Transitioning towards a sustainable and resilient society is an existential challenge. Fundamental thinking, value, attitude and behavioral changes are necessary for human survival.
Unsustainability is connected to the failure of a global development paradigm. The failed paradigm is a social construction, a product of the human mind. This means that the model can be replaced.
Fundamentally all future challenges have social and environmental backgrounds. Our challenge is a shift towards a holistic orientation which integrates social and ecological concerns. I call this new paradigm an “Ecosocial Wellbeing Paradigm (EWP)”.
Western welfare states are based on a long history of the thinking tradition, where the development of human societies is seen as independent from ecological constraints. However, the earth is a system of interdependence. A more holistic and multi–disciplinary systems thinking is needed to analyze and manage the causal complexity of the systems in which we live.
No nation can achieve sustainability on its own. Our behavior and daily choices have impact on other people, nature and economy on local and global levels. The resilience of social systems is related in to the resilience of the ecological systems on which social systems depend. Without the well–functioning biosphere there can be no society and without a society there can be no societal functions, including an economy. The executive Office of the President of the United States points out that ”because CO2 accumulates in the atmosphere, delaying action increases CO2 concentrations. Thus, if a policy delay leads to higher ultimate CO2 concentrations, that delay produces persistent economic damages that arise from higher temperatures and higher CO2 concentrations. Alternatively, if a delayed policy still aims to hit a given climate target, such as limiting CO2 concentration to given level, then that delay means that the policy, when implemented, must be more stringent and thus more costly in subsequent years. In either case, delay is costly.” (*
Human wellbeing is only loosely coupled with resource consumption. We have to focus on our real needs instead of desires. We also have to expand our ethics. On the finite planet that is the question of what is enough and what is good for us. Strictly speaking, strategies to increase resource productivity are a policy of peace, and – according to systems thinking – burning of fossils fuels is a crime against humanity.
The EWP holds promise not only for solving social and ecological problems, but also for helping people to be happier and healthier. It emphasizes human relationships and the meaningfulness of people´s unique lives, including trust, community resilience and participation in the life of society as well as establishment, and flourishing of civil rights and personal expression.
*) Executive Office of the President of the United States (2014). The cost of delaying action to stem climate change. Available at http://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/docs/the_cost_of_delaying_action_to_stem_climate_change.pdf