Global Environmental Sustainability: Case Studies and Analysis of the United Nations’ Journey toward Sustainable Development

By Choy Yee Keong

Global Environmental Sustainability: Case Studies and Analysis of the United Nations’ Journey toward Sustainable Development presents an integrated, interdisciplinary analysis of sustainable development, addressing global environmental problems in the contemporary world. It critically examines current actions being taken on global and local scales, particularly in relation to the UN’s efforts to promote sustainable development. This approach is supported by empirical analysis, drawing upon a host of interweaving insights spanning economics, politics, ecology, environmental philosophy, and ethics, among others. As a result, it offers a comprehensive and well-balanced assessment of the overall perspective of sustainable development supported by in-depth content analysis, theoretical evaluation, empirical and actual case studies premised on solid data, and actual field work. Also, the book marks a milestone in placing the Covid-19 pandemic into a perspective for understanding the universality of human collective environmental behavior and action.By utilizing in-depth analysis, both quantitative and qualitative, and challenging the status quo of what is expected in the global approach to sustainable development, Global Environmental Sustainability provides the theory and methodology of empirical sustainable development which is especially germane to our advanced society today, which is deeply entrenched in a crisis of environmental morality. More particularly, it serves as a salient source of moral reconstitution of society grounded in empirical reality to liberate man’s excessive spirit of individualism and self-aggrandizement to the detriment of the environment. Epistemologically, the book furnishes a remarkable tour de force with a new level of analytical insight to help researchers, practitioners, and policymakers in sustainability and environmental science, as well as the many other disciplines involved in sustainable development, to better understand sustainability from a new perspective and provides a methodological direction to pursue solutions going forward.

• Provides a systematic exposition of sustainable development in all its complexity, with all the chapters complementing each other in an integral way
• Presents extensive empirical evidence of various environmental problems across the world including China, the United States, Canada, Southeast Asia, South America and Africa, and the extent to which the United Nations has succeeded in driving toward global environmental sustainability
• Provides a cogent examination of the treatment of our global commons by some of the world’s most powerful leaders
• Includes data from field studies and in-depth interviews with indigenous people in Borneo’s rainforests of the Malaysian state of Sarawak most affected by environmental change

• Language: English
• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Release date: Oct 31, 2020
• ISBN: 9780128224137

Choy Yee Keong

Dr. Choy Yee Keong, Ph.D. is currently a Senior Research Fellow and Lecturer in Environmental Economic Theory in the Faculty of Economics, Keio University, Tokyo. He is also a member of the review committee of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS). Prior to this, he was with the National Institutes for the Humanities, Research Institute for Humanity and Nature (RIHN), Kyoto, Japan as an invited scholar. He was also an Assistant Professor and Research Fellow at Kyoto University. He has over 10 years of field research experience in development and environmental issues in Southeast Asia, especially in Malaysia. He has also published extensively in various international peer-reviewed journals and has presented his papers at numerous international conferences held in various parts of the world. He has also often been invited by various universities to deliver public lectures on development, energy, and environmental issues.

Book preview

Global Environmental Sustainability

Case Studies and Analysis of the United Nations’ Journey toward Sustainable Development

Dr.Choy Yee Keong

Faculty of Economics, Keio University, Tokyo, Japan

Table of Contents

Cover image

Title page

Copyright

Dedication

List of Figures

List of Tables

List of Boxes

List of Appendixes

Preface

Acknowledgments

Chapter 1. Introduction: Sustainable development—a preliminary reflection

Abstract

1.1 The rise and fall of sustainable development: A historical perspective

1.2 Reemergence of sustainable development: The United Nations environmental protection initiatives

1.3 The ethics of sustainable development

1.4 Structure of the book

Chapter 2. The United Nations' journey to global environmental sustainability since Stockholm: An assessment

