Sustainable Societies

SOSE Assignment: Sustainable Societies.
By Alex Pallas

Introduction

Firstly what is a sustainable society? A Sustainable society is one, which over a period of time, can manage to have continued growth and prosperity whilst being able to preserve its resources so that it can survive into the indefinite future and not be in a state of collapse. In my opinion to achieve complete sustainability a society has to achieve a society that can achieve sustainability in four areas. These are Environmental (resource conservation, water management, waste management and absence of extreme weather), Societal (governance, cultural factors like whether the population are willing to adapt), Economy (good trading and strong currency) and International Relations/Military Power (weak/no enemies, strong allies and trade partners or strong military force). To go into all these factors in full detail would take me well over the word limit as all four of these factors are intertwined so I will just investigate briefly the four main areas and give examples of countries that managed to be quite sustainable in these areas and how they managed to do so, giving us an idea of how today’s societies could adapt to become sustainable and avoid collapse.

Environmental Sustainability

To gain Environmental Sustainability a society has to be able to fulfil the current requirements of humans without endangering the welfare of future generations. If a society does not do this it will inevitably run out of resources and therefore it will obviously collapse. To do this a society must put into action plans to manage waste, reduce greenhouse emissions to prevent climate change which is a major danger and if not prevented could cause many of today’s societies too collapse, protect its forests or reforest deforested areas to prevent erosion and damage to top soils and prevent salinity becoming major problem and find sources of renewable energy to replace fossil fuels which will eventually become depleted and leave us with a major crisis.

One example of a country that has implemented one of these plans is Sweden. Sweden saw the need to reduce landfill and convert waste into energy to help reduce greenhouse emissions and to be more environmentally friendly. They used several methods of reaching the targets they set. They made producers of products responsible for dealing with packaging, newspapers, cars, tyres and electronic waste. They also put taxes on landfill and adopted more demanding recovery and recycling targets. Now organic waste is dealt with separately which costs less, it is sent to a sewage plant where it is co-treated with sewage to create enough bio-gas to run 50 local buses. This number will increase to 200 by 2010. This reduces landfill pollution, air pollution and the carbon in organic waste comes from the atmosphere so its not contributing to climate change. This is a great example of Environmental Sustainability.

Another example of a plan to sustain the environment is Japan. Japan took part in heavy deforestation of its own rainforests 30 years ago. Presently 68.2% of Japan is forested. Japan managed to achieve this by implementing protection of rainforests in Japan and reforestation programs and making up for its lack of timber by mass importing from overseas. Japan imports more than 33% of internationally traded wood and are the largest importer of wood in the world. Though this solved its deforestation problem it has caused major problems in the countries it is importing it from such as Indonesia and Malaysia.

Societal/Cultural Sustainability

Cultural Sustainability has to do with whether the population are willing to adapt to change and whether the governance responds to the problem positively. If the public doesn’t adapt and the government doesn’t act it will result in a situation where the society is collapsing rapidly and everyone tries to carry on the way they are, leaving the problem to get worse until it leads to their collapse.

Again I would like to draw your attention to Japan and its forestation problem. This is also a great example of the countries ability to adapt. It was nearly on the brink of ecological collapse when it adapted and managed to reforest and now is one of the technological leaders of the world and has a large percent of forest cover. 300 years ago the problem began when the population increased and the need for timber, which was usually just logged locally with no thought to replenishment of timber sources, was increased. Their old method of locally deforesting and then moving on to another area worked with a small population but once the population increased it was not viable to continue this exploitative timber use. Soil erosion, floods, landsides and barren lands were becoming increasingly common and something had to be done to prevent ecological disaster. Then they decided to enforce a ‘positive tip’ which involved local community co-operation to restrict logging and to plant sugi and hinoki plantations. Previously villages had not co-operated on forest management but they adapted to their needs and brought themselves back from the brink of collapse.

The Mayan civilisation is a pretty good example of what not to do when faced with a problem. The Mayans were highly dependent on rainfall that filled up lakes which supplied 95% of their water that was used for drinking and agriculture for 18 months at a time. They also depended on seasonal crops due to overpopulation, which left them extremely vulnerable. The government however made no effort to conserve resources and kept being 100 percent on the seasonal crops. Then three droughts hit and the government decided instead of adapting and finding other sources of food to stick to their religious beliefs and sacrifice their leaders to the gods, leaving them leaderless and still short of food. This then left them weak and bickering between themselves and eventually led to their collapse.

