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Posts Tagged ‘sustainability’
Tuesday, December 29th, 2009
December 27, 2009
“Nature cannot continue to absorb the abuses that we are throwing at it,” the Prime Minister told me. “The world is finite, and economic growth cannot continue to take place except with considerable cost to this generation and generations in the future.
“It is time that the world understood that we should talk about growth with a different understanding — growth of the individual, growth of the mind, growth of happiness. What really constitutes wealth? What is prosperity, and what is being rich? I think these have to be understood more in human terms, in terms of relationships and in an ecological sense.”
The Prime Minister of Canada? Ah, I wish! But no: the speaker was His Excellency Jigme Y. Thinley, the Prime Minister of Bhutan, a Himalayan kingdom smaller and less populous than Nova Scotia. Nearly 40 years ago, Bhutan’s Fourth King declared that “Gross National Happiness is more important than Gross National Product,” bravely setting his tiny nation on a unique path to development. In 2006 he abdicated in favour of his 27-year-old son. In 2008, ancient Bhutan became the world’s youngest democracy, its commitment to Gross National Happiness intact.
Gross National Happiness sounds like wide-eyed California mind-mush, but it’s as rigorous as most economic measurements — and far more useful. GNH rests on “four pillars” of value that almost everyone accepts. The first pillar is environmental conservation, caring for nature and others. Second is cultural promotion, preserving the wisdom of an ancient and cherished culture. Third is sustainable and equitable development that benefits all citizens, past and future as well as present. Fourth is “good governance,” the inculcation of active and responsible citizenship.
These “pillars” are divided into nine “domains,” which in turn are broken down to 72 measurable variables. One variable reflects Bhutan’s commitment to maintain at least 60% forest cover forever. In actual fact, 72% of Bhutan is forested, 52% is protected, and Bhutan presently absorbs three times as much carbon as it produces. Similarly, between 1984 and 1994, life expectancy rose from 48 to 66 years, while infant mortality was cut in half. The country now has universal health care and universal free education.
That’s solid data. And that’s GNH in action.
Bhutan has serious problems, including the controversial status of Bhutanese refugees of Nepali origin, a relentless rural-urban migration that has created a restless cohort of unemployed urban youth, and the advent of western-style materialism resulting from the introduction of TV and the internet a decade ago — all of which make GNH even more urgent.
To help entrench GNH values in Bhutan’s civic consciousness, Prime Minister Thinley turned to GPI Atlantic of St. Margaret’s Bay, the creators of Nova Scotia’s own Genuine Progress Index. Assembling educators and others from 16 countries, GPI convened a workshop in Thimphu, the capital, in early December, on “Educating for Gross National Happiness.”
So I found myself in Bhutan, listening to a sparkling five-day debate on education attended by both the Prime Minister and the Education Minister. What would the graduate of a GNH-infused education look like? How would you develop and nurture such a student?
After two days, Ron Colman of GPI made an amazing announcement. Overnight — literally — the government had adopted the workshop’s findings as government policies. Now, how should those policies be implemented? Two days later, the government had committed to an immediate GNH workshop within the education department, followed six weeks later by a workshop for all school principals in the country. Within a year, the new policies would reach every schoolroom in Bhutan.
As the workshop ended, I asked the Prime Minister how Bhutan would be different in 10 years, if the GNH education program succeeded.
“I would like to see an educational system quite different from the conventional factory, where children are just turned out to become economic animals, thinking only for themselves,” he said. “I would like to see graduates that are more human beings, with human values, that give importance to relationships, that are eco-literate, contemplative, analytical.
“I would like graduates who know that success in life is a state of being when you can come home at the end of the day satisfied with what you have done, realizing that you are a happy individual not only because you have found happiness for yourself, but because you have given happiness, in this one day’s work, to your spouse, to your family, to your neighbours — and to the world at large.”
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Tags: Bhutan, GPI Atlantic, Gross National Happiness, holistic education, Jigme Y. Thinley, Ron Colman, sustainability, Thimphu
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Tuesday, September 29th, 2009
September 27, 2009
I probably shouldn’t have bought the Durabrand 18-volt cordless drill at Wal-Mart. But it seemed well-built, and it was a small fraction of the cost of comparable name-brand drills. So I bought it. The Achilles heel of a cordless tool is the battery, so I bought an extra one. The drill was fine, but two years later, both batteries gasped their last — and Wal-Mart doesn’t sell Durabrand batteries any more, though it still sells the cordless tools.
“Try the manufacturer,” shrugged the Wal-Mart hardware clerk. The box bore no website or phone number. He slit it open and found a number — 888-267-7713. I called. A new directory assistance system applies, said a recorded voice; call 1014578# — and if you do, you’ll be charged $3.99. What?
The instruction manual revealed that the importer is Superior Airco Wholesale. Their website yielded the same 888 number — and an email address. I tried the email. It bounced back instantly.
I’m now chasing batteries on the Wal-Mart web site, which is a pain in the posterior. And I find myself wishing that I’d bought my drill from some place like Landry Brothers Home Hardware in Louisdale. Then I could have gone over and hounded Joe Marchand, and Joe would have said, “Leave it with me. I’ll deal with it.” That’s why I buy camera equipment from Bob Martin Photographic in Port Hawkesbury, and computer equipment from Computer Connection in Antigonish or Brilliance Computers in Halifax.
And that’s why I accepted an invitation to join the Board of a new organization called BALLE-NS — Business Association for Local Living Economies. BALLE Nova Scotia (www.balle-novascotia.com) is the newest of roughly 65 local BALLE networks across the US and Canada, all dedicated to building a new kind of economy — community-based, green, fair and sustainable. Its members are locally-owned businesses and individuals that hold themselves accountable not only to shareholders, but also to other stakeholders, to the community at large, and to the environment.
