Sustainability

The increasing number of human beings on the planet (from 3 billion in 1960 to more than 9 billion in 2050) creates a host of issues for us to confront. Growing numbers of people (with increasing density in East Africa, East Asia, Europe and South Asia) place increasing demands on the complex systems of human adaptation created over the last couple of centuries by the urban, industrial world in the West and its imitators/developers all over the globe. On the most fundamental level, there are the effects of population and the demand for modern lifestyles on global climate. There are also the concomitant effects on the provision and distribution of resources, especially those required for the provision of energy and transportation, the design and creation of shelter and the production and distribution of food. The destruction of the old city of Shanghai (below), the relocation of its mainly poor residents, and the replacement of these dwellings with high-end developments are just one set examples of the ethical issues involved. 

Issues of security and safety (creating socially sustainable spaces) and the need for effective conflict resolution and justice systems (enforcement, courts, prisons) in an increasingly crowded living space also arise. Managing the health consequences of these numbers, from effective waste disposal (sewage treatment, landfill use, recycling) to treatment of communicable diseases (HIV, malaria, influenza, etc.), is more and more complicated. Questions regarding cultural identity, merging, and transformation along side issues of privacy and individual choices are intensified and distorted by increasing population and the waves of migration (both rural-urban and international) that this creates.

Obviously, quantity affects quality in innumerable ways. In order to preserve and expand the availability of a quality of life to which we have become accustomed, fundamental questions need to be answered. How can we mobilize individuals and communities to seek low-cost, sustainable solutions to these issues? Should we take a short-term view focused on mitigating impacts or a long-term view on transforming the causes? Can charitable organizations and the desire to do good be sufficient? Or will we need to focus on adaptation to inevitable change and the demands for survival? How involved must entire social and economic systems and their members be in order to address these problems? Are there cultural, political and educational options available and how effective will they be?

The Junior Fellows in Transdisciplinarity at Woodbury University will begin to address these problems and issues by studying two seminal works on global ethics: Simon Dresner’s The Principles of Sustanability and Peter Singer’s One World: The Ethics of Globalization, both written in 2002. Following this review, as well as immersion into current international coverage of these issues, the junior fellows will invite local guest speakers and journey to local sites of interest to begin to develop an analysis and propose a response that will have global and local dimensions. A public presentation of their work will come in December.