Lindsay Falvey
2004
Sustainability of the environment implies both wishful thinking and ignorance – ignorance of the reality that natural systems are complex and unfathomable by scientists, and that repetition of research outputs depend on repetition of initial and all subsequent conditions. Scientific insights provide knowledge, but it is partial in most cases, and when applied is often subject to conflicting objectives, which in turn produce conditions that affect outcomes - thus our best efforts to predict natural outcomes are usually flawed. We further display our ignorance in seeking social sustainability while we behave inequitably towards groups other than ‘us’ and invoke spurious reasoning to justify further research. The effect of ignorant self-interest is played out daily in our largest intervention in the natural environment – agriculture, which is why agriculture provides perhaps the best model for consideration of the ideal of sustainability. From ancient Asian wisdom through modern global forces and technology to the central environmental issue of food production, we have identified some necessary conditions for sustainability. Yet, our approaches to care of the natural environment seem to be based on erroneous assumptions. We seem to assume the need to compete for resources even if they are not limiting, the necessity and virtuousness of maintaining our current lifestyles, and the inevitability of our Western technological approach as a precursor to a global utopia of sustainable environmental management. While each of these assumptions may be easily challenged, the possibility that they may contain some truth is sufficient reason to consider the conclusions of the penultimate Chapter 9 in the light of everyday practices. In that way, we may posit a conclusion that sustainability is an elusive goal understood by an insightful few while to the majority it remains an illusion - unless our science becomes more insightful.
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