Some might suggest that the title of this post involves a mistake: the decade is not ending yet. However, things like years, decades, centuries and milennia are nothing but conventions, and when the year 2000 was welcomed as the beginning of a new decade, a convention was established so powerfully that it cannot be considered unreal, or at least neglected.
So this is an opportunity to reflect on the changes the world has experienced since 2000 until now. The world has changed considerably, and so the world agenda. We have a different conception of our possibilities and challenges, of our strenghts and threats.
If we had to choose just a few aspects from which to approach the issue, it could probably be enough with the following: environmental sustainability, political organization and human development. What can we learn from what has happened during these 10 years (a bit more, a bit less), having these three facets in mind? By the way, why these three? I am not intending to answer these questions exhaustively, but at least I could offer a point of departure for reflection (I think that should be the mission of an opinion website, that at least). I hope I can develop my views more properly in the near future.
Environmental sustainability
During this decade, we have witnessed an impressing revival of interest in ecological issues. But the discussion is now more interesting and complex than it was in the previous decade. The big question is not anymore how to save the planet, but how to save ourselves from self-destruction caused by our impact on it. Current discussions suppose a great deal of technical complexity and the notion of climate change has become central.
Though there still are dissident voices, there is general agreement that the earth is warming, that human activity contributes to the process and that the change will surely put humanity on the verge of catastrophe. So the whole ecological debate revolves now around the problem of how to stop it or ease its impact. And it seems undoubtable that the answer has much, perhaps all, to do with a single variable: human consumption. Human consumption determines the impact of human activity on the earth.
But this is no simple fact at all. The thing is not just how much we consume (be it raw material, food, energy, whatever), but also how we consume. I think this is crucial to understand the problem and find a way to solve it.
We have to consider here a plainly obvious but largely disregarded fact: earth resources are limited. Then, if the amount of consumption tends to grow indefinitely over time, resources will go depleted. If the consumption process involves production of waste that is destined to never be used again, resources will exhaust. If both factors are combined, the situation obviously gets worse. Sooner or later, the result is the same. This cannot be denied without falling into absurdity. However, our whole way of consumption involves this double absurdity. We consume more and more as years pass, we produce wastes that are not reused.
This inevitably leads us to a question: how to consume in such a way that resources do not get exhausted? This is not an easy problem at all. It is not just about saving, or consuming less. We have to restructure the whole system on which human consumption is based today. And that implies a thourough revaluation of our economic systems and of our ways of production. Economy must be sensible to the essentially finite nature of resources, production must operate so that it doesn’t generate a single bit of waste that cannot be reused.
Political organization
The world is more densely connected than ever. Information, people, goods can move faster, and as a consequence, distances seem shorter. This is not new: it is the result of a long historical process. But some recent events have contributed to skyrocket it. Many of them have to do with the development of the internet and of media in general: what was a mere dream about ten years ago, namely, sharing any kind of information with people all around the world, has become a reality.
But our interconnectedness goes even further. It has transformed the world because it has increased the causal interdependency between countries and peoples. Now what happens in China affects several economies all around the world, the events of Africa become crucial por several industries and viceversa… and so on. Reality, as Buddhist sages have always remarked, is itself interdependent, that is not something new. But now we cannot ignore it because it has become quite evident, as the temporal distance between cause and effect in the political and economical level is much smaller than ever, and the network of causal links connecting us has reached the whole humankind. No single people or country in the world can consider itself isolated from the rest.
Given this background, we have to ask ourselves if the current political organization of the world is adequate to face the challenges deriving from our globality. As the world is densely interconnected, world problems become global, and so they demand global strategies. Governments have felt forced to act in cooperation to cope with -for instance- terrorism, environmental risks, economy, and we can even say that the same must be done concerning poverty. These issues have become global, they hardly respect borders. Therefore, the heart of the matter is how the political organization of the world has to change in order to fit the challenges it faces.
I am afraid it is not quite adequate as it is nowadays, despite all the efforts. First, the clear disparity of power between developed and developing countries is and will be a continous source of conflict, making real cooperation extremely difficult. Second, the consolidation of human rights is threatened by the arising of powers that show little or no regard for them (or not enough at least), such as African guerrillas financed by diamonds -and now coltan-, Islamic extremism, the Chinese government, some radical politicians in the US, etc, being then sources of more problems than solutions and tolerating (in some cases promoting!) injustice. Third, many countries are still fearful of sharing power or making decisions by consent; inevitably, in order to be fruitful, cooperation requires that each country gives up part of its autonomy and agree to submit to the control of the others. Fourth, not few corporations get in the way, defying even the constraints of governments for the sake of very particular economic interests, but causing severe damage to local as well as international initiatives intending to ease poverty or promote justice.
We will not find a way out of this tricky scenario while the problem of poverty reamins unsolved and the distribution of wealth keeps as unfair as it is today. But it also seems to demand the creation of international superpowers able to control any single government or group of governments, any single corporation or group of corporations. And that seems quite unlikely to happen. That leaves nations with only one alternative: to conform regional blocks of cooperation (cooperation as I have suggested it here) or strengthen the ones already existing, and exert rigorous control over the power of entrepreneurial organizations. Possibly the second cannot be done without doing the first.
A remarkable example of this sort of joint organization is the European Union. Despite all the criticism against it, it is the closest humanity has approached to the ideal of cooperation between nations under the rule of justice and equality. After World War II, European politicians grew more and more conscious that the continent would not be able to avoid the risk of being absorbed by one of the superpowers of the time (the USA and the USSR) if European countries did not unite. Latin American and African countries should show the same level of awareness and act analogously if they want to fight the negative influence of developed countries on their opportunities to grow, overcome poverty and gain genuine autonomy in the international scene.
Human development
There is currently an enormous obsession with economics. Though it is clearly right to recognize its importance and its influence in our lives, it is not the key to all the answers. It is absurd to believe that all problems of human life are ultimately economical in character. Even if some degree of wealth is really necessary to lead a happy life, it is certainly not enough. Certain forms of gaining wealth create much more stress and dissatisfaction than they actually eradicate. Happiness seems to be more related with the way resources are used than with simply having them. Human development certainly requires material conditions, but being necessary, it is not at all sufficient. So what else do we need?
Interestingly, in this decade Bhutan -a small country in the middle of the Himalayas- became the setting of a curious experiment. Its former king, Jigme Singye Wangchuck, arrived to the conclusion that GNP (Gross National Product) was not good enough as an indicator of welfare, so he decided to adopt a new one: Gross National Happiness (GNH).
Though the sheer idea of measuring happiness, as I consider the matter, should arouse a prudent scepticism about its very possibility, this decision is a step in the right direction. First, possession of wealth is justifiable on the ground of contributing to happiness, not the contrary. Second, as I mentioned above, wealth is not enough for happiness, even if it is proved to be necessary. So, why not stop obsessively focusing on sheer economic growth (as if it was an end in itself, which is not), and start centering our attention on happiness as such?
Going further in this direction, it seems urgent to reconsider the value of education as it is imparted today. The curriculum applied worldwide was modeled over the interests of science. A question then forcefully appeals to us: are we really teaching what kids and teenagers will need to lead a developed life? I mean: is education good enough for them to develop their particular potential, build a satisfactory life and understand the world they live in? It is simply doubtful that a curriculum made for the service of mere science can fit these requirements.
Being a citizen of Colombia, I have witnessed how interest in research on education has incredibly grown this decade here. And it seems not the only country having that concern. I can also mention the example of Brazil. It is hard for me not to wonder whether all that enthusiasm might lead to the reforms needed.
Etiquetas: world-issues
