Human Flourishing And The Environment

In this paper I outline the main questions of ecological sustainability in relation to human flourishing. Below I offer a summary of major risks to flourishing from environmental damage. I then outline a Christian model of flourishing, and link this to considerations of ecological integrity. The paper then makes parallels between a Christian understanding of environmentally sustainable development and the long secular critique of the Growth Model, which has drawn attention to what I call the ‘great forgetting’ of the natural world and has prompted a ‘great reminding’ of our embeddedness in ‘nature’ and of dependence on ecological systems, part of what Christians and others call common goods. The paper then translates the main aspects of Christian understanding of environment and human flourishing into secular policy terms, focusing on policies for fair action on climate, pro-poor ‘Green development’ and low-carbon growth, environmentally sound economic policies, governance and safeguarding of biodiversity. 1. The state we’re in Ecological disruption and risks to development When we think about human flourishing, we often emphasise the social and economic elements of well-being love, companionship, meaningful work, an income that secures decent shelter, health, and so on. The nature of ‘developed’ life in urbanised industrial societies means that we can overlook, or even forget (as discussed further in section 3), the ultimate dependence of human well-being on the Earth, the biophysical environments from which we make our livings. The fact is that there can be an environment without society or economy; there can be no society or economy without a functioning web of ecosystems 1 Ian Christie is Associate, Green Alliance / Visiting professor, Centre for Environmental Strategy, University of Surrey providing the ‘life support’ we all need. A stable climate system; healthy and renewed soils; clean watercourses; undamaged common resources for fresh water, timber and game all these have been present, if often over-exploited locally, during the era of human civilisation and post-Ice Age development. The ultimate dependence of human wellbeing on terrestrial ecosystems ought to be obvious, but it has taken the shocks of ozone layer depletion in the 1980s and the diagnosis of human-induced climate change over the past 20 years to remind developed societies of the need to sustain our terrestrial life support systems. Climate change has come to dominate political debate on ‘the environment’, although it has yet to generate, as seen at the December 2009 Copenhagen conference, a sense of existential urgency among decision-makers, media and citizens. But climate change is not the only phenomenon presenting deep challenges to development and flourishing. The political focus on climate risks downplaying many other ecological problems. These concern our ability to produce enough food, use wisely our freshwater resources, sustain healthy soils, protect a rich variety of species and habitats, conserve forests and the services they provide, and manage common resources fairly as scarcities begin to bite. Climate disruption makes all this more difficult to achieve, and is likely to exacerbate many processes already in train, such as deforestation. This has profound social and economic consequences, especially for the poorest people in developing countries, whose livelihoods are often less shielded from localised environmental damage than those of urban dwellers, and whose wealth is dependent on the richness of natural resources. Ecological damage can worsen poverty, dislocation, conflict and ill-health, and put at risk achievement of major policies such as the Millennium Development Goals. There are multiple challenges to ecological stability, all stemming from the interaction of the rise in human population over two centuries and especially since 1950, with enormous growth in consumption in the industrialised countries and in the capacities of modern technology. This is summed up in the Ehrlich-Holdren ‘sustainability equation’ I=PAT, where impact I is the product of population, affluence (a measure of rate and scale of consumption) and technology. I can be modified by reductions in population, consumption or use of technologies, or in all of them. Impacts on climate and ecosystems reflect all these aspects of human development, and in particular the effect of massive increases in per capita consumption of resources (and consequent emissions of waste) in ‘developed’ countries in the past half-century. Impact over the past two centuries has become globalised along with trade, industrialisation and population growth. We have moved from a ‘frontier world’ in which resources appeared to be inexhaustible, to a ‘full world’ (Daly, 1992) in which scope for growth in population and consumption is highly constrained unless it is at the expense of potentially ruinous increases in ecological impact. Two international research initiatives indicate the scale of the problems. First, the United Nations International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has produced several large-scale assessments of literature on our collective impacts on the climate system. The IPCC reports show to a very high degree of confidence that human activities are the main element in the recent observed heating trend : if unchecked will very probably lead to average temperature rises by the end of this century that will cause serious disruption to ecosystems, economies, communities and security, with a large spike in the already high rate of species extinctions (see for example Houghton, 2009). Second, the Millennium Ecosystems Assessment process (MEA) initiated in 2001 has shown that 60% of ecosystems for which adequate data can be compiled are being degraded or exploited unsustainably (MEA, 2005). Ecosystems provide ‘services’ the lifesupport systems on which human welfare and that of other creatures ultimately depend and these are being damaged by the impacts of population growth, consumption and pollution and powerful technologies (over-fishing provides the most striking example of technological capabilities overwhelming the capacity for renewal). The MEA makes explicit the dependence of wellbeing on irreplaceable ecosystems whose integrity we are undermining. The environmental movements of the past half-century have been in the vanguard of those advancing a critique of modernity that rejects the equation of flourishing and progress with the dominant economic model, insisting that growth is not the same as development, and that development as we have known it is not producing the conditions for human flourishing (see Hawken, 2007). Some see growth as incompatible with sustainable well-being (see NEF, 2010) and some see it as an essential means to human ends (see Stern, 2009); all agree that however we regard growth, it cannot be treated as an end in itself, as has been the case for generations in the developed world. Here we can see important points of convergence with what I take to be a Christian critique of existing ‘development’ and a Christian account of human flourishing in relation to the environment, and hence points of consensus and actual and potential collaboration in policymaking and practice. Below I outline the main points of a Christian critique and account of flourishing, and indicate areas of convergence with secular critiques and proposals for new models of development. 2. Christian perspectives on human flourishing and the environment The papers from Nick Spencer, Celia Deane-Drummond and Severine Deneulin for this project all develop a fuller account of Christian views of human flourishing than I can offer here. I draw on their discussions and summarise the main features as follows. (See also Pope Benedict XVI and Koenig-Bricker, 2009 for a set of ‘ten commandments’ on the environment that elaborate on these themes.) First, human flourishing is at heart a matter of right relationship: with God, with fellow humans, and with other creatures. The Growth Model of development, like all utilitarian schemes, focuses on individuals and their consumption within a system of choices and consequences. It neglects the social and environmental relationships in which people are ‘always already’ embedded. In a Christian framework, we thrive relationally, not as atomised consumers and maximisers of utility. We need to develop in relation to God as ultimate source and destination; to others as members of a common body of mutually obligated and responsible persons, whose individual flourishing depends on the actions and values of others (love your neighbour as yourself); and to fellow creatures as sources of value embedded like us in a cosmic scheme that precedes us all, a Creation that belongs not to us but to God, and whose goodness is intrinsic and derived from God, rather than from our calculus of utility. In environmental terms, we are embedded in a web of ecological relationships essential to our well-being and life-chances. Moreover, this web extends indefinitely in time, and must be sustained over generations: the injunction love thy neighbour can be seen as part of a covenant that enjoins us to ensure that the conditions for human flourishing extend beyond our own place and time. Second, human flourishing depends on the quality of common goods. This follows from the recognition of well-being as a relational quality. There is a limit to individual well-being in a larger social and environmental setting in which others are failing to thrive and in which common goods are endangered. Where peace is at risk, my individual well-being might be defensible for a while, but I am unable to flourish indefinitely when others are suffering from the loss or decay of common goods. The sustaining of global and local public goods essential to human flourishing is, or ought to be, fundamental to development. Third, human flourishing is bound up with work and stewardship of the wor