{"id":2164,"date":"2013-02-18T08:53:26","date_gmt":"2013-02-18T13:53:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.synapse9.com\/signals\/?p=2164"},"modified":"2014-12-09T11:42:06","modified_gmt":"2014-12-09T16:42:06","slug":"post-2015-un-strategy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals\/post-2015-un-strategy\/","title":{"rendered":"Post 2015 UN Sustainable Development Strategy"},"content":{"rendered":"
Responding to questions for <\/em>UN Post2015 Sustainability Consultation with NGO’s <\/em>
\nWeek 2: Development Challenges in a Changing World (11 Feb- 17 Feb)<\/a><\/span>
\non the UN\u00a0http:\/\/www.worldwewant2015.org<\/a> website\u00a0<\/em><\/em> <\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\"\"<\/div>\n
_____________<\/em><\/div>\n

\n<\/em><\/div>\n
\n
1. Which global trends and uncertainties may influence how environmental sustainability is framed in the international development agenda over the next 10-30 years?<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n

There’s a major global shift that will continue, and upset virtually everything people are planning on, because people are NOT planning on our world economic growth model to stop producing growing economic returns. \u00a0It financially relies on consuming the earth ever faster. \u00a0That is produces ever shrinking returns.<\/p>\n

You can see the physical evidence of it happening all over and as the main cause of our converging world crises, the world commodities crises, food crises, inequity and ‘missing middle’ crises, \u00a0the related financial crises and ecological liability crises. \u00a0 It is giving us a world increasingly mired in conflicting interests, complexity, confusion, and indecision.<\/p>\n

The real cause is an oddly deceptive but ultimately quite simple thing. \u00a0 \u00a0Ant kind of competitive system driven to grow by compound investment of its own profits will change behavior this way… as reaching natural limits of growth causes it to swell with internal complications and conflicts of all sorts. \u00a0It’s an ecological, not a political or social phenomenon, with extraordinarily grave\u00a0political and social consequences.<\/p>\n

These symptoms are the “signal” from the environment that continually expanding our use of nature is finally approaching its natural limits. \u00a0 I write quite a bit about it, from all sides. \u00a0 \u00a0http:\/\/synapse9.com\/signals<\/a><\/p>\n

Over the next 10-15 years it seems virtually certain that all the present gains in social welfare resulting from the worldwide MDG and other socially purposed sustainability efforts will largely or totally be reversed. \u00a0 That result appears quite unavoidable unless people take an interest in, and come to understand, the natural consequences of relying on growth for prosperity and act promptly.<\/p>\n

What causes the turmoil is that when there are no longer virgin resources to claim, the needs of more competitive users take precedence over all others… because they can pay higher prices, and the less competitive users get squeezed out. \u00a0That multiplies by the positive feedback loop of investors using the profits to also invest more in the more competitive users driven to grow their own needs.<\/p>\n

A related intellectual tragedy is that this is just the kind of great puzzle that scientists get ostracized for solving, again and again in history. \u00a0In this case both Keynes and I among others saw the dilemma and understood the quite necessary answer long ago. \u00a0 He was repeatedly dismissed for bringing it up (in time to forestall our current chaos) and I’ve been repeatedly dismissed for bringing it up (in time to relive some of the worst symptoms and its natural end)….\u00a0 People keep making the error of assuming that nature should follow our social values, and that\u2019s mistaken.<\/p>\n

\n