Download Developing the Race model

DRAFT FOR DISCUSSION
Developing the model for a Race to Sustainability
The Race against the clock to achieve environmental and social sustainability globally and locally
1 August 2017 Version 1.e
Content
PURPOSE OF THIS PAPER ..................................................................................... 1
THE BASIC CONCEPT OF THE RACE TO SUSTAINABILITY ....................... 2
UNDERSTANDING SUSTAINABILITY AND SUSTAINABILITYPROMOTING CAMPAIGNS .................................................................................... 2
THE PURPOSE OF THE RACE TO SUSTAINABILITY ..................................... 4
WHAT IS THE ‘VALUE-ADDED’ OF THE RACE?? ........................................... 4
PARTICIPATING IN THE RACE TO SUSTAINABILITY .................................. 5
THE CENTERPIECE - WHOLE COMMUNITIES RACING TO ACHIEVE
LOCAL SUSTAINABILITY AND TO CONTRIBUTE EFFECTIVELY TO
GLOBAL SUSTAINABILITY ................................................................................... 5
PEER OR SPECIALIST COMPETITIONS - ESSENTIAL FOR NEAR TERM
MOTIVATION BUT NOT THE MAIN GAME ...................................................... 6
WHO WILL DECIDE ON THE MINIMUM MANDATORY
SUSTAINABILITY OBJECTIVES? ......................................................................... 6
THE MINIMUM MANDATORY SUSTAINABILITY OBJECTIVES FOR
COMMUNITIES.......................................................................................................... 6
POSSIBLE EVENT CATEGORIES IN THE JAMBOREES ................................. 7
WHERE IS THE ‘FINISHING LINE’? .................................................................... 7
TRIALING THE RACE CONCEPT ......................................................................... 8
TO JOIN IN THE RACE TO SUSTAINABILITY .................................................. 8
Purpose of this paper
This is a working paper that sets out a possible model for the organisation of the Race
to Sustainability. The paper will be used as a focus for discussion and debate that will
feed the model development process. There is a great deal more detail still to be
worked out. However this paper takes the concept a number of important steps
further.
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The basic concept of the Race to Sustainability
For basic information of the Race, see:
http://www.green-innovations.asn.au/Race-to-Sustainability.htm
Understanding sustainability and sustainability-promoting campaigns
Sustainability is a simple concept - it is the ‘ability to keep something going or keep
it in existence1’ and sustainability-promoting campaigns are campaigns that result in
the sustaining of the things or attributes that are identified as needing to be kept going
or in existence.
A sustainability issue only arises if there is a threat that could result in the loss of
something that is valued: that is, there is a risk that the valued thing or attribute might
cease to be sustained.
However, if there is something that is wanted that has never existed before then the
aspiration is for genuine progress, not sustainability.
There is one situation where a desired outcome can be legitimately described as either
a sustainability issue or a genuine progress issue and that relates to ‘identifiable
potentials’. It is possible to describe the same set of actions as being aimed at:
 “sustaining an identified existing potential” (ie. seeing the actions through the
lens of sustainability) or
 “actually creating something for the first time” (ie. seeing the actions through the
lens of genuine progress)
For example, a society might have existed for millennia and poverty may have existed
throughout this time. So the society is clearly sustainable (ie. it has been able to
persist for a long time and shows every sign of continuing into the future in the same
mode). However, as the world has developed and as aspirations have risen it is now
possible to see clearly how the continuing poverty is destroying the potential for a
reasonable life for many people in that society. So it is now clear that their individual
potential (as now perceived) is not being sustained.
Improving the lot of the poverty-stricken people can be seen as a genuine progress
issue (ie. allowing that stratum of society to rise out of poverty for the first time) or as
a sustainability issue (ie. sustaining the identified existing human potential of the
poverty stricken individuals).
Using this analysis, it now possible to see that wherever a need is felt to act urgently
there must be a threat existing that could cause the loss or degradation of something
(actual or potential) that is valued - in other words -wherever there is a need to act
urgently there must be a sustainability issue at stake.
By protecting the ‘something’ from loss or degradation and by restoring what has been lost where the
damage can be reversed.
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It should be possible to identify, for any sustainability issue:
 what is to be sustained (an actual thing or attribute or a potential thing or attribute
that is clearly identifiable)
 the threat(s) that could degrade or eliminate the thing(s) or attribute(s) to be
sustained
 the necessary scale of action to assure the achievement of sustainability
 the imperative to act urgently to prevent degradation or loss or to undertake
restoration
 the need to adopt a no major trade-offs approach to the sustainability issue, in the
context of other community needs, so that the desired sustainability objective(s)
can actually be achieved.