Abstract

2.1 Introduction

2.2 The United Nations’ journey to global environmental sustainability: The evolution of the Stockholm green era

2.3 The Stockholm impediment and the Founex Report

2.4 The Stockholm Conference and the North–South greening conflicts

2.5 Outcomes of the Stockholm Conference

2.6 The Cocoyoc Symposium

2.7 The Stockholm Conference and the emergence of global environmental regimes

2.8 The Stockholm environmental impacts: Some remarks

2.9 The postStockholm era: The second wave of United Nations engagement with environmentally sustainable development

2.10 The United Nations' journey to environmental sustainability 2001 and beyond: The third wave

2.11 United Nations environmental efforts in the postRio+20

2.12 The United Nations’ journey to environmental sustainability: Some comments

2.13 Concluding remarks

Chapter 3. The United Nations’ journey to global environmental sustainability since Stockholm: The paradox

Abstract

3.1 Introduction

3.2 Global environmental status since Stockholm: An overall view

3.3 Forest conservation and deforestation: An empirical assessment

3.4 Global forest tracking: Food and Agriculture Organization versus Global Forest Watch

3.5 Global forest loss: An empirical analysis

3.6 Country-specific case studies

3.7 Global forest conservation: A bleak picture

3.8 Biodiversity conservation: United Nations’ ecological conservation initiatives in retrospective

3.9 Biodiversity conservation and environmental degradation: The global reality in general

3.10 Biodiversity conservation in the tropical rainforest region (specific case study): The status quo

3.11 Africa

3.12 Southeast Asia

3.13 China’s environmental protection and biodiversity conservation

3.14 Global biodiversity outlook: Some comments

3.15 The United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, carbon dioxide emissions, and atmospheric concentration: A global assessment

3.16 Carbon emission country-specific case studies: China versus the United States

3.17 China’s decarbonization initiatives: The road to Paris Accord

3.18 China’s pathways to decarbonization: The arduous journey

3.19 Carbon dioxide emissions and climate change: The American carbon curse and Donald Trump’s anti- environmental attitudes and practices

3.20 The United Nations’ road to global environmental sustainability: Some United Nation success stories

3.21 The United Nations’ success stories: Some remarks

3.22 Global environmental sustainability, biodiversity conservation and climate protection: The missing links

3.23 Concluding remarks

Chapter 4. Greening for a sustainable future: The ethical connection

Abstract

4.1 Introduction

4.2 Environmental ethics and environmental sustainability: A theoretical assessment

4.3 Ecocentrism and Aldo Leopold’s land ethic

4.4 Albert Schweitzer’s reverence for life ethic: The Leopold connection and its implication for a pragmatic unification of environmental ethics

4.5 Environmental ethics and de-ethics in a real-world system: Some empirical reflections

4.6 The Canadian anthropocentric conquest of nature: The power of anthropocentrism

4.7 Sustainable environmental governance and the ethics of sustainability: The Nexus

4.8 Concluding remarks

Chapter 5. The nexus of environmental ethics and environmental sustainability: An empirical assessment

Abstract

5.1 Introduction

5.2 Environmental philosophy—the epistemological disputes

5.3 Indigenous land culture in brief

5.4 Targeted areas of study—some basic facts

5.5 Field trip physical environmental conditions in brief

5.6 Fieldwork and interviews

5.7 Empirical findings and the indigenous land use philosophy: Some conceptual underpinnings

5.8 The indigenous duty-based moral principle: The Kantian categorical imperative

5.9 Indigenous bioecocentric environmental worldview: The nexus of values, environmental attitudes, and moral actions

5.10 The ethics of sustainability (bio-ecocentrism): The nonindigenous people versus the urbanized indigenous communities

5.11 Concluding remarks

Chapter 6. The United Nations environmental education initiatives: The green education failure and the way forward

