The End of Sustainability
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The time has come for us to collectively reexamine—and ultimately move past—the concept of sustainability in environmental and natural resources law and management. The continued invocation of sustainability in policy discussions ignores the emerging reality of the Anthropocene, which is creating a world characterized by extreme complexity, radical uncertainty, and unprecedented change. From a legal and policy perspective, we must face the impossibility of even defining—let alone pursuing—a goal of “sustainability” in such a world. Melinda Harm Benson and Robin Kundis Craig propose resilience as a more realistic and workable communitarian approach to environmental governance. American environmental and natural resources laws date to the early 1970s, when the steady-state “Balance of Nature” model was in vogue—a model that ecologists have long since rejected, even before adding the complication of climate change. In the Anthropocene, a new era in which humans are the key agent of change on the planet, these laws (and American culture more generally) need to embrace new narratives of complex ecosystems and humans’ role as part of them—narratives exemplified by cultural tricksters and resilience theory. Updating Aldo Leopold’s vision of nature and humanity as a single community for the Anthropocene, Benson and Craig argue that the narrative of resilience integrates humans back into the complex social and ecological system known as Earth. As such, it empowers humans to act for a better future through law and policy despite the very real challenges of climate change.
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Sometimes the best way to read a book is curled up next to a warm fire; and when the fire in question is forty-five thousand acres in size and just a few scary miles away from your home, well, that just lends a certain je ne sais quoi to the whole experience, dontcha think?
The premise is simple, well understood by anyone who's been paying attention: we can no longer strive for sustainability in any ecological sense. Our best—only—hope is to recognize that ASAP; change our way of thinking; change our legal frameworks for governance of forests, aquifers, fisheries; and work together in harmony despite enormous and delicate uncertainties. The book was written in 2017, and since then we've learned how well Americans unite to forge through in times of crisis. (Forgive me please. I'm wearing my National Sarcasm Society t-shirt today. It might be influencing me unduly.)
What I really liked: the use of Trickster—Coyote, Raven, Pan, Loki—as a model for what's coming. Trickster, a common figure in most (but, interestingly, not all) folklores, tends to be viewed as amoral: neither good nor evil, simply unknowable. I completely agree that if our societies can adopt that metaphor, it would help us tremendously in coping with the consequences of climate change. I also liked the case histories and legal backgrounds summarized in Chapter Six, ones that show surprising (to me) and hopeful (yes really) precedent and trends in court rulings.
This is not a book for most people: it's scholarly. Dry. Dense. I see it as a must for policymakers and climate activists; or at least something for their staff to read and summarize. I'm glad to have read it, and would be glad to lend or give you my copy if you want to.