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Shifts in multilateral frameworks are needed for a civilisational approach to the conservation of biological diversity, rather than a complete reliance on the market.
The shift from accepting environmental damage and its implications for the sake of improving living standards to seeking comparable living within ecological limits creates a very different conceptual framework for understanding conservation and sustainable use of biological diversity.
Discussions are needed to specify what societal values and priorities can be set and clarify if market pricing mechanisms should play the lead role in determining what is to be valued, produced, and consumed.
Loss of land, water, and biodiversity as well as the negative impacts of climate change represent huge costs to society that are yet to be calculated.
The Natural Resources Defense Council analysed hard data from three major US cities – Denver, New York, and Nashville – to shine light on the issue of food waste.
Apples, bread, oranges, and potatoes topped the list of wasted food, alongside discarded dairy products; 44 percent of participants said they frequently discarded uneaten food, 20 percent reported moldy or spoiled food, and 11 percent indicated they ended up tossing out leftovers.
Asian civilisations perform much better.
China launched a comprehensive "Clean Your Plate" campaign in recent years to reduce food waste when eating out. Restaurants and dining halls display anti-food waste posters and banners, and the media has aired content promoting frugality.
Local governments have introduced a series of measures to curb food waste alongside efforts to promote waste sorting. In India, each person eats only five kilograms of meat a year on an average, while a person in the European Union consumes more than 60 kilograms. Even with highly productive European agricultural methods, it takes an estimated 3.2 square feet of farmland to produce 2.2 pounds of vegetables, but 78.5 square feet for chicken, 95.8 square feet for pork, and 225 square feet for beef.
Different civilisational values make middle-class consumption in developing countries far less wasteful during the first phase of urbanisation than it has been elsewhere.
Five shifts in multilateral frameworks are needed for a civilisational – rather than purely market-based – approach to biodiversity conservation.
First, sustainability is about usage and distribution, not scarcity, of natural resources. Degradation of natural resources is a symptom, not a cause, of the biodiversity problem.
Second, international trade and disconnection between areas of biological diversity and areas of product consumption that cause biodiversity loss make it difficult to understand, monitor, and prevent ecosystem loss.
Fourth, the societal transformation that led Western civilisation to venture away from European socioeconomic conditions to scour the world for raw materials and energy sources defined progress as material abundance. This worldview is obviously not applicable to developing countries which have prospered while living within ecological limits.
Fifth, the new urban dwellers caused by urbanisation increase material usage, which is far higher than that of manufacturing and rural populations. The urban middle class is both the cause and solution to the global problem of living within ecological limits.
(The author is an Indian expert on climate change and sustainability who once served as a policy advisor to the Executive Director of the United Nations Environment Programme and the Executive Secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.)
(The content is provided by Beijing-based China-India Dialogue.)
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