Abstract

6.1 Introduction

6.2 Environmental education: The raison d’être

6.3 Environmental education and environmental literacy: The United Nations/UNESCO initiatives

6.4 The United Nations/UNESCO EE discourse: The changing face

6.5 The United Nations/UNESCO environmental education initiatives: Some critical remarks

6.6 The United Nations/UNESCO’s global environmental education efforts: Some success stories

6.7 The United Nations’ environmental education initiatives: Other success stories

6.8 The United Nations/UNESCO education for sustainable development revisited: The return of Émile Durkheim’s philosophical principle of simplicity

6.9 The foundation of environmental education

6.10 From the first ring of environmental predominance to the second ring of moral essentiality

6.11 Environmental education in practice: An illustration

6.12 Environmental education: Outdoor education programmes

6.13 Environmental education for children

6.14 Environmental education: Some remarks

6.15 Moral education

6.16 Why moral education can lead to proenvironmental behavior and actions?

6.17 Environmental education framework: A suggested model

6.18 Concluding remarks

Chapter 7. Summary and conclusion

Abstract

7.1 The United Nations striving for global environmental sustainability since Stockholm

7.2 From the United Nations’ journey to global environmental sustainability to the emergence of an anthropocentric world of environmental destruction

7.3 The United Nations ethical dilemmas

7.4 Environmental ethics

7.5 United Nations environmental education framework: The changing face

7.6 The United Nations’ environmental education programs: Where do we go from here?

7.7 Environmental sustainability: The current state and future outlook

7.8 Concluding thoughts

Bibliography

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Index

Copyright

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Dedication

This book is dedicated to the memory of my beloved father Choy Tuck, my beloved mother Lee Yong Kan, and my beloved sister Chui Soh Lan who have been my constant source of great encouragement and inspiration.

List of Figures

List of Tables

List of Boxes

List of Appendixes

Preface

Choy Yee Keong Dr. , Keio University, Tokyo, Japan

Looking back on the world’s first international environmental conference, the Stockholm Conference held by the United Nations in 1972, which brought leaders across the globe together to facilitate global consensus on the urgency to address the challenges of global environmental degradation, we wonder what has been achieved so far. We know that the United Nations, committed to addressing this challenge, has made continuous and unrelenting efforts at convening a host of international environmental meetings and conferences to advance its core mandate of bringing about a wiser use of our natural environment. Hundreds of international declarations, agreements, regulations, protocols, agendas, and action plans were adopted at these conferences to facilitate and guide the global community to efficaciously address the challenges of balancing its three core values of sustainable development, namely, environmental protection, economic growth, and social equity. Thus a new world order was presented on the horizon held together by these three pillars of sustainable development. Since then, this has been the raison d’être for framing development discourse across the globe. Virtually all the countries in the world have endeavored to streamline their development path for sustainable use of the natural environment deemed critical to the wellbeing and livelihood of not only the present but also the future generations.

Yet, more than 45 years later, it has turned out that the United Nations’ canonical formula for a sustainable world has unfortunately resulted in chaotic development. It may well be that in a neoliberal economic world order dominated by the imperative of keeping up with progress, unrestrained expropriation of environmental resources spurred by ever-increasing scales of production and consumption has become the norm. Anthropogenic transformation of our Earth system such as irreversible habitat destruction, unprecedented scale of ecosystem disintegration, and persistent level of greenhouse gas emissions are some of the notable examples. The stark truth is that humans are exerting heavy pressure on our Earth system at an unprecedented rate.

Today the threat of environmental doom driven by the increasingly widening gap between economic growth and environmental protection, and unsustainable resource use is making itself felt. Not too long ago in 2017, a perfect storm of life-threatening environmental disasters hit many countries affecting millions worldwide. Extreme hurricanes such as Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, and Maria swept across the United States with devastating consequences. The year 2017 was also ranked second hottest worldwide on record by NASA, just behind a sizzling 2016, and the hottest year on record without the short-term warming influence from El Niño. While temperature soared to 53.7°C (128.7°F) in the Southwestern Iranian city of Ahvaz, one of the Earth’s hottest temperatures ever recorded, Shanghai experienced its hottest day in 145 years with temperatures soaring to a record 40.9°C (105.62°F). Drought in Eastern and Southern Africa has put 38 million people at risk of food shortage and malnutrition. Heavy snow in Northern Afghanistan resulted in a deadly avalanche which buried towns in up to 10 feet of snow, crushing, or freezing hundreds of people to death. In addition, sea ice both in the Arctic and Antarctic continue its declining trend due to rapid ice melt caused by global warming which could trigger polar tipping points and uncontrollable climate change at global level.

