So where is the global authority for sustainability?
This question has puzzled me for some time without raising any answers that I like the sound of. As a consumer, producer, manufacturer or one who is simply politically motivated by this agenda, it would seem to be impossible to gain a comprehensive answer to this question. There should in fact be a body dedicated to understanding the embodied sustainability of an item from inception through use and to destruction, or hopefully reuse.
The sustainability agenda is so riddled with partisan interests that no clarity is possible. For those who have realised that a continuation of consumption and emission continued in our current vein will lead to an increase in uninhabitable areas of this planet for human habitation which will have disastrous effects on every aspect of our lives; there is a cohesive analysis of the problem missing. Without this identification of the problem the quest for a solution can not seriously begin.
Everything must be scrutinised. From the carbon intensive delivery of goods and services to the demand that we create for them.
Again it is about taking responsibility for our actions. Global carbon trading has been the only response on a global level and has achieved little more than proving to be a catalyst to corruption. As it is predicated on trading in the current market it is open the same exploitation and pitfalls as every other ‘option’ traded in this field.
We have an abundance of global organisations to deal with disasters natural or man-made. From The UN, the International rescue committee, Save the children, Oxfam, Médecins Sans Frontières, Merlin, Care, Plan international… and the list goes on.
Where are such organisations for the sustainability agenda? There is a man-made series of actions that we are embarking upon which will create natural disasters, with yet not global body to respond to this imminent disaster.
This article was written in 2011 and as such is written in the context of the social and political conditions of the time
