matter to the soils once it, and he micro-organisms, have been removed? Can we stop and reverse the acidification of soils, and the ocean? Restoration of the ecoservices of marshes and wetlands is out of our reach; so is the replacement of eroded soils. Once climate change has altered the functioning of ecosystems (e.g. changing the animal composition of an area due to increasing drought), there is no possibility of reversing it.
Can we change over from the self-sustaining, circular, balanced feedback system of Nature to an artificially, never-ending, positive (one-directional) feedback system based on infusion of massive clean energy and perfect recycling techniques?
This challenge is intensified by the exponentially growing world population.
Is this a dead-end dilemma?
Our capitalistic economic system for development is using matter (resources) from which we produce products, then use them, and discard after using. Then we start over again with new resource extracting for more resources and products. Extract-produce-use-discard-extract-produce….an unsustainable system. What are our options?
Industrialists will not reduce output for the sake of the environment. As long as the demand is there, they will “cash in”. Economists will not preach degrowth as long as our yardstick for success is measured in terms of GDP and standard of living[1]. Can politicians be coerced into implementing enviro-friendly policies that will compromise their next election results? It has been said that to ask governments to initiate such a deviation is unlikely. All the futile COP meetings up to the recent COP28 has proven this.
If we cannot return to a perfect natural balance with nature, and the current technologically driven economic system does not work on a sustainable level, and legislators fail to implement Sustainable Development Goals, we will have to look at other means of solving the problem facing us. We just will have to face it. We have devastated the “paradise” condition of Nature. If we carry on along the same road there is no means of returning to utopia. Do we then have to accept that we are stuck? Radical thinking is required.
[1]Standard of living can be measured according to your income and material possessions. Quality of life is measured according to your relationships – with God, fellow Human beings, and by the quality of the Environment in which you live. Striving for a higher standard of living leads to a decrease in the quality of life; a high quality of life makes a high standard of living irrelevant. (Hugo & Hugo, 2024)
“Avoiding climate breakdown will require cathedral thinking. . We must lay the foundation while we do not know exactly how to build the ceiling.”
Greta Thunberg
The dilemma facing us has had a complicated origin; so is the possible solution(s). All that we know for sure is that the environmental problem is due to actions of humans. Nature does not harm itself. But what influences our actions that are degrading the system? It is not due to our logical thinking, otherwise we would not have arrived at the situation where we are now. It probably lies much deeper in the sphere of the emotions, desires, beliefs, attitudes, ambitions of people who might be striving for better living conditions, or for more comfort, or prestige, or due to lack of knowledge.
Suggestions as to resolving the problem appears regularly in the media. At the risk of over-simplifying the issue, one could say that the discourse range between two extreme options: “back to Nature” or “subdue and reign”. Perhaps we must have the wisdom to “do the one and not neglect the other” – in a sensible way.
Photo: We have become masters in technologies that extract from the Earth…
It is a basic desire of mankind to accumulate more than is necessary for making a living that drives technology and the economy to excessive resource extraction and production. If we should look at Nature as our guideline, we see that animals use just enough what they need for survival. They only eat their fill, and the rest (left-overs, carcasses, excretion) is returned into the soil for micro-organisms to transfer it back to the system via plant roots into primary and secondary production. Animals do not gather and hoard substances for any ulterior motive but to survive. Humans on the contrary extract far more than is needed to live, often to impress others, and to live in ultra comfort. “Too many people spend money they don’t have, to buy things they don’t need, to impress people they don’t like.” (Paul Wachtel).
We thus gather, use, and waste resources and hoard the rest for luxury. According to Mollison (1978): “Our consumptive lifestyle has led us to the very brink of annihilation…. To accumulate wealth … beyond one’s needs in a limited world is to be truly immoral”.
“Too many people spend money they don’t have, to buy things they don’t need, to impress people they don’t like.” (Paul Wachtel)
“Our consumptive lifestyle have led us to the very brink of innihilation… To accumulate wealth… beyond one’s needs in a limited world is to be truely immoral. ” (Mollison)
Photo: …but we have yet to learn how to return what we have taken from Earth.
People’s basic urge to survive is normal and compatible to the laws of Nature (Maslow). People however are by-and-large selfish. Self-gratification comes above the good of the community or the environment as exemplified by the theory of the Tragedy of the Commons. (Hardin, 1968). People will take as much as thy can from all the freely available resources (ecoservices such as air, water, soil, biotic life) notwithstanding its effect on other people or the environment. According to Catto (1990), the underlying cause of the environmental dilemma is “… man’s greedy, lazy, and selfish character…).
If the essence of the problem lies in human perception and attitudes, the answer must also lie there.
Photo: Poverty and luxury cannot forever live happily side by side
The world’s population consists out of 2 billion desperately poor people. Of this it is estimated that as many as 25 000 dies daily due to lack of provision of food, water, and basic medical services. This is a negatively growing downward spiralling trend. Opposed to this, a very small percentage uses most of the of the manufactured resources.
According to data by the World Inequality Lab, 3,500 adults earn more than the poorest 32 million people in South Africa. Poverty and luxury however cannot for ever live happily side by side. The French Revolution has told us so. The rugby player Cheslin Kolbe and a number of his colleagues earns more than R20 million per year to provide entertainment to the public (The South African, 25/01/24).
Photo: Poverty and luxury cannot forever live happily side by side
It is estimated that Elon Musk could save millions of people from starvation if he donated 2% of his $36 billion earned in one day in October 2021. The discrepancy between 3rd world and 1st world countries is excessive. Whilst large sections of the population have no or little primary education the most expensive schools in the world have fancy amenities, e.g., lakeside chateaus, jacuzzies, steam and sauna rooms, and sailing centres with annual fees of as much as $133 000 (R2.6 million).
