Like millions of other people around the world
I've been fascinated to hear five eminent speakers share with us their
thoughts hopes and fears about sustainable development based on their own
experience. All five of those contributions have been immensely thoughtful
and challenging. There have been clear differences of opinion and of
emphasis between the speakers but there have also been some important
common themes, both implicit and explicit. One of those themes has been
the suggestion that sustainable development is a matter of enlightened
self-interest. Two of the speakers used this phrase and I don't believe
that the other three would dissent from it, and nor would I.
Self-interest is a powerful motivating force for all of us, and if we
can somehow convince ourselves that sustainable development is in all our
interests then we will have taken a valuable first step towards achieving
it. But self-interest comes in many competing guises - not all of which I
fear are likely to lead in the right direction for very long, nor to
embrace the manifold needs of future generations. I am convinced we will
need to dig rather deeper to find the inspiration, sense of urgency and
moral purpose required to confront the hard choices which face us on the
long road to sustainable development. So, although it seems to have become
deeply unfashionable to talk about the spiritual dimension of our
existence, that is what I propose to do.
The idea that there is a sacred trust between mankind and our Creator,
under which we accept a duty of stewardship for the earth, has been an
important feature of most religious and spiritual thought throughout the
ages. Even those whose beliefs have not included the existence of a
Creator have, nevertheless, adopted a similar position on moral and
ethical grounds. It is only recently that this guiding principle has
become smothered by almost impenetrable layers of scientific rationalism.
I believe that if we are to achieve genuinely sustainable development we
will first have to rediscover, or re-acknowledge a sense of the sacred in
our dealings with the natural world, and with each other. If literally
nothing is held sacred anymore - because it is considered synonymous with
superstition or in some other way "irrational" - what is there to prevent
us treating our entire world as some "great laboratory of life" with
potentially disastrous long term consequences?
Fundamentally, an understanding of the sacred helps us to acknowledge
that there are bounds of balance, order and harmony in the natural world
which set limits to our ambitions, and define the parameters of
sustainable development. In some cases nature's limits are well understood
at the rational, scientific level. As a simple example, we know that
trying to graze too many sheep on a hillside will, sooner or later, be
counter productive for the sheep, the hillside, or both. More widely we
understand that the overuse of insecticides or antibiotics leads to
problems of resistance. And we are beginning to comprehend the full, awful
consequences of pumping too much carbon dioxide into the earth's
atmosphere. Yet the actions being taken to halt the damage known to be
caused by exceeding nature's limits in these and other ways are
insufficient to ensure a sustainable outcome. In other areas, such as the
artificial and uncontained transfer of genes between species of plants and
animals, the lack of hard, scientific evidence of harmful consequences is
regarded in many quarters as sufficient reason to allow such developments
to proceed.
The idea of taking a precautionary approach, in this and many other
potentially damaging situations, receives overwhelming public support, but
still faces a degree of official opposition, as if admitting the
possibility of doubt was a sign of weakness or even of a wish to halt
"progress". On the contrary, I believe it to be a sign of strength and of
wisdom. It seems that when we do have scientific evidence that we are
damaging our environment we aren't doing enough to put things right, and
when we don't have that evidence we are prone to do nothing at all,
regardless of the risks.
Part of the problem is the prevailing approach that seeks to reduce the
natural world including ourselves to the level of nothing more than a
mechanical process. For whilst the natural theologians of the 18th and
19th centuries like Thomas Morgan referred to the perfect unity, order,
wisdom and design of the natural world, scientists like Bertrand Russell
rejected this idea as rubbish. 'I think the universe' he wrote 'is all
spots and jumps without unity and without continuity, without coherence or
orderliness. Sir Julian Huxley wrote in "Creation a Modern Synthesis" -
that modern science must rule out special creation or divine guidance.'
But why?
As Professor Alan Linton of Bristol University has written- 'evolution
is a manmade theory to explain the origin and continuance of life on this
planet without reference to a Creator.' It is because of our inability or
refusal to accept the existence of a guiding hand that nature has come to
be regarded as a system that can be engineered for our own convenience or
as a nuisance to be evaded and manipulated, and in which anything that
happens can be fixed by technology and human ingenuity. Fritz Schumacher
recognised the inherent dangers in this approach when he said that 'there
are two sciences - the science of manipulation and the science of
understanding.'
In this technology driven age it is all too easy for us to forget that
mankind is a part of nature and not apart from it. And that this is why we
should seek to work with the grain of nature in everything we do, for the
natural world is, as the economist Herman Daly puts it - 'the envelope
that contains, sustains and provisions the economy, not the other way
round.' So which argument do you think will win - the living world as one
or the world made up of random parts, the product of mere chance, thereby
providing the justification for any kind of development? This, to my mind,
lies at the heart of what we call sustainable development. We need,
therefore, to rediscover a reference for the natural world, irrespective
of its usefulness to ourselves - to become more aware in Philip Sherrard's
words of 'the relationship of interdependence, interpenetration and
reciprocity between God, Man and Creation.'
Above all, we should show greater respect for the genius of nature's
designs, rigorously tested and refined over millions of years. This means
being careful to use science to understand how nature works, not to change
what nature is, as we do when genetic manipulation seeks to transform a
process of biological evolution into something altogether different. The
idea that the different parts of the natural world are connected through
an intricate system of checks and balances which we disturb at our peril
is all too easily dismissed as no longer relevant.
