C.1. Do our policymakers consider sustainable Development?

1.1a Are We Improving Governance by Trial and Error?

The evolution of better management of human societies has been, and still is, a very long rocky road, and it will go on being rocky. Humanity is now facing the challenge of wider-scaled instabilities in the financial, political, environmental, and social sectors that are inhibiting any further evolution towards global peace and sustainability. With the second and third industrial revolutions (electric power, computerization, and t Internet) and with global population growth, our societies are increasingly interdependent even as they remain profoundly unequal, notably in the division between Developed and Lesser Developed nations. The result is social turmoil in the form of interethnic and inter-communal conflicts, riots and uprisings, armed religious-zealot groups, violent repression, terrorism, civil and resource wars, global waves of refugees, and even genocides. Thus, we are witnessing simultaneously both a growing codependence and a friction on a global scale that requires a greater force and direction for global political cooperation, Yet such cooperation is outside our historical experience and is also still beyond our ability to implement even through the United Nations.

In sum, our increasing consumption and population have outstripped our ability to sustainably manage the human system. In every country, but especially in the global north, we must change our overarching goal, from that of protecting national sovereignty and increasing ‘economic growth”, which almost always depends on the exploitation and extraction of resources of poorer nations by the richer nations, to that of a cooperative goal of shared resources and conservation of the human habitat and the ecosystems that support us. The basis for this transition requires a clear understanding that global social management inevitably has only two potential end-points:

 1) Oligarchic governments dominated by the 0.01% of the wealthiest and by large corporations that are negligent environmentally and unjust socially, increasingly unstable, and dependent on state violence and environmental looting to remain in power, thereby accelerating the human species on the path to extinction; or

 2) Federations of sustainable democratic states that facilitate the maintenance of symbiotic global networks; that balances interregional resource needs and conflicts; that ensures that each state balances it’s social and individual needs through internal self-regulation; that each state ensures justice and social equality, allows cultural diversity, and protects human rights; and that each state preserves the function and production of their natural ecosystems (cf. Ch. 4).

Our current situation could be described as a struggling, complex mix of these two tendencies. One the one hand, most states that have not failed (as an increasing number are doing because of military interventions aimed at “regime change”) are tending through the application of neoliberal economic policies toward increasing inequality, economic exploitation, racial or ethnic dominance, internal and external militarization, and environmental degradation. On the other hand, there are growing social movements—local, regional, national—and global networks pushing for sustainability through multi-pronged efforts to enlarge or restore democracy, protect human rights, conserve natural resources, address climate change and environmental destruction, to form larger collective organizations and cooperative international agreements that will struggle for better and more equitable education and health services.

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