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By Santi Serrat

The beginnings of sustainable development / Communication towards the Circular Economy (1)


By Santi Serrat

In order to implement the Circular Economy me must make a communication effort to raise awareness among the population of the seriousness of environmental damage and climate change. But we also have to provide objective and intelligible information to explain how an economy without waste and without energy expenditure is a source of development and well-being. A first step is to understand and disseminate what we mean by “sustainable development”.
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Since the climate and environmental crisis situation has become more evident, the public opinion has realized that we must urgently change the production models of goods and services. These are the cause of the current degradation of nature in which climate change, pollution and mismanagement of the territory define a situation that is more than worrying for the future of the planet, which will approach 9,000 million inhabitants in 2030.

Institutions and governments advocate evolving from the traditional economic growth model towards one that does not exhaust resources, does not emit greenhouse gases and does not pollute with waste. Getting this model to provide a decent life for an overpopulated planet is the greatest ethical and survival challenge humanity has ever had. The Circular Economy is presented as the only socioeconomic model capable of achieving this.


From economic growth to sustainable development

The idea of creating a production model that did not generate waste began to take shape after the first environmental alert that reached the media in the 1970s. Then, science began to warn that the atmosphere was altering: in addition to degrading the ozone layer, the accumulation of CO2 was causing a “greenhouse effect”, a somewhat diffuse concept that was not paid much attention at the time.

The oil crisis, which was basically due to political-economic reasons, emerged along with a sudden awareness of citizens of the significant air and water pollution caused by the enormous increase of industrial activity after Second World War. 
In that decade, the alternative presented to oil, nuclear energy, was vigorously contested by a wide sector of public opinion that was becoming aware that the “developed” world was not on its right track in its relationship with nature and that a change of model was necessary. 

In 1987, an international commission headed by Dr. Gro Harlem Brundtland, then Prime Minister of Norway, presented a report at the UN in which the term “sustainable development” appeared for the first time, which was defined as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the needs of future generations”. 

The Brundtland Report, as it was called, issued one of the first serious warnings about the concept of “environmental cost”, and also analyzed, criticized and proposed a rethinking of development policies, stating that socio-economic progress was taking place against the balance of nature.
In this way, in addition to a new meaning of the term sustainability, the report generated among economists a contrast between the concepts "economic growth", at that time universally used, with that of "economic development", which made a more direct reference to the social benefits of the economy, and left financial indicators in the background. 

In 1989, the British economists David W. Pearce and R. Kerry Turner, in “Economics of Natural Resources and the Environment”, noted that the industrialized world had developed an open economy without recycling, which had led to the use of the environment as a waste dump. The concept of sustainable development began to be applied to ideas aimed at stopping this “linear” economy in which production was based on the model of extracting -> making -> using -> throwing away; a chain that moved mainly by burning fossil fuels.


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The idea that natural resources, understood as “natural capital”, were inexhaustible was already questioned in the 1990s. However, the conviction that the loss of this natural capital could be compensated in economic terms by the capital produced by the obtained products still prevailed in economy. This model continued to maintain that sustainable growth was possible since natural capital was replaceable.


In 1991, the American economist Robert Costanza published “Ecological economics: The science and management of sustainability”, a book that exposes a new way of understanding sustainability, showing that once there is a loss of natural capital, it is irreplaceable in terms of sustainability. This idea can be considered as the first step in a paradigm shift that should lead the world from the traditional economy towards what began to be called Ecological Economics (now better known as Green Economics), a science that advocates a clear break between the economic activity and environmental degradation, and that leads to a statement that even today is difficult for us to assimilate: although economic development can be sustainable, sustainable growth is not possible, as it is limited by finite natural capital, either by depletion or degradation.


We have now realized that these ideas brought about a paradigm shift in the economy that even some political and opinion currents are reluctant to accept. In the 1990s, the industrialized world began an incipient turn towards a new production model:



  • Efficient in terms of the use of resources and energy, avoiding the loss of natural capital.

 

  • More humanized, being more focused on the real needs of the population and not on those created, and introducing the concept of planetary solidarity as an asset.


  • More participatory and transparent with a consumer who is aware and knowledgeable about the scientific-technological bases of the production model.


  • Able to face the enormous challenge of a demographic that grew in an unbalanced way, with enormous pockets of poverty.



It was not until the arrival of the climate and environmental crisis that public opinion, the majority of governments and the media have become aware that this paradigm shift is a fact.



To be continued…

We will continue talking about it.



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