So, in an age when we're told that science has all the answers, what
chance is there for working with the grain of nature? As an example of
working with the grain of nature, I happen to believe that if a fraction
of the money currently being invested in developing genetically
manipulated crops were applied to understanding and improving traditional
systems of agriculture, which have stood the all- important test of time,
the results would be remarkable. There is already plenty of evidence of
just what can be achieved through applying more knowledge and fewer
chemicals to diverse cropping systems. These are genuinely sustainable
methods and they are far removed from the approaches based on monoculture
which lend themselves to large- scale commercial exploitation, and which
Vandana Shiva condemned so persuasively and so convincingly in her
lecture. Our most eminent scientists accept that there is still a vast
amount that we don't know about our world and the life forms that inhabit
it. As Sir Martin Rees, the Astronomer Royal, points out, it is complexity
that makes things hard to understand, not size. In a comment which only an
astronomer could make, he describes a butterfly as a more daunting
intellectual challenge than the cosmos!
Others, like Rachel Carson, have eloquently reminded us that we don't
know how to make a single blade of grass. And St. Matthew, in his wisdom,
emphasised that not even Solomon in all his glory was arrayed as the
lilies of the field. Faced with such unknowns it is hard not to feel a
sense of humility, wonder and awe about our place in the natural order.
And to feel this at all stems from that inner heartfelt reason which
sometimes despite ourselves is telling us that we are intimately bound up
in the mysteries of life and that we don't have all the answers. Perhaps
even that we don't have to have all the answers before knowing what we
should do in certain circumstances. As Blaise Pascal wrote in the 17th
century, 'it is the heart that experiences God, not the reason.'
So do you not feel that, buried deep within each and every one of us,
there is an instinctive, heart-felt awareness that provides -if we will
allow it to- the most reliable guide as to whether or not our actions are
really in the long term interests of our planet and all the life it
supports? This awareness, this wisdom of the heart, maybe no more than a
faint memory of a distant harmony, rustling like a breeze through the
leaves, yet sufficient to remind us that the Earth is unique and that we
have a duty to care for it. Wisdom, empathy and compassion have no place
in the empirical world yet traditional wisdoms would ask "without them are
we truly human?" And it would be a good question. It was Socrates who,
when asked for his definition of wisdom, gave as his conclusion, "knowing
that you don't know."
In suggesting that we will need to listen rather more to the common
sense emanating from our hearts if we are to achieve sustainable
development, I'm not suggesting that information gained through scientific
investigation is anything other than essential. Far from it. But I believe
that we need to restore the balance between the heartfelt reason of
instinctive wisdom and the rational insights of scientific analysis.
Neither, I believe, is much use on its own. So it is only by employing
both the intuitive and the rational halves of our own nature - our hearts
and our minds - that we will live up to the sacred trust that has been
placed in us by our Creator, - or our "Sustainer", as ancient wisdom
referred to the Creator. As Gro Harlem Brundtland has reminded us,
sustainable development is not just about the natural world, but about
people too. This applies whether we are looking at the vast numbers who
lack sufficient food or access to clean water, but also those living in
poverty and without work. While there is no doubt that globalisation has
brought advantages, it brings dangers too. Without the humility and
humanity expressed by Sir John Browne in his notion of the 'connected
economy' - an economy which acknowledges the social and environmental
context within which it operates - there is the risk that the poorest and
the weakest will not only see very little benefit but, worse, they may
find that their livelihoods and cultures have been lost.
So if we are serious about sustainable development then we must also
remember that the lessons of history are particularly relevant when we
start to look further ahead. Of course, in an age when it often seems that
nothing can properly be regarded as important unless it can be described
as "modern", it is highly dangerous to talk about the lessons of the past.
And are those lessons ever taught or understood adequately in an age when
to pass on a body of acquired knowledge of this kind is often considered
prejudicial to "progress"? Of course our descendants will have scientific
and technological expertise beyond our imagining, but will they have the
insight or the self- control to use this wisely, having learnt both from
our successes and our failures?
They won't, I believe, unless there are increased efforts to develop an
approach to education which balances the rational with the intuitive.
Without this truly sustainable development is doomed. It will merely
become a hollow- sounding mantra that is repeated ad nauseam in order to
make us all feel better. Surely, therefore, we need to look towards the
creation of greater balance in the way we educate people so that the
practical and intuitive wisdom of the past can be blended with the
appropriate technology and knowledge of the present to produce the type of
practitioner who is acutely aware of both the visible and invisible worlds
that inform the entire cosmos. The future will need people who understand
that sustainable development is not merely about a series of technical
fixes, about redesigning humanity or re-engineering nature in an extension
of globalised, industrialisation - but about a re-connection with nature
and a profound understanding of the concepts of care that underpin long
term stewardship.
Only by rediscovering the essential unity and order of the living and
spiritual world - as in the case of organic agriculture or integrated
medicine or in the way we build - and by bridging the destructive chasm
between cynical secularism and the timelessness of traditional religion,
will we avoid the disintegration of our overall environment. Above all, I
don't want to see the day when we are rounded upon by our grandchildren
and asked accusingly why we didn't listen more carefully to the wisdom of
our hearts as well as to the rational analysis of our heads; why we didn't
pay more attention to the preservation of bio-diversity and traditional
communities or think more clearly about our role as stewards of creation?
Taking a cautious approach or achieving balance in life is never as much
fun as the alternatives, but that is what sustainable development is all
about.
source REITH