What is the history of sustainability?

The link between economics and the environment is crucial, particularly in a globalizing world. Historically economics, dating back to Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations, has largely disregarded environmental issues.

True, Smith included "land" among his original economic factors, but mainly as a resource to be exploited. Later economists downgraded the importance of land and other environmental factors, assuming a virtually unlimited amount of natural goods to be harvested and used by humans.

The problematic exception is Thomas Malthus, who in 1798 published An Essay on the Principle of Population, warning that while population increased exponentially food production increased only incrementally. Population was thus bound to vastly overshoot subsistence, leading to mass poverty and starvation. This set the terms for an environmental limit to ever-expanding human needs.

Thomas Malthus, initiator of dismal population theories Source: http://www.blupete.com/Literature/ Biographies/Philosophy/Malthus.htm

In terms of today's wealthier societies, Malthus was quite wrong, as technological advances have allowed food production, along with numerous other goods and services, to advance at an even faster rate than population. Yet elsewhere, local environment has proved unable to meet daily needs. One question for future sustainability is whether resource use will be able to continually shift as needed, or whether all resources will eventually be exhausted. A related question is how heavy a price increasing pollution, including hazardous wastes and such threshold effects as global climate change, will exact. Economists refer to these costs, which are not paid by those who harvest or produce goods, as externalities.

Meanwhile, Malthus has proved right in numerous local circumstances, as various groups of people have exceeded the carrying capacity of their environments and paid the price. A favorite example of environmentalists and sustainability scientists is Easter Island, discovered in 1722 by Europeans who were amazed by the enormous stone statues that confronted them on an otherwise barren landscape. Speculation on the mystery of who put them there would last for centuries.

Easter Island: Stony faces from an unsustainable past Source: http://www.eco-action.org/dt/eisland.html

Today we believe we know the answer. Leaders of the Polynesian civilization that settled the island erected these statues as enormous symbols of their prestige. The drive for status overrode ecological considerations, leading them to denude the island, cutting down ever-more trees upon which to drag ever-larger boulders, in the quest to make ever-larger statues. That the island was isolated, with a fragile ecosystem, made it particularly prone to environmental collapse.

Although environmentalists use Easter Island as a symbol of what may happen to our own society, global ecosystems are, of course, far more complex and resilient, while our technology and our ability to communicate and change give us much greater ability to adapt. Yet, as Jared Diamond documents in his book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, other societies have overexploited their available ecosystems, precipitating disasters similar to that predicted by Malthus.

The Maya present one of the most dramatic cases; their civilization largely collapsed, probably during the ninth century AD, leaving vast ruins replete with abandoned temples and monuments. Diamond explains the collapse as "population growth outstripping available resources," along with deforestation, conflict, drought, and inaction by Mayan kings. The explanation goes beyond ecological determinism; despite difficult circumstances, Diamond believes that better decision-making by the Maya would have forestalled collapse.

Pyramid scheme: Environmental stress forced the Maya to abandon some cities (the Spanish Conquistadors finished the process) Source: http://www.mnsu.edu/emuseum/prehistory/latinamerica/meso/cultures/maya.html

Societies facing overpopulation and ecological stress have not always failed. Sometimes, Diamond explains, they have realized their situation and adapted environmental management strategies that allow long-term success. Japan is a prime example. In the 17th century the island nation faced a population explosion that threatened to overrun the resources available in its limited space. Deforestation was a particular threat. According to Diamond, a combination of forward-looking forestry practices and rather draconian population measures enabled Japan to avoid the Malthusian fate of the Maya, to move toward its dynamic role in recent world history.