EBOOKS

Sustainable Futures – Replacing Growth Imperative and Hierarchies with Sustainable Ways

By Ulvila Marko & Pasanen Jarna (eds.)

	FREE

OVERVIEW

The search for a balance between modern industrial development and the environment has been intense for more than four decades. However, the results are far from impressive: complex environmental problems, such as climate disruption, impoverishment of ecosystems and toxification, are threatening the future of humanity more than ever before. Therefore, there is a clear need for reassessing the cultural foundations of the present ways and looking for agendas for transformation.

The authors define culture in a broad sense as all the patterns of human behaviour that includes thought, expression, action, institution and artefacts. Sustainable culture is understood as one that incorporates environmental sustainability and human dignity for all.

By using the two criteria for sustainable culture, three cultural classes are outlined globally. The over-consuming class has human needs met but is exceeding environmental space and, therefore, not meeting sustainability criteria. Secondly, there is the struggling class that lives within environmental space, but suffers from malnutrition and other symptoms of powerlessness. In between the two, there is the sustainable class that meets basic human needs with ecological balance. Roughly, one-third of humanity belongs to each of these classes.

The future scenarios are degrowth for the over-consuming class, steady-state for the sustainable class and empowerment for the struggling class.

A country-wide assessment of sustainable cultures is presented by relying on three sets of data. The book also presents a thematic selection of interventions from eleven dialogues held by a research project under the title Cultures of Sustainability - Sustainability of Cultures: Africa-Asia-Europe Dialogue on the Future of Low Ecological Footprint Communities. The project was launched in May 2008 by Coalition for Environment and Development. There are also summaries of or excerpts from the articles commissioned by the project. They are grouped in four sections: analysis of sustainability, presentations of sustainable livelihoods, processes of destruction and pathways to sustainable futures.

The book is commissioned and funded by the Ministry for Foreign Affair of Finland within the framework of Finnish development co-operation.