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SD-scene: Issue 19; June / July 2009
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A crisis of sustainability
On the 14th of May Environment Secretary Hilary Benn spoke at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington on the topic of ‘Sustainable Economy’. He described the urgent threat that faces humanity - a crisis of sustainability - and issued a call to arms for the world to confront the crisis. Here we have included an abridged version of his speech.
He said:
“It is a great pleasure to be back here at this centre which honours the memory of Woodrow Wilson, the 28th President of the United States.
He was, of course, known the world over for his commitment to peace and to justice; great causes for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize. And it is about the great threat to peace and justice in our age that I wish to talk principally today.
We are today faced with a crisis of sustainability.
The spiralling price of food in 2008 was a wake-up call. Riots threatened political stability. Export bans threatened world trade. Wheat prices doubled, rice quadrupled. And another 75 million people were threatened by poverty and hunger - in a world in which one billion people are overweight and another billion go to bed hungry every single night.
And although prices may have fallen back today, the problem has not gone away. Demand is growing and global food production will need to double by the middle of the century to meet it. And that means there will be more pressure on land and more pressure on water – the two things we need to grow food.
We are already seeing a new Klondike scramble for land as potentially food poor, but income rich countries rush to secure fertile farmland in Africa and across the developing world. In the past, increased agricultural yields have fed the world and eased the pressure on land. While we need a new agricultural revolution, we also know that the intensive production of the last one did not come without a cost. So, this time, the increase in global production must be achieved in a way that is environmentally sustainable.
The expansion of biofuels to the detriment of food production and vulnerable ecosystems is an example of where we can get the balance wrong.
But it’s not just land that we need to produce food, it’s water too – and we need to start recognising just how valuable and precious this stuff is. A third of the world’s population is today living in places where water is scarce. By 2025 it will be two thirds.
Across the world, people are now recognising just how precious our resources are. Steven Chu, your new Energy Secretary, has issued a stark warning that California – which currently provides about half of America’s vegetables – could become an agriculture-free state by the end of the century because there simply won’t be enough water available.
The Secretary-General of the United Nations, Ban Ki-moon, sees an even greater risk. At the 2008 World Economic Forum he said: ‘The challenge of securing safe and plentiful water for all is one of the most daunting challenges faced by the world today. Too often where we need water, we find guns instead.’
The terrible conflict in Darfur, for example, has been made worse by extended droughts as pastoral farmers clash in their search for food. And what will we do when human beings start to fight each other, not about politics, or religion or land, but about water?
The truth is, these threats are real, they are immediate, and they will affect us all. So in the year of Copenhagen, the most important gathering in human history – in my view, an agreement on cutting emissions would be the biggest single step we could take to safeguard these resources. And the most difficult task we face is to reconcile reducing emissions with reducing poverty – in other words the need for more development.
Many developing countries are already faced with the stark reality of environmental degradation. Take Haiti. Massive deforestation has left the country vulnerable to devastating floods. Its watercourses are polluted and laden with sediment. Almost 90% of children are chronically infected with intestinal parasites from the dirty water they have no choice but to drink. As Franklin D Roosevelt once remarked: ‘a nation that destroys its soil destroys itself.’
The Millennium Assessment showed us that 60% of our ecosystems are now being degraded or used unsustainably. And so, two years ago, at a meeting of the G8+5 in Potsdam, an initiative was taken to try and transform the debate about natural resources, just as Nick Stern has done on climate change with his ground-breaking report. And the Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity project, led by Pavan Sukhdev, is now taking forward some remarkable work.
We all value the natural environment for its beauty – it is part of who we are; it nourishes our souls. But this project seeks to define the economic value of what nature provides – from food and fibres, to fertile soils and carbon storage – much of which our markets take for granted.
There is a different way of seeing nature; people are already paying for the services it can provide. In Brazil communities in forested areas are being paid for their ‘eco-services’ in helping to preserve the trees. In China, they are paying farmers to change their crops in order to improve the soil. And closer to home – my home – in the European Union, we already make payments to farmers for what we call environmental stewardship – ensuring that they farm in an environmentally sensitive manner and recognising the public benefits they provide.
There is of course another cause of resource scarcity, and that is increasing demand. By 2050 there will likely be over 9 billion of us living on this small and fragile planet. So, of course, it prompts the question: can we provide the resources – the food, the water, the energy – to sustain the equivalent of another two Chinas?
It may seem strange in the midst of a global recession, but prosperity is rising in parts of the developing world and this new middle class is a willing consumer. There is seemingly a contradiction here. Development is the best way of lowering the rate of population growth and so, in turn, lowering the pressure on resources. But development also increases income, and therefore demand.
The way out is to create a green economy, for developing and developed nations alike, that is truly sustainable and equips us for the long-term problems we face.
South Korea has led the way with its green plan. Here in the US, the fiscal stimulus passed by Congress is going to provide a huge boost for renewable energy. And in the UK we have provided an additional $2.3 billion for the low carbon sector. We are investing in waste into energy through anaerobic digestion. We are building new flood defences to protect communities. And, in March, I had the rare opportunity to create a new national park – sixty years after the legislation was passed by the UK Parliament to create the first national park.
But this is just the start. Our goal must be to make every building energy efficient, all our transport sustainable, all our energy clean or renewable, and all our agriculture sustainable and productive.
To do this, we have to change incentives in our economies; for how else will we make investment change course so we can meet demand with fewer resources? .We must seize the opportunities – and create the jobs - that this new era will open up.
The world needs to come together to deal with water scarcity, the damaging loss of biodiversity, and the challenge of producing enough food.
We need America to apply all of its great energy to the task we, together, face. And we need you to lead.
The politics of climate change and environmental degradation may not be new, but the world today is smaller than it has ever been. We are more interconnected than ever before. The problems of finance, health and the environment in one nation are the concern of all nations. And we need to bring new leadership to bear if we are to build our sustainable world.
As we confront the great questions of our time, we would do well to remember what Darwin’s painstaking research taught him – and us. He wrote:
‘It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent. Rather, it is the one that is most adaptable to change.’
Well, change is coming. We must adapt. It is the challenge to which our generation must rise. And the time to start doing so is now. Thank you.”
Further information
- Transcript of Hilary Benn’s speech at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington - Confronting resource scarcity and the crisis of sustainability, 14 May 2009
Updated: 30 June 2009