Sustainable Societies Essay Flashcards
Characteristics of Sustainable Societies
Restoring the biological base— including fertile soil, grasslands, fisheries, forests, wetlands, freshwater bodies and water tables
Stabilized population— slowing growth and a more stable population size implies that people have access to contraception and family health care, control resources to alleviate extreme material insecurity, and reduce gender inequality
Renewable energy— minimizing and phasing out the use of fossil fuels
Economic efficiency— increase investments in efficient equipment and buildings, and maximize the recycling of materials and wastes
Social forms— social restraints on behavior, but tolerance of diversity, social justice, and democratic politics would be valued as necessary to elicit the required responsiveness, cooperation, and coordination of people
A new culture— beliefs, values, and social paradigms that define and legitimize these natural, economic, and social characteristics
Participation in a world order— cooperating in the negotiation of sustainability in other societies
3 PERSPECTIVES
Sustainable consumption
Ecological modernization theory
POLICY REFORMIST APPROACH
POLICY REFORMIST APPROACH
Critical approach
Mechanisms of sustainable development serve to reproduced global inequality
Trade, aid, and debt are used by the Global North to exploit the Global south
Economic logic will always win over ecological and social logics as long as free markets dominate
Only dramatic changes to the structure of the global economy, the goals that drive it, and the distribution of what it produces could bring us to a socially and ecologically sustainable relationship between social systems and ecosystems
Ecological Modernization Theory
Capitalism is flexible enough to permit movement in the direction of sustainable capitalism
Industrial society must use better environmentally friendly technologies
The market is viewed as a more efficient mechanism for solving environmental problems than the state
Environmental protection is a precondition for future sustainable growth, not a burden on the economy
Ecological modernization processes
Biomimicry: restructuring an industrial economy to resemble an ecosystem with recycling and feedback loops
Cogeneration: using the waste material of one industrial process as the “feedstock” of another
Radically increased resource productivity: slows the depletion of natural resources and lowers pollution, toxicity, and-often- produces more jobs
A service & flow economy: instead of being made and sold, goods are leased to consumers, serviced, and recycled ( or remanufactured) by producers
Sustainable Consumption
Positive change would mean productive efficiencies coupled with real reductions in material consumption
Reigning in the treadmill of consumption
Simple living/voluntary simplicity
Minimalism
local consumption
Chemical free/organic