Soppy, right? Business is business, buddy. It’s dog-eat-dog in this bitch of a world. Don’t you know that?
Yeah, I do. But I also know that what we’re doing now isn’t sustainable, and things that can’t be sustained are (by definition) destined to collapse. Today, it’s hard for local businesses to compete with huge corporations that can produce goods in China, flood us with advertising, “roll back prices” and undercut local artisans. But those corporations evolved in a fantasy world of cheap oil and cavalier disregard of the true costs of resource depletion and environmental decline. Ultimately, they will have to pay those costs - and at that point the advantage will shift to local businesses that have been doing it right all along.
And, I might point out, thriving at it. My fellow Board members represent companies like Renovator’s Resource, which recycles building materials; LED Roadway Lighting, makers of environmentally-friendly street lights; Just Us Coffee Roasters, who sell great fair-trade coffee; P’Lovers, the Halifax-based chain of environmental stores; and Minas Basin Pulp and Power, a pulp mill fed entirely by recycled paper products and powered by its own hydro-electricity.
The Chair of BALLE-NS is Lil MacPherson, co-owner of The Wooden Monkey, Halifax’s “locavore” restaurant, which serves organic foods from local producers. Other Board members represent social-economy organizations like the Nova Scotia Community Foundation, the Ecology Action Centre, the Pollination Project and Cape Breton University. Still others are self-employed — consultants Lara Ryan and Janet Larkman (who is also part-time co-ordinator), motivational speaker Bill Carr and your humble scribe here. The organization’s start-up has been assisted by Nova Scotia Economic and Rural Development.
In short, the green economy is already here — and now it’s getting organized. After more than a year of preparation, BALLE-NS formally launches next week, with a public lecture by organic-seed merchant Tom Stearns in Wolfville at 7:00 on Wednesday, and a gala launch party at the NS Community College Waterfront Campus on Thursday from 6:00 to 10:00, MC’d by Bill Carr.
Love to see you there. Register on the website, and come out to meet the future.
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Tags: BALLE, Durabrand, local economy, small business, sustainability, Walmart
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Sunday, April 19th, 2009
April 19, 2009
“Yis, yis, yis,” nodded the Irishman, as he watched the complicated machine clattering away. “I see it works in practice — but does it work in theory?”
For now, our economy works in practice — but it doesn’t work in theory, because it is not sustainable. A sustainable society provides “Enough For All, Forever,” to quote the most succinct definition I’ve heard. To reach sustainability, we have to learn three principles that fundamentally challenge the way we’ve always done things.
First principle: it isn’t counted, it doesn’t count. You can’t manage what you don’t measure.
If you’re on a diet, you weigh yourself. If you’re cooking a roast, you monitor its temperature. If you’re seeking fuel economy, you measure your gas mileage. But we don’t calculate the costs of smokestack emissions and greenhouse gasses, and incorporate them in the price of the products. We don’t measure food miles — the distance that our food travels to reach us. If we factored the environmental costs of shipping into the price of the food, local farmers would be fully competitive with agribusinesses in California or Chile. We don’t tot up the value of volunteer work, or of household work. We don’t measure what we’ve lost when a forest is clear-cut — the aesthetic loss, the soil erosion, the stream turbidity, the loss of habitat, the forest’s ability to capture carbon.
All of that literally counts for nothing. And because we don’t measure properly, we can’t calculate our losses. So we act as though there were no losses, which means we are living in an imaginary world.
We do calculate the Gross Domestic Product, and our politicians unfailingly use it as a measure of progress. Alas, the GDP doesn’t measure progress; it merely measures activity. As the great economist Kenneth Boulding noted, it only tells us that people are busy. Using the GDP for policy purposes is stupid and damaging
Second principle: Ownership is an illusion.
The caribou doesn’t own the land that it occupies. The monkey doesn’t own the jungle. And we don’t own the land or its resources either. We just get to use them for a painfully short time.
That’s the view taken by traditional cultures. The land was, literally, common property, belonging to everyone and no one. That’s the aboriginal view, and the Highland view. “A man with two cows,” says the Gaelic proverb, “is a man with too much.” Use what you need, and no more. And don’t own what you don’t need.
In many cases we want the services that a product can provide rather than the product itself. I want convenient, affordable transportation, but that doesn’t mean I need to own a car. If Ford rented me a car and had to cover all its maintenance and recycle it when I was done with it, Ford would be motivated to make it inexpensive and durable. Thomas Edison originally sold electric illumination rather than electricity, so he was motivated to produce electricity cheaply and efficiently. When he switched over to selling electricity rather than light, he was motivated to encourage waste and inefficiency, which increased electricity sales.
We need services, not things. We need to be sheltered, fed, transported, equipped for work. The idea of ownership — on which our economic system is based — is saturated with incentives to waste.
Third principle: If it is to be, it is up to me.
Our whole economic system is designed to convert resources into waste, with a brief interlude as consumer products. Do not expect companies that sell steel, oil or lumber to develop a sudden enthusiasm for conserving resources. Do not expect Wal-Mart to express great misgivings about the economic system which has served it so well. These companies will change — and are changing now — but only because you and I are changing.
Whenever I speak to industry groups, I hear the same thing in my briefing sessions. “We have to go green because we’re under pressure on all sides from our customers, our employees, our shareholders.” That’s us, folks. In our roles as voters, citizens, consumers and advocates, we’re forcing the changes.
These three principles may not take us all the way to sustainability, but they are steadily taking us closer. Your efforts may never be counted — but never believe they don’t count.
– 30 —
Tags: Add new tag, citizenship, GDP, Genuine Progress Index, green business, product of service, property rights, sustainability
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