Why is there unsustainable development?
What makes development unsustainable?
How is it possible to achieve sustainable development?
The pre-conference event of the Development Days 2019 conference focused on the possibility of sustainable development and the means necessary to achieve it. Unsustainable development can be argued to be built into our current world system – market-oriented capitalism is based on unsustainable means of production – and therefore sustainable development may be possible to achieve only through a vast change in the current world economic system. All the problems on the way of creating truly sustainable development are interconnected, which brings along the issue of recognizing particular issues yet along finding solutions to them. Or would it be possible to solve all these interconnected issues simultaneously in one process of change?
According to the keynote speaker of the Development Days conference 2019, Ashish Kothari, one of the founders of Kalpavriksh, an environmental NGO in India, for this process of change to be enabled, a shift in the social structure and therefore a shift in the values and world views of people is necessary. Kothari has based his work on enabling sustainable development mainly in India and describes the basis of unsustainable development to arise from corporatism. He is a strong believer in the power of local communities – even individuals – in bringing change to the larger social structure of societies. Kothari suggests that it is not necessary to destroy to develop, but rather a systemic change can be achieved through education.
Kothari believes in radical democracy – to achieve truly sustainable development can often seem impossible without radical measures. Dreams and hopes for the future are the fuel in this process of unifying ideologically close groups globally and finding solutions in a multidisciplinary manner. Although communication between local resistance movements is essential, the plurality of these groups is a core value – the change should not come from a single ideology, but rather to arise in different ways in different contexts. However, this pluralistic and decentralising ideology brings along the concern of global harmony – as we do not yet have, and are quite unlikely to have in the near future, a truly equal tool for a truly equal global governance. Would decentralisation bring along the waves of positive disturbances to our world system but also negative, even violent disruption which could also be negative for the goal?