by Nick Saltmarsh, SD Scene editor4 May 2011
In its final report before its closure on 31st March, the Sustainable Development Commission drew on its experience over the last decade to offer help to current and future governments successfully meet the challenge of mainstreaming sustainable development.
Governing for the Future: The opportunities for mainstreaming sustainable development is intended as a guide "to help Governments - current and future - with the challenge of mainstreaming sustainable development". Though primarily concerned with the experiences of government and the public sector, it also provides advice for practitioners and leaders in business and civil society, "whether their organisations are already some way along the sustainability journey or just starting out".
The guide summarises the lessons learned by the SDC in its work as the Government's independent adviser on sustainable development, explains the meaning and benefits of a sustainable development approach, and sets out the barriers, challenges and opportunities it has seen.
Recognising that "while successive UK Governments have made progress towards a more sustainable future, there is still much to do", the guide aims to help governments and others to respond systemically to the challenges we face.
In his foreword to the report, Will Day, the SDC's outgoing chair, sets the context of increasing environmental, social and resource pressures, before crystalising the question of how we should respond:
"For several decades, scientists, demographers and advisors around the world have been alerting their governments, and the wider public, to the emergence and implications of a set of interlocking global trends that will require prompt, large scale and profound decisions to be taken if their potentially devastating effects are to be averted or minimised. Over the years, the UK government has received advice and information of the highest quality from its various advisory bodies, alerting it to the consequences of increasing environmental degradation, biodiversity loss, natural resource depletion, rapid urbanisation, a warming climate, and so on. Sir John Beddington, the Government Chief Scientific Advisor, attracted considerable public and political attention by his description of the gathering strength of a 'Perfect Storm' of interlinked issues. Critically, the natural resource and environmental trends that scientists and NGOs have been measuring and increasingly agitating about are in many cases exacerbated by a set of social and demographic trends. These trends include the profoundly political issues of poverty and wellbeing, taxation and equity, infrastructure strain, population growth and the quality and quantity of our current consumption patterns and model of economic growth."The question, in the light of such consistent advice, and the daunting implications of doing nothing, is what can and should be done, and by whom; and critically, how can government operate to deliver this change?"
"For several decades, scientists, demographers and advisors around the world have been alerting their governments, and the wider public, to the emergence and implications of a set of interlocking global trends that will require prompt, large scale and profound decisions to be taken if their potentially devastating effects are to be averted or minimised. Over the years, the UK government has received advice and information of the highest quality from its various advisory bodies, alerting it to the consequences of increasing environmental degradation, biodiversity loss, natural resource depletion, rapid urbanisation, a warming climate, and so on. Sir John Beddington, the Government Chief Scientific Advisor, attracted considerable public and political attention by his description of the gathering strength of a 'Perfect Storm' of interlinked issues. Critically, the natural resource and environmental trends that scientists and NGOs have been measuring and increasingly agitating about are in many cases exacerbated by a set of social and demographic trends. These trends include the profoundly political issues of poverty and wellbeing, taxation and equity, infrastructure strain, population growth and the quality and quantity of our current consumption patterns and model of economic growth.
"The question, in the light of such consistent advice, and the daunting implications of doing nothing, is what can and should be done, and by whom; and critically, how can government operate to deliver this change?"
In his companion foreword, Andrew Lee, outgoing chief executive officer of the SDC, describes the increasing need for a systemic approach, as offered by sustainable development, to the challenges set out by Will Day,:
"[A] great deal of evidence shows that attempts to solve issues in isolation all too often result in perverse consequences elsewhere. For example, the interaction between decades of policies on food, out-of-town planning, and mobility/transport has had unforeseen consequences in terms of obesity, carbon emissions and loss of biodiversity. Sustainable development is about seeing this bigger picture. Its basic premise is that we need a different way of thinking about problems, one starting from the fact that we live in a finite, complex, interconnected world. Increasingly, we face new types of problems - "wicked issues" - which will require new types of response - flexible, adaptive, using systems thinking, seeing the whole picture not just a part of it. One of the watchwords will be creating "resilience"."Sustainable development is a hugely powerful toolkit for finding new solutions to old problems, an operating system which has the potential to sit behind everything that our government departments, companies, schools, hospitals, local authorities and grassroots organisations do, delivering better economic, social and environmental outcomes."
"[A] great deal of evidence shows that attempts to solve issues in isolation all too often result in perverse consequences elsewhere. For example, the interaction between decades of policies on food, out-of-town planning, and mobility/transport has had unforeseen consequences in terms of obesity, carbon emissions and loss of biodiversity. Sustainable development is about seeing this bigger picture. Its basic premise is that we need a different way of thinking about problems, one starting from the fact that we live in a finite, complex, interconnected world. Increasingly, we face new types of problems - "wicked issues" - which will require new types of response - flexible, adaptive, using systems thinking, seeing the whole picture not just a part of it. One of the watchwords will be creating "resilience".
"Sustainable development is a hugely powerful toolkit for finding new solutions to old problems, an operating system which has the potential to sit behind everything that our government departments, companies, schools, hospitals, local authorities and grassroots organisations do, delivering better economic, social and environmental outcomes."
The guide describes in detail the necessary components of a sustainable development approach in government and other organisations:
Examples of best practice are given for each of these areas, with a handful of more detailed case studies from business and the public sector. These areas are also mapped against the Coalition Government's vision for sustainable development.
The report concludes with a powerful reassertion of the global challenges we now face and the need to confront them through sustainable development:
"We can no longer simply think of existing from generation to generation, but must ensure that fairness and equality is passed through generations and that the world we leave is as good as, if not better than, the one we found. In other words, we must govern for the future."