Sustainable Development or Sustainable Systems

The risk of human extinction posed by the Anthropocene is a consequence of the predatory features of neoliberal capitalism, characterized by the constant production of goods irrespective of the real needs of society, just for the sake of the accumulation of capital, a fact that provokes consumerism and the squandering of produce, food and all kinds of agricultural and industrial outputs. Thus, the current mode of production must be changed if we don’t want to run the risk of extinction. Nevertheless, a world revolution of the type that Communists attempted during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries does not seem to be a viable way out of this crisis. The type of Great Transition (Raskin 2002) proposed by the Global Scenario Group could be a solution, but such a transformation requires time, the scarcity of which is not exactly any help, unless the 2020/21 pandemic triggers all nations to support the international cooperation needed to transform capitalism at world level, a scenario that does not loom large on the horizon. Therefore, a reform of the capitalist system to carry out as a minimum the SDGs of the UN 2030 Agenda is necessary and unavoidable if sustainable development is to be implemented. The latter has been the best alternative for restructuring capitalism since the end of the 1980s, but unfortunately the predominance of the neoliberal paradigm has obstructed the reformist agenda. In the following pages I will outline the historical difficulties and problems of sustainable development since its origins, with the aim of demonstrating that the contradictions that exist between a circular economy and a linear one are real and deserve attention and study. To achieve that goal, I will review the proposals made at the end of the twentieth century concerning human and sustainable development, the UN proposals of Agenda 2030, and certain normative intentions to change the model – such as the cultural and community development intentions expressed by the constitutions of Ecuador and Bolivia – and compare all these cases with historical examples of failed and collapsed societies of the past and with successful experiments of sustainable systems described by well-known researchers like the US social scientist Jared Diamond. In short, it is possible to say that sustainability refers to the conservation of Earth ecosystems, given its cyclical nature, and concerns the maintenance of balance in the survival of any species, hence it has a close relationship with biodiversity in the field of natural sciences. However, it also relates to social and environmental sciences, since this field of knowledge seeks to sustain human actions over time without exhausting resources or harming the environment, which implies the ability of a society to make responsible use of such resources without exceeding the carrying capacity of the planet or putting them at risk for future generations. Sustainability refers to the ability to remain, to durability, resilience and endurance, and to last over time, whereas sustainable development is the process by which the balance between the socio-political, ecological and economic factors essential to guide individual actions and public policies is achieved in order to satisfy human needs.