This model could be elaborated as follows:
ENDS - Ethical Motivators
The things to sustain because we care for them altruistically. Needs to have a global
reference point - to avoid local parochialism. But local issues would also have to be
factored in.
What is cared
for
Nature
Society
Individuals
Other?
Existing/Actual
Potential
Existence and abundance of
species; Existence and quality of
ecological communities
Existence and viability
Existence; Wellbeing
??
Potential for evolutionary
development in the wild of
species
Identified human potential2
??
MEANS - Practical mechanisms/ways to achieve preferred ends.
Things to be sustained because they are useful, beneficial, pleasing or satisfying etc.
Actual
Existence and abundance of
Life support
systems/ecosystem species; Existence and quality
of ecological communities
services
Adequate amounts
Natural beauty;
Heritage values
Beneficial economic output
Productive
(economic)
systems
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Potential
Potential for evolutionary
development of species in the
wild
Potential to create the
resources need to sustain
‘human potential’
Eg. good nutrition, health care and education, an absence of oppression, discrimination, communal
strife and crime, and at least a modest level of income are critical to maintenance of ‘human potential’.
This is illustrated by the very high level of welfare that the vast majority experience in the quite poor
State of Kerala, India or in the less poor Curitiba, Brazil.
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Human resources
Other?
Human productive capacity;
Human health; Capacity for
problem solving;
Indigenous/folk
ways/knowledge; scientific,
technological and managerial
ways and knowledge
??
Potential for knowledge
development; Potential for
innovation
??
The key environmental problem issues that need to be addressed - eg.
 biodiversity loss and habitat loss and degradation
 depletion of cheap oil
 damaging perturbations to climate systems
 freshwater shortage and degradation
 soil degradation and loss
What about key social issues?
The key social problem issues that need to be addressed - eg.
 warfare/recourse to violence
 response to terrorism
 poverty
 Aids
 religious/belief system conflict
 migration and refugees
 emergence of artificial intelligence and advanced technologies
Sustainability actions programs (where ethically-driven or utilitarian) fall into three
modes:
 preventing loss and degradation
 restoring what has been lost or degraded (where reversibility is a technical
possibility)
 creating an improved situation for the first time (genuine progress) and then
sustaining the gains.
The purpose of the Race to Sustainability
The Race to Sustainability is a race against the clock undertaken by communities to
actually achieve a sustainable world and a sustaining society - a necessary utopia!
Genuine progress issues should only be brought into the Race to the extent that
they can be understood clearly through a sustainability framework. How this can
be done is discussed above.
What is the ‘value-added’ of the Race??
What difference will it make to have the Race going? It should:
 promote a higher level of mobilisation than would occur otherwise
 bring a global context to local activity
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encourage consensus-building and engagement around comprehensive strategic
action
encourage innovation around comprehensive strategy development and diffusion.
Participating in the Race to Sustainability
The proposal is that communities (often quite large ones eg. states, regions, nations3)
would be nominated to be participants in the Race by one or more organisations. At
the time of nomination, a nominating organisation would specify what that
organisation wants to see sustained over-and-above the minimum commitment
required by the Race organising committee4. The minimum commitment is described
below. Nominating organisations would be able to modify their sustainability
objectives at a later time.
Any organisation or individual within a registered participating community would be
eligible to affiliate with the Race if they are contributing positively in some way to
that community’s Race effort. Participating organisations would be eligible to
participate in the Race jamborees (eg. the Sustainability Olympics).
Participating communities would be encouraged by the Race Organising Committee
to establish one or more:
 mobilising organisations - to take responsibility for engaging as many people as
possible and for helping them identify highest-common-denominator consensus
actions to help the society achieve a sustaining and sustainable structure.
 strategic teams - to develop and promote the implementation of carefullystructured, comprehensive strategies for the achievement of sustainability strategies that endeavour to ensure that all the pieces of the jigsaw puzzle are
created and brought together5.
A participating community would be required to run a consensus-building process to
provide guidance to participating organisations within that community. The Race
rules should not bind any organisation to follow the consensus view. The consensus
process should be open to participation by any person or organisation participating in
the Race, within the participating community. All nominating organisations,
mobilising organisations and strategic teams would be required by the Race
Organising Committee to work together to establish and operate the consensus
building process.
The centerpiece - whole communities racing to achieve local sustainability and to
contribute effectively to global sustainability
The core of the Race is a ‘marathon’ - where only communities can be ‘winners’. The
aim of the community marathon is to create a sustaining society (and economy) that
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Fundamental economic, political and lifestyle restructuring are less likely to be triggered if the
participating communities are small (ie. only at the municipal or smaller scale).