In the year 2018, even a stronger risk of environmental catastrophe surfaced on the global sphere of sustainable development as a rude awakening. More precisely, a series of extreme weather conditions was wreaking havoc around the globe in the same year, from prolonged heat waves in the northern hemisphere with very extreme conditions near the Artic, unprecedented wildfires in Sweden, to life-threatening floods and landslides in China, India, and Japan. Super Typhoon Mangkhut, the strongest storm observed on Earth in 2018 battered across the Philippines, Hong Kong, Macau, and China, causing massive flooding and devastation in the regions. Japan witnessed its exceptionally brutal year in 2018 with a cascade of extreme events hitting the country. These included the historic rainfall pattern with a 72-hour precipitation record, deadly temperature spikes, and super typhoons. Similarly the record-breaking hurricanes, Hurricanes Michael and Florence in the Atlantic, and Typhoons Jebi and Trami in the Pacific were wreaking havoc around the world in the same year.

These summary statements are by no means exhaustive but they suffice for the present purpose of emphasizing that things are getting worse and harder to deal with now than they have been in the past. They also underscore the fact that the United Nations’ concept of sustainable development embraced by the global community has ended in nature exacting revenge on us in cruel and unusual ways. This leads us to conclude that after more than 45 years of promoting environmental sustainability, the United Nations has apparently failed to prepare the global community to contain worldwide environmental threats. The perilous environmental status quo also points to the direction that humans are increasingly losing touch with nature.

All these are clearly indicative of the emergence of a new economic order, cemented by the anthropocentric worldview of development in which humans regard themselves as separate from, independent of, and superior to the natural world, and that resources may be rightly and justifiably exploited for human benefit. In this dominant anthropocentric paradigm, nature is a horn of plenty and a bottomless sink, and there is no sense of interconnection between humans and nature. This sounds the death knell for the United Nations’ overarching environmental mandate which has turned into a false hope of a sustainable future. Equally obvious is the fact that sustainable development as embraced by the global community firmly holds to the dictum that sustainable development is economic growth and material progress ad infinitum.

Thus the iron rule of the biophysical limits to economic expansion was hard to exhibit as a model of sustainable development across the anthropocentrically dictated global economic system. Developed and developing countries alike continue their self-interested focus on tapping excessively into the patrimony of nature without constraint. Conceivably, sustainable development has ended in a plunder of our planetary system. Against the backdrop of this anthropocentric paradigmatic change, the environmental controlling and management systems across the globe are simply not functioning effectively as they have expected to. In many instances they are broken. The consequence is that our planet is at breaking point more than four decades later and sustainable development has moved into an impasse. This raises the most pertinent question: With the present dire environmental conditions, can our Planet still be saved? This will be the gist of my analysis.

My intention here is to allow readers to conceptualize the concrete reality of the United Nations environmental protection efforts and their implications for a sustainable future in the interests of all humanity. While this United Nations environmental conundrum has been considerably and extensively discussed among academics and scholars from various perspectives and in a host of disciplines, each advocate mostly confine his/her argument within a particular discipline or concept, or isolated for separate study in accordance to its specific objective. This makes it difficult for researchers, environmentalists, NGOs, policy makers, or students alike to gain a holistic view of the global environmental sustainability issues in their entirety. This, in turn, hampers the articulation of proper modes of control and policymaking. In an attempt to make headway in the urgent task of containing this critical problem, this book seeks to develop more adequate perspectives and concepts for an analysis of the complex process which has led to the present environmental conundrum, and to offer a way out of it.