“Unless we all commit to breaking the poverty trap, by doing much more than paying lip service to creating jobs and opportunities for the upliftment of the poor beyond paltry social grants and charity while hiding wealth in tax havens and Swiss bank accounts, we will remain stuck in a festering pit of stagnation” (Heather Robertson, Daily Maverick, 17-01-24).
Redirecting superfluous wealth to stimulate eco-friendly industries, elevating education, promote family planning, improving regenerative farming, recycling, etc. can surely put us on a positive road towards a solution. Is this feasible? Who is in a position to put such a process in operation?
It is thus postulated that the excessive wealth of the superlative rich and large consortiums should be channeled to ensure the eco-friendly development as proposed long ago by Schumacher (1973) in his visionary book “Small is beautiful”. Eco-friendly technological innovations driving a steady move back from intensive industrialization and concomitant urbanization to widespread local agricultural activities and home-based industries seems be a sensible approach towards sustainable living. This of course goes directly against the prime objectives of hard capitalism. Massive income from consortiums is supposed to deliver jobs to the masses – ignoring the plight of Nature and the effect on social structures. Can it be reversed?
“Appealing to altruism and ecocentrism are unlikely to prevail in competition with short-run economic interests”.
(Dustin R. Turin, 2014)
Where governments fails, and economists’ drive for development stays strong, and industrialists keep on developing new (often luxury) products based on the economic principle of supply creates demand, a localized privately driven process from bottom up wil have to start developing where individuals and local groups will of necessity (not out of moral conviction), in order to have food on their tables, accepts a modest lifestyle of more simplistic living that can be in harmony with the ecosystem services of nature.
The only possible solution thus seems to lie in the unlikely situation of the majority of humankind itself accepting a standard of living in balance with what nature can provide. Although reaching happiness through material acquisition is denounced by every major religion and philosophy, it is still preached incessantly by advertising – in which people seemingly have more faith. The wealthy lifestyle of the minority of the world cannot be replicated to the majority of the poor.
Photo: Energy-intensive industrial fruit packaging factory versus picking fruit and packaging it by hand
A downscaling to simplistic living does not imply renouncing of all conveniences of the middle-class citizens. It is not the equivalent of poverty. This must be done in a way that most of the privileged few would remain privileged, but in a more measured way (Rudin).[1] At most it addresses the ultra-rich who lives a lavish lifestyle. The need is for a new economy, focusing on a steady change-over from traditional “development at all cost” (“cost” implying our natural resources) to a moderate levelling off into a green growth situation, built on the concept of degrowth[2], maturing gradually into a full-fledged green economy.
[1]Jeff Rudincalls it: curing the illness of Affluenza (Daily Maverick).
[2]Jason Hickel defines it as: “a planned reduction of energy and resource use designed to bring the economy back into balance with the living world in a way that reduces inequality and improves human wellbeing”.(Wim Naude, The Conversation).
Photo: The Earth can no longer supply in the growing burden that our growing need for ‘more stuff’ puts on it.
Simplistic living, that can be best named Effective living, touches on daily activities, services, and all day-to-day living conditions. It does not imply a struggle for survival condition, living without basic conveniences. Basic convenient living refers to the limiting of the personal use of energy and water, assess the need for such aspects as multi-level mansions, private swimming pools, the frequency and mode of travel (luxury private cars vs walking, cycling, public transport),
household items (furniture from hardwood tropical forests), exotic cuisine vs healthy self-prepared food, gardening (vegetables instead of lawns), recreation (for healthy living only), holidays (local instead of abroad), prestige projects (grandiose buildings, monuments); sports cars, and excessive entertainment. It is no secret that high income and luxury living does not ensure real happiness. The saying goes: ‘How much is enough? Only a little bit more” (Unknown Author). Living within the limit of basics can be fully satisfactory.
Economic growth is obvious needed for job creation for a growing population, but it should focus on production of basic livelihood necessities. While the implementation of de-growth laws by governments is unlikely, people will soon realise that they have no choice. Or rather, they do have a choice: either carry on living in denial for the next decade or willingly introduce economic degrowth by accepting and implementing simplistic living.
Are people ready for such drastic measures? Most people will vote positively for conservation initiatives, providing the element of ……………….
NIMBY – Not InMy Backyard
……..is adhered to. I.e. as long as it does not directly negatively affect my comfort zone or my pocket.
This must now become ………………
NIMBI – Now IMust Become Involved
As said, such a process of being satisfied with fewer conveniences and luxuries will not be easily accepted by people unless necessity is the driving force. The general population is seemingly becoming more and more aware of the reality of the situation. Simplistic living based on reduced demand is not as far-fetched as it seems. In a recent extensive global study (Andre, P., et al.2024) it was found that 69% of the world population is willing to incur a personal cost of 1% of their personal income to fight climate change, and the overwhelming majority (>80%) demands political action and supports pro-climate norms. This indicates that the world is becoming united in its normative judgement about climate change and the need to act.
In closure, Robert Swan said that the greatest threat to our planet is the belief that someone else will save it. If you and I are not willing to get pragmatically involved and revert to an inter-active cooperative, integrated, simplistic livelihood, (according to the earth’s ecosystems’ directives) we all will be eliminated, and Nature will flourish again as a it did a million years ago.
The choice is yours. “If you want to predict the future, create it”
When enough people come together, then change will come and we can achieve almost anything. So, instead of looking for hope – start creating it.
Greta Thunberg
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