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This would eventually be an international organisation to foster and manage the Race across the
world.
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Each strategic team would be, in effect, a bet on the best way to achieve the sustainability objectives.
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we can be confident will achieve the global and local sustainability objectives. When
this has been done the community has reached the finishing line. See below for more
discussion of the concept of the finishing line.
Peer or specialist competitions - essential for near term motivation but not the
main game
The periodic local, regional and global jamborees would focus on testing and
celebrating effective action to achieve intermediate goals that are determined, by a
consensus approach, to be likely to lead to the achievement of the community and
global sustainability objectives. Local jamborees would respond to both the local
consensus process and so might have uniquely local events and would also give
participants the chance to qualify to enter the regional and global jamborees.
Regional and global consensus processes would determine the events to be run at
these levels.
Who will decide on the minimum mandatory sustainability objectives?
Who should decide on the minimum sustainability objectives?
The Race Organising Committee should develop a globally relevant set of
sustainability objectives (ie. what is to be sustained) that all communities need to try
to meet. I think the minimum objectives set should be developed through a global
consultative process of sustainability-minded people.
The Race consensus building processes within communities could perhaps specify
additional minimum local goals.
Nominating organisations could add their own additional sustainability objectives
The minimum mandatory sustainability objectives for communities
The minimum objectives should relate to sustaining the things the community cares
about most and the things that have a high ethical call on us. We should aim for
things that are important and where there is urgency for action (ie. there is a important
sustainability issue at stake).
The minimum sustainability objectives could be:
 at least maintain average human life spans
 maintain the population (not necessarily at its current high level, but it shouldn’t
be in ‘permanent’ free fall due to poor health and safety or violence or personal
reproductive choices that are not consciously made with the wider need of the
community and environment in mind).
 at least maintain human wellbeing
 at least maintain identified fundamental human potentials
 maintain all the other living species on the planet (this will require restoration of,
for example, habitat and species distributions)
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restore and maintain ecological life support systems/essential ecosystem services
for humans and the rest of nature
maintain the wellbeing-value that can be derived from the utilisation of
depletable resources (for the benefit of people and the rest of nature)
For a community to get over the finishing line, these sustainability objectives would
need to be achieved for that community and the community would need to be making
a fair and effective contribution to these objectives being achieved in the rest of the
world.
We need to have a sense of the scale and quality of what needs to be sustained so
these ‘platitudes’ can become practical specification guides.
Economic sustainability shouldn’t be included in the minimum set of sustainability
issues as economic sustainability is or at least should be much more of a means to
achieve the social and environmental goals - as these are closer to the ethical starting
points for our concern.
Possible event categories in the jamborees
The events in the jamborees could fall under one or more of the events categories.
Possible events categories include:
 biodiversity
 ecosystem services and planetary health
 human health
 population management
 human wellbeing and human potential
 dematerialisation
 closed-cycle economy
 renewable energy
 zero toxicity
 depletable resources value-maintenance
 democracy and good governance
 cultural vitality and heritage
 community/civic society vitality
 non-violence
 anti-corruption
 community knowledge and education
 sustaining economy
 sustainability strategy
 global collaboration
 etc.
Where is the ‘finishing line’?
One confusing thing is that the ‘finishing line’ is not a geographical ‘place’ but rather
it is a condition of society and the world:
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it a condition where there can be no reasonable doubt that the social and
economic processes are in place so that there can be no reasonable doubt that the
sustainability objective will be met in the future
So there will be no more decline in final outcomes and a very high level of certainty
that the necessary rebuilding of system resilience will occur in a timely fashion.
The aim of the community marathon is to create a sustaining society (and economy)
that we can be confident will achieve the global and local sustainability objectives.
So the ‘finishing line’ or completion point for the Race is the point where this society
and economy has been created6.
Trialing the Race concept
While quite a lot of issues for the operation of the Race can be considered in virtual
reality, learning-by-doing is the most profound test. For this reason a trial run of the
Race will be undertaken in Australia quite soon. Only after this test and perhaps
others in different societies will we attempt to launch the Race officially, globally.
To join in the Race to Sustainability
If you want to be involved in the Race, contact us by email:
[email protected]
Given that complex systems tend to change through an ‘S’ curve trajectory - where achieving the last
few percentage points of change can be very slow - it might be reasonable to declare that a community
has, for all practical purposes, reached the finishing line when it has got 90-95% to the final desired
state. That way we can celebrate much earlier and yet still have confidence that the momentum in the
society will carry it over the 100% completion point.
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