Abstract
The eight authors of Sustainability Unpacked (an additional fifteen were recruited to write illustrative boxes) are attempting a very bold synthesis around measurement and understanding of social and environmental sustainability. They are partially successful and extremely thought-provoking in the systematic presentation and analysis of comparative data and specific cases.
Coming together through the Forest Systems and Bioenergy Program at Washington State University, the authors bring global experiences in forestry and natural resource management to their complex task. Most have had careers that span industry, government agencies, and civil society environmental groups as well as universities across the world. They are well aware of the intersection of the biophysical with the socio-economic. In particular, they look for policy lessons that can be learned at a country level from past and present policy decisions, some not necessarily directed at the ecosystem, that contribute to sustainability.
Nation-states are their unit of analysis for comparing 34 countries in different parts of the world at different levels of development for which a wide variety of indices are available. While they realize that a great deal of intra-country nuance and specificity is lost by such an approach, they boldly take on the challenge of comparative environmental policy and the implications for human and ecosystem well-being. Procurement and consumption of energy and bio-resources are the core to sustainability and resilience. Yet what makes one country resilient may greatly increase the vulnerability of countries providing food, energy, forests, and water to the consumer country in an ever-globalizing world.
They argue that the ultimate constraint to human sustainability is a nation’s amount of available “solar income” (sometimes referred to as energetics), which comes primarily from a vegetative base. This is in contrast to the current emphasis on the use of “solar capital” or fossil fuels.
They define and operationalize dimensions of sustainability through a series of indices, which they observe are the results of past decisions. The authors display the data on which their analyses are based in tables and charts throughout the book. They find that most of the indices do not correlate with each other, implying the diverse situations in which policies are made have an effect; they look within each index for specific indicators that suggest the state of that dimension of sustainability in each country. The comparisons serve to inform the kind of policies and compromises that make sense under differing circumstances. They find, as have many before them, that generalizations about sustainability are not necessarily the substance of building resiliency. Yet they are hopeful that such analyses can instruct countries with a particular Human Development Index (HDI) move to a high level, based on decisions made by countries with a higher HDI.
Most effective are the “real country stories” that move beyond single indicators and indices to processes and interactions at the country level. Here the wide range of the authors’ experiences are most useful, as they deal with each country’s mix of constraints, opportunities, and how one dimension of sustainability can make others worse. They look critically at different national choices related to energy and mitigating carbon dioxide emissions and the impacts each strategy has on water, forests, and food. By consistently analyzing their data with an ecosystems ecology lens, the reader is left with an appreciation of the complexity and necessity of careful attention to policy.
Climate change and human exacerbation of it are a continuing theme throughout the book, particularly CO2 emissions, land use change, and forest sequestration of carbon. Their country-level data on these variables suggest no direct correlations, but they have a number of examples of attempts to minimize emissions and maximize carbon sequestration.
They are skeptical of biofuels, particularly since high-HDI countries are increasing sourcing them from low-HDI countries. They are more sanguine about distributed energy systems, if they can provide energy security, higher paying jobs and new markets, climate change mitigation, ecosystem service and human health, reduce forest fire risk, and be subject to regional and national regulation. They are persuasive that capital intensive, centralized energy systems cost more environmentally and economically. They stress the need to move from solar capital (fossil fuels) to solar income, which they show is much easier to decentralize and operate on a small scale, and they make clear, does not make them inefficient.
Soil and water are intimately tied to food. The authors make an excellent case for attention to soil degradation, soil chemistry, and soil microbiology. And they show how dependence on precipitation for water supply increases national vulnerability. Soils and climate, especially when it impacts available water supply, are constraints to the use of solar capital. Even high HDI countries have medium or high environmental vulnerability. Knowledge of national soils and their limitations must be included in policy decisions regarding energy. They point to the general ignorance of agricultural land-use practices and their repercussions on soil health, particularly in HDI countries. HDI countries add chemicals to soils, as well as chemicals to crops and soils to kill pests, and an excess of those chemicals adversely impacts soil microbiology and thus soil quality, water quality, and human health. In this discussion, they draw on the merging discipline of medical geology. They show countries face very different soil constraints—and thus a single solution will not work around the world. Even in nations that grow crops through Green Revolution technologies, soil quality impacts the nutritional value of those crops.
While colonization, imperialism, and migration have traditionally been ways that countries dealt with domestic resource depletion and the need to get more resources from outside their borders and/or decrease the numbers of domestic users of resources, such strategies are much more difficult in the twenty-first century. The discussion of the human impacts and responses to changing resources raises interesting issues about scapegoating and denial in the face of such resources decline.
The book is quite readable, and suitable for a general audience, including undergraduates. It could use a list of acronyms, which are abundantly used throughout the text. For the sociologist, the book links the biophysical and the socio-political in innovative and compelling ways. In addressing a number of sustainability myths, they reiterate the complexity of the collective choices to be made and the necessity of national and international efforts to make such decisions. They stress the importance of investing in both human and natural capital to move toward more sustainable nations in a more sustainable world with both social and ecological resilience.