At the outset, I present a critical analysis of the efforts undertaken by the United Nations to decisively break the vicious circle of environmental degradation for the past 45 years. I further show how the United Nations’ grand schemes of environmental protection were too much in dissonance with the dynamics of the ethical link between the economy and the environment. To enable the readers to understand clearly the economy–environment dilemmas, I shall present the United Nations’ environmental protection discourse over the past few decades alongside a rich and complex account of contemporary global environmental trends.

This urgent reality calls for solutions to circumvent the economy–environment predicament. The upshot is that the prevailing looming environmental crisis is a crisis of the human heart: only humans can save our planet. For a start, we have to shed our anthropocentric skin to view ourselves as custodians of nature. To be sure, even the most cursory examination of the prevailing environmental trends in the human-centered world reflects that this is an extraordinarily formidable task. Nonetheless, it is not impossible if we frame our sustainable development discourse from a different angle.

We must embark on a bold new direction guided by the prism of the ecumenical disciplines of environmental philosophy. We have to take the leap to view sustainable development as a never-ending process of environmental improvement which underpins human long-term existence. Taking cognizance of the legitimate view that the real looming crisis lies not in our Earth system but in our heart, we must reconstruct our mental representations of the natural world based on the moral beliefs on the rightness and wrongness of our actions toward it. The quintessence of the argument is that humans are the major destructive force of Mother Nature, so it is humans themselves who can turn the tide of environmental impoverishment around. Clearly how we think about and how we view our Earth system matter; it bespeaks what we value and shapes what we do. Simply put, our values serve as a strong guiding force in our dealings with nature. I believe that the classical foundations of philosophical studies contribute immensely to understanding this important debate. More specifically, Aldo Leopold, Albert Schweitzer, Jeremy Bentham, Immanuel Kant, Émile Durkheim, René Descartes, and Francis Bacon’s conceptual insights are a remarkable tour de force in that they collectively provide a persuasive scholarly line of argument in this complex discussion.

In undertaking this ambitious and arduous academic task, I acknowledge that it is unrealistic for any single concept to fully capture the complexity of sustainable development. Hence, this book takes a multidisciplinary study and interdisciplinary approach, embracing such branches as science, environment, ecology, economics, politics, philosophy, anthropology, and empirical studies. I certainly do not claim to be a specialist in all these fields, but years of research have enabled me to glean from them the perspectives of a hopeful sustainable future.

This study is considered to be authoritative because its findings are supported by unusually rich concepts with semantic precision, empirical analysis, and actual field research. The book also serves to supplement many books and articles in sustainable development, environmental ethics, and environmental value systems written from philosophical perspectives. It also reinforces many of their armchair theoretical analyses with empirical verification based on solid evidence gathered from an extensive field study.

I hope this book will serve as a wake-up call to the United Nations, the world leaders, the global community, environmentalists, and the public at large of the urgency to recast the hitherto all-encompassing, politically versatile, and anthropocentric concept of sustainable development and reorient our way forward on a genuine course of sustainable future. Those who staunchly believe that the international environmental negotiations, treaties, declarations, and agreements of the past few decades have enabled us to rescue our plundered planet need to realize that the goals of sustainability are not attainable by those means alone. Sustainability will not be achieved without putting environmental ethics and moral philosophy at the forefront of development discourse. This book is intended to serve as a therapeutic solution to morally heal the ethical wound of sustainable development.

It is also my sincere hope that the book will fuel human collective moral consciousness of and ethical engagement with nature and induce responsive ways to reattune and transform mere human rhetoric of environmentalism on paper to one of the effective policies in fine print and real action. A world driven by an anthropocentric view of nature is an ecologically destabilized world. It is time to reverse our anthropocentric drive toward destroying our planetary system in the name of sustainable development. Frederick Engels, almost one-and-a-half centuries ago in The Part Played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man (1876), said: Let us not, however, flatter ourselves overmuch on account of our human victories over nature. For each such victory, nature takes its revenge on us. This cogently and partly explains the root cause of the 2017 and 2018 years of disaster: human beings were the cause, and it is only human beings who can heal our planet.

