Conflict, Relapse and Failure in the Sustainability Process: Neglected Problems
In the sustainability process, conflicts, failures and crises are neglected, reinforcing the methodological and practical difficulties of sustainable development. In large parts of the economic and political sustainability discourses technological solutio
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Conflict, Relapse and Failure in the Sustainability Process: Neglected Problems
This chapter discusses neglected problems and obstacles in the sustainability discourse and process: conflicts, setbacks, failures, crises, unexpected disturbances and catastrophes. These difficulties met in sustainability governance and collective action result from manifold social and environmental problems that need to be solved: social inequalities, social exclusion, poverty and hunger, overuse of the natural resource base, climate change, biodiversity loss, land use change, human modification of ecosystems, and so forth. Integrating global governance processes across cultural and political boundaries implies mitigating many environmental and resource use conflicts (violent and non-violent), failures and delays in the policy and governance processes, the slow change towards environment-friendly ways of life and the risks of a global economic and societal collapse, as discussed in the “limits to growth” discourse. Most of these problems are not caused by failures in the sustainability process but through other national and international economic and political processes (unequal development, economic globalisation, competition, global exchange and trade, national and international policies), where they could not be solved and now wait for sustainable development as the last way out. The unfavourable conditions under which the sustainability transformation began will continue to appear in these postponed and often unsolvable problems and conflicts. Figure 7.1 shows in simplified form how these problems and obstacles interact and reinforce each other in sustainable development as a process overloaded with conflicts.
© The Author(s) 2020 K. Bruckmeier, Economics and Sustainability, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56627-2_7
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294 7 Conflict, Relapse and Failure in the Sustainability Process: Neglected Problems Unsolved problems: Unequal development, hunger and malnutition, Exponential growth of resource use
Conflicts: Natural resources (access, use), property rights, overuse of resources, degradagion of ecosystems
Sustainable development: threats Obstacles :
Willingness to act, lack of knowledge and capacity, asymmetric power rela tions
Relapse and Failure: Policy failure, (implementaion of environmental regimes and policies) market failure
Disturbance Systemic risks, social and environmental catastrophes, resilience and ecological collapse
Fig. 7.1 Problems, obstacles and conflicts in sustainable development
From the analyses in the preceding chapters the unfavourable conditions of the sustainability transformation can be summarised as follows: 1. incompatibility of continued (exponential) economic growth and sustainable use of natural resources that appears in the contrasting processes of economic globalisation and sustainable development; 2. continuing inequality between the Global North and South through the economic and social divides in the modern world system, reinforced by increasing inequality within all countri
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