(Un)Sustainable Development“

Sustainable development”, a magical formula with which the world system of coexistence and production pretends to solve the problems which it itself has created, no matter how official it be, is a contradiction in terms and an illusion.

It is a contradiction since the two terms are mutually exclusive. The category “development” comes from the area of the dominant economy. It obeys the iron logic of maximalization of benefits with the minimalization of investment in terms of both money and time. To meet this end all productive forces are assembled in order to extract from the Earth literally everything which is consumable. The Earth is tortured by technoscience, and is subjected to a systematic assault on its soil and subsoil and on its atmosphere and oceanic riches. The result is a fantastic production of material goods and services which are unfairly distributed. This imbalance is destroying peace among the peoples and threatening the biosphere, which is being subjected to an almost intolerable stress.

The category “sustainability” comes from the field of biology and ecology, the logic of which is contrary to this type of “development”. This category signals the tendency of the ecosystems to a dynamic equilibrium and emphasizes the interdependency of all systems, guaranteeing the inclusion of every being, even of the weakest. It is obvious that to link this concept of sustainability to that of development outlined above is a complete nonsense.

The concept of “sustainable development” is a contradiction in terms because it proposes as a cause that which is in fact an effect. It is said that poverty is the cause of ecological degradation. Therefore, the less poverty and the more development, the less ecological degradation. If, however, one analyses the real causes of poverty and degradation, one sees that they are precisely the result of the type of development which is being practised in the world today. It exploits people by impoverishing them and it exhausts nature’s resources by degrading it. So, the political use of the expression “sustainable development” represents a trap set by the prevailing political system: it uses ecological terminology (sustainability) but empties it of its meaning, thereby disguising the true cause of the social and ecological problem (development ), which is the [prevailing political] system itself.

Finally the expression “sustainable development” is an illusion. It postulates a development which moves between two infinities: the infinity of the Earth’s resources and the infinity of the future. Such a scenario requires that the Earth’s resources be inexhaustible and the future limitless. Well, these two infinities are illusory: the resources are finite and the future is limited. If India wanted to be as England is, it would need two Earths to exploit, as Gandhi ironically used to say in the 50s.

“Sustainable development” is not a panacea, but a placebo. To insist on applying it is to deceive the patient, killing him or her, perhaps. This is the danger for the biosphere. To understand this contradiction is to understand the reason which led to the impasse in the Earth Summit in Rio-92 and now in Johannesburg-2002. We must focus on sustainability and not development. We need a sustainable Earth, a sustainable society and a sustainable human life. Without this there can be no sustainable development. This is what the lords of “(un)sustainable development” do not understand at all. The Titanic is leaking water on every side. We have no time to lose. We have to wake up otherwise it will be too late. This is not being apocalyptic, but simply realistic.