From Sustainability to Resilience: why a small change in terminology has big implications

This week there’s an ad in the Economist for a job at the UN as “Program Head for Climate Strategies and Resilient Development” to support climate adaptation activities in developing countries. So what? I hear you cry. Well, a year ago that job title would probably have been Head of Climate Strategies and Sustainability, and while it may look like a small change in terminology, moving from sustainability to resilience has big connotations.

Adaptation is very different to mitigation. The latter suggests the possibility of a sustainable future, the former accepts that if you can’t beat climate change, you’d better join it. But why the shift – is sustainability really unachievable? I think that if sustainability has become shorthand for maintaining the way we live today, then maybe it isn’t possible and resilience might be the way to go.

Climate change isn’t something that will just pop up in 2050 and bite our grandkids on the arse, it’s happening now. Climate scientist Dr James Hansen of Columbia University says that: “Changes are beginning to appear, and there is a potential for rapid changes with effects that would be irreversible.” In Strategies to Address Global Warming, his data demonstrates that we have already caused atmospheric carbon dioxide to increase from 280 to 387 ppm (parts per million) and this means that we are already beyond a safe limit. He says: “The safe level of carbon dioxide in the long run is no more than 350 ppm. Earth’s history shows that an atmospheric CO2 amount of say 450 ppm eventually would yield dramatic changes, including sea level tens of meters higher than today... we would hand our children and grandchildren a condition that would run out of their control, a situation that should be unacceptable to humanity.”

So even if we put in place mitigation measures, we should perhaps accept that we cannot avert some environmental crises and therefore planning for resilience is not a bad idea. The situation in Haiti demonstrates how preparedness is vital in responding to a national emergency. Can you imagine something like that happening in your neighbourhood? But hang on, before I spin off into utter gloom (you’ll know by now that I’m no fan of doom-mongering) what does resilience mean for us? Moving to higher ground with a load of tinned beans and a shotgun? I hope not. Here’s what I think we’ll need to hand our children and grandchildren.

Resilient communities:
This would probably mean neighbourhoods where the need for travel was minimised. That might mean families living near each other, producing the food supply from allotments and market gardens, and socialising and working locally. Critically though, protectionism should play no part in resilient communities – we need neighbours who are adaptive to change and welcoming if those from elsewhere need sanctuary.

Resilient services.
Again, localisation is key to this. We will need a local infrastructure that can provide food, education, policing, health services and goods readily in uncertain times. Removing reliance on global logistics to get us the things we need is key. Just look at how the snow affected the UK recently with schools, libraries and even supermarkets shutting. We need to be better prepared than that!

Resilient people.
This is the hippy dippy bit. Resilient people will be those who can live through crises without succumbing to fear, depression or protectionism. To be adaptive to change is not easy, but we must raise loving, kind and, most importantly, adaptable kids. They’ll need to be flexible if they’re going to live fulfilling lives in uncertain times.

So does that mean “Sustainability is dead, long live Resilience”? I hope not. I hope that our collective efforts to reduce our environmental impacts work and we can retain the better parts of our modern society long into the future, but a little forward planning for what we might do if they don’t won’t do any harm.

Endnote. I must acknowledge that this post is based largely on a conversation I had with a colleague on my masters alumni weekend. He is the brainy one who made all the salient points and I just added the bit about shotguns. I hope I reflected the discussion appropriately without him feeling used!

Reflections on climate change denial #1 – why oversimplification has made global warming a cult

There I was having a nice cup of tea listening to Radio Four when Peter Hitchens came on to talk about why energy saving light bulbs are proof of the tyranny of the nanny state and that man-made global warming was a load of old hokey. This got me rather hot and bothered even though the heating was off and my tea was cold, but rather than internally fume I decided to think more broadly about what he is saying. On reflection, what occurred to me is that climate science has become so dumbed down for public consumption that people now find it hard to believe.

So let’s look at the oversimplification of climate science. Two years ago few people knew what a carbon footprint was, but now it has become so ubiquitous that I even saw a man in Westfield shopping centre yesterday wearing a sweatshirt that said, “keep your carbon footprint low dude”. Some might say that this means that the message is getting across, but I bet if I’d asked that man what his footprint was he wouldn’t know. What we – the communications people – have done by reducing a complex science down to neat digestable messages and "top tips for what to do" is create this simple equation:

man-made stuff = carbon emissions = 2 cm sea level rise in 2050

By essentially editing out great swathes of scientific information we have made it easy for people to believe or deny that equation. If we broadened it to reflect the actual components of the environmental situation, it might look more like this:

Growth of mass production and consumption of commercial products, livestock, food, transport, services, minerals, etc + population growth = Deforestation + acidification of oceans + mass agriculture + species loss + peak oil, etc = Pollution, greenhouse gases, unstable international relations, war, poverty, extreme weather events, flooding, etc.

Because the true picture is systemic: whether we like it or not, man is a species that sits within – not outside of – the eco-system which in itself is entirely interdependent. Noone would deny the dependence of plants on bees for pollination or animals on plants for oxygen, but too often we take ourselves –  man – out of the system altogether which in turn enables us to deny that our actions make any impact at all.

By simplyifying our impact into a short equation about carbon emissions, we further distance people from the multi-species holistic eco-system that we live in and we make “man” the villain and "earth" the victim. This of course polarises people into “for” and “against” camps because who, other than bleeding heart liberals like me, wants to admit to being the villain? So by oversimplifying a complex problem into a digestable message, we therefore make it possible to deny the existence of an environmental crisis altogether. And the media then sees it as an argument with two sides and TV producers can make films called “the Great Global Warming Swindle”, and silly people like James May and Peter Hitchens get air time on BBC 1 and Radio Four to say “I don’t believe in man-made global warming” like it is a cult or something.

Climate change in itself has become an easily thrown about soundbite with the polar bear as its charismatic mascot. In this oversimplification, we no longer look at man’s actual impact on the environment, but rather we choose between the option of man = villain or man = hero, and select which side of this totally unscientific binary argument we sit on. It’s not hard to understand where climate change denial comes from when you look at it like that. Even I'd rather be a hero than a villain.