Approaching Sustainability
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Sustainability has as it’s goal to create a society that lives in harmony with the environment. To this point the dialog has mainly been focused on infrastructure, reducing carbon outputs, recycling waste into new resource streams, and increasing efficiency. Basically the approach has been to substitute inputs. But we need to also ask what kind of system are we trying to sustain? How did we get here in the first place? This approach to the goal of sustainability, from the gross to the subtle, from the outside to the inside, is good and we certainly need to tackle the imperatives of sustainability from all angles but it is not enough. It only places minimal emphasis on what I feel is the underlying cause of our current environmental situation: the loss of the everyday experience of interconnectedness with nature. As we reinvent the way we do things we should also strive to cultivate a genuine experience of connecting with our environment. Through that experience we will be better able to fulfill our role as stewards of a sustainable global family from the outside in and perhaps more importantly, from the inside out.
Here’s something to think about. What role does culture play on the path to sustainability?
Comments
the Mali people have a lot to teach us in this sense, they are still very connected to the environment in which they live, they have a connection to the energy of the earth, the universe, that is being lost elsewhere.
We can bring technological solutions to them, but as most visitors come to find out after a few days on Vorovoro, it is the Mali people who are doing most of the teaching, just by their “apparently” simple way of existence.
Why can they still do such effective healing with massage, with herbs and things that we don’t understand? Wh can they “do without” and still be so happy? There are reasons. The earth connection has been handed down through their culture, and not destroyed from the race of progress (although progress may need defining here). It is very possible that we need to look at their culture as actually being sustainable, if not exactly from our point of view. The river can flow both ways and we call all benefit.
Your cultural herritage and background will influence greatly your opinion of what sustainability is and how it can be achieved. The more of a rural culture that you come from, the more you are likely to understand the reality of and practical side of creating sustainability.
benj, really looking forward to having you over here.
culture in my belief is the key to vorovoro. while we might have lots of ideas about how to do things, it is the people of mali who have been evolving with the land since forever. While they might not have the technology they have a connection with their land that i have never seen anywhere else. They, in my mind, hold the key to the true sucess of this project.
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