August 2020

Acknowledgments

I am deeply indebted to many people and institutions whose support has been instrumental in bringing this work to fruition. First of all, I wish to express my gratitude to Prof. Ayumi Onuma (Keio University), Prof. Takashi Iida (Keio University), Prof. Eiji Hosoda (Chubu University), Prof. Kitakawa Hideki (Ryukoku University), Prof. Tadayoshi Murata (Yokohama National University), Prof. Skoko Sakai (Kyoto University), Prof. Masahiro Ishikawa (Koichi University), Prof. Andrew Alex Tuen (University Sarawak Malaysia), Prof. Mazlin Mokhtar (National University of Malaysia), Prof. Lee Khai Ern (National University of Malaysia), Prof. Wang Chen-Hao (National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, Taiwan), Dr. Wang Chin-Tsan (Ministry of Science and Technology, Taiwan), Dr. He Yanmin (Otemon Gakuin University), Dr. Yamaguchi Rintaro (National Institute for Environmental Studies), Tomonori Ishida (National Institute for Defense Studies, Ministry of Defense, Japan), Dr. Goh Chun Sheng (Harvard University), Dr. Kim Woo Jin, Dr. Wei Hongbiao, Dr. Lee King Siong, Lai Choong Hon, Max Choo Ming Hang, Xu Yiran, Usat Ibut and Sano Tatsuhiko for their support in the course of writing this book. I also wish to extend my thanks to Candice Janco (Publisher), Marisa LaFleur (Acquisition Editor), Peter Llewellyn (Acquisition Editor), Michelle Fisher (Editorial Project Manager), Chiara Giglio (Editorial Project Manager), Matthew Limbert (Cover designer), Indhumathi Mani (Copyrights Coordinator), and Kumar Anbazhagan (Production Manager) from Elsevier for their advice and valuable suggestions. I am also grateful to four anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on my earlier proposed draft of this work and an anonymous expert reviewer for his careful reading of my final manuscript and his many insightful comments and suggestions for improvement. Above all, my heartfelt gratitude goes to Choy Yee Hong, Chooi Yee Kuan, Chooi Yee Wah, Chooi Yee Nam, Chee Sow Lin, Chooy Sam Mooi, Chye Siew Fong, Teng Foh Mooi, Choy Khai Luen, Choy Sook Fan, Choy Sook Yee, Choy Sook Wai, Choy Sook Theng, Choy Sook Yan, Yee Phooi See, Yee Phooi Phooi, Yee Kit Hoe, Chin Yee Meow, Goh Choon Keat, Yong Yoke Heng, Leaw Siew Mooi, Chin Chee Keong, Chin Chee Han, Jasmine Chin Yong Shya, Chin Mee Kuen, Chin Yuen She, Chooi Hui San, Chooi Zhan Hoong, and all my family members, whose relentless support and encouragement over the years leaves a debt that I can hardly pay.

I am grateful to the National Institutes for Humanity, Research Institute for Humanity and Nature (RIHN), Kyoto, Japan (Project No. D-04) for funding the larger part of my indigenous field research in the state of Sarawak in Malaysia. I also wish to acknowledge the financial support from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) Supported Program for the Strategic Research Foundation at Private Universities, 2014–18 (MKS1401), and the Grant-in-Aid Scientific Research (C), 2016–19 (MKK349J), MEXT, Japan, in the course of writing this book. Last but not least, any flaws that remain in the manuscript are solely the responsibility of the author.

Choy Yee Keong Dr. , Keio University, Tokyo, Japan

August 2020

Chapter 1

Introduction: Sustainable development—a preliminary reflection

Abstract

This chapter provides a preliminary reflection of the concept of sustainable development. It reveals a less well-known fact that sustainable development is not a new concept as popularized by the Brundtland Report published in 1987. It traces back its original source from the traditional agricultural practices among the ancient tribes in Sri Lanka, Eastern Africa; and in the American and European continents some of which may date back to as far as 2000 years ago. It also provides the structure of the book, serving as a guide to the prospective readers.