Economy

A strong economy is essential to the prosperity of a society. It needs to be able to produce more gains than it invests, producing a surplus, which makes the society’s economy self-maintained. However some countries that have an insufficient amount of resources like timber or iron ore it is essential to have trade partners to allow for the society to grow through positive trading and to obtain the necessary amount of resources needed to create products necessary for everyday living. Although trade is a major part of economic growth other key factors are low unemployment rate, high availability of basic goods and services and low amounts of borrowing by the government.

Singapore has a highly developed and successful economy that has a strong a\ infrastructure. Although it is small and doesn’t have access to many raw materials it has a strong export in the electronics industry. It imports raw materials and refines them for re-export. This is their main form of income that fuels the economy and their strategic port makes them a better candidate then their rivals to carry out these activities. They also have had a very successful skilled worker education program, which has fuelled their growth through low unemployment rates.

Switzerland is another of the stronger economies in today’s society. It also relies heavily on its exports to provide it with money to purchase raw materials to expand their range of goods and services. A liberal amount of import-export laws cause a high cost of living and a very conservative fiscal policy. The Swiss legal system is highly developed and their standards of banking are regarded as some of the highest in the world. This makes the Swiss Franc one of the soundest currencies.

International Relations/Military Power to protect against invasion

International relations refers to the need to be secure from attack and have strong allies to defend from attack whilst maintaining strong trade partnerships to be able to develop and be sustainable for a long period of time. Any society that is vulnerable to attack from close neighbouring societies and has no allies to help defend them will be soon destroyed. Also a society without trade partners is very unlikely to be sustainable as it would need to be completely self-sufficient and would be vulnerable if there were to be a sudden change in climate that prevented vital crops growing.

Indigenous Australians are possibly one of the best examples of how without any enemies a society can prosper with great success with very little hassles. The aboriginal people didn’t have to worry about invaders for thousands and thousands of years and are one of the oldest civilisations known to man. This is most likely to be because without the need for putting up defences and using resources to protect them they could focus on living off the land and working on strong cultural and social bonds with the various tribes. Although some may say they weren’t a complex society they had very complex law systems and had very strict religious ceremonies. The only thing that stopped the indigenous peoples in succeeding is the English sailing half way around the world and taking the land for their own due to a belief that the aboriginals were not a complex people and therefore did not own the land.

Another good example of how military power and/or strong international ties can help a society to sustain itself is Bhutan. Though Bhutan itself is small and fairly defenceless its ties with its two neighbouring powerhouses, India and China, keep it safe. Had it not made these ties, especially with India, which is its very strong Allie, it would most likely have been invaded quite a while ago and therefore not have been sustainable. It has always worked hard to keep a strong relationship with India so that it is secure. Although there have been many disputes on the border between Bhutan and China they have signed a treaty which forces them to settle them peacefully. This keeps them relatively safe and although they do not have any official trade with China they are still peaceful relations between the two countries leaving Bhutan quite sustainable in this aspect.


Conclusion

Altogether there are so many other aspects that could influence the sustainability but I have just given an overview as to what the main 4 factors are and some examples of what specific things some societies have worked on to become sustainable in that one aspect. Our current day societies have the opportunity of looking back and seeing what went wrong and what has worked and if we take all these things on board and develop detailed plans which incorporate all the key factors that we can identify by studying previous societies we hopefully will be able to create a sustainable society for our children and grandchildren to carry on.


Bibliography

Economy of Singapore,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Singapore#Trade.2C_investment_and_aid
World Rainforest Movement,
http://www.wrm.org.uy/deforestation/Asia/Japan.html
Japan Embroiled In Timber Import Predicament
http://archives.cnn.com/2001/TECH/science/04/18/japan.timber/index.html
Indopedia - Economy of Switzerland, 5 Dec 2004
http://www.indopedia.org/Economy_of_Switzerland.html
Bhutan-China relations, 5 July 2004
http://www.bhutannewsonline.com/bhutan_china.html
Embassy of Sweden - Waste management, 25 April 2008
http://www.swedenabroad.com/Page____51405.aspx
Garbage can be seen as a resource in the wrong place, May 28 2007
http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/editorial/story.html?id=6876b9f3-569b-4be9-a479-b4d7079303ff&p=1
Silence - Collapse of the Classic Mayan Society, March 18 2008
http://thisiswhaticanseethroughmyeyes.blogspot.com/2008/03/my-report.html