Keywords

Sonjo and Chagga; Codex Leicester; ethics of sustainable development; international environmental rules and principles; anthropocentric view of nature

1.1 The rise and fall of sustainable development: A historical perspective

The concept of sustainable development is not new. Historically it may be traced back to the traditional agricultural practices among the ancient tribes in Sri Lanka, the Sonjo and Chagga tribes in Eastern Africa; and in the American and European continents which embraced sustainability ethics by integrating environmental concerns with economic activity, some of which may date back to as far as 2000 years ago (Marong, 2003). The concept of intergenerational equity is also not a recent invention. Its pedigree appeared more than 500 years ago in the Codex Leicester, which may have been the first book to unveil the ethics of sustainable development by emphasizing the need to preserve the environment in the interests of future generations while pursuing economic progress (May, 1998).

However, this environmentally sustainable and morally justifiable development ideology gradually eroded with the advent of the industrial revolution in the 1800s in Western Europe, characterized by massive capitalist modes of production and consumption. In 1860, the three leading industrial countries, namely, Great Britain, Germany, and the United States, were producing over a third of total global output, further increasing to a little under two-thirds of a much larger total by 1913 (WTO, 2014). In 1820, economic progress measured in terms of per capita gross domestic product of the richest countries was about three times that of the poorest, and by 1913 the ratio had increased from 1 to 10 (WTO, 2014; Boon and Eyong, 2009). The drive for capitalist expansion and industrial advancement inevitably ignited a mad rush for imperialist acquisition and accumulation of sources of raw material in developing countries such as those in Africa and in Latin America (Boon and Eyong, 2009).

1.2 Reemergence of sustainable development: The United Nations environmental protection initiatives

The dominant western industrial culture and the neo-liberal capitalist expansion come at the cost of global natural resource depletion and environmental impoverishment. Out of a deep concern over the scale and persistent trends of the earth’s degradation, the United Nations convened the first world conference on the environment, the Stockholm Conference, in 1972 with the view of returning to the mode of development that was environmentally sustainable. The Stockholm Conference contributed to triggering the rise of environmentalism and fostering the gradual emergence of an environmental movement across the world in the 1970s. Many countries across the developed region responded positively to the Stockholm environmental protection initiatives to arrest any further global environmental decline. However, many developing countries in the South, especially in Africa and Latin America, were less enthusiastic. Despite the Stockholm recognition of the need for development in the South, they still viewed its environmental inspiration suspiciously as a new form of colonialism aiming to sustain the developed countries’ continued access to raw commodities and deprive them of their rights to develop.

The tensions that emerged from the incongruent North–South environmental and development agendas were, to a great extent, diffused with the release of the Founex Report on Development and Environment prior to the convention of the Stockholm Conference and the adoption of the United Nations Cocoyoc Declaration in 1974. Both documents explicitly acknowledged the legitimate rights of the developing countries of the South to development and helped to convince them that environmental issues were equally relevant in their development discourse (Marong, 2003). The sense of distrust between the North and the South was further mitigated with the publication of the Brundtland Report in 1987 (WCED, 1987). The Report viewed environmental protection and economic development as not necessarily incompatible. To the developing countries, the Brundtland concept of development is more palatable because it allows development to proceed while protecting their environment. More specifically it provides a basis for them to locate the link between environment and development as the foundation for a just and equitable economic order which is socially and environmentally sustainable.

Following Stockholm and Brundtland, a multitude of environmental summits and conferences were convened, and hundreds of regional and international environmental treaties were made to reinforce global commitment to promote environmentally sustainable development. In response to the high aspirations and ideals of the United Nations’ environmental initiatives, the international community has put in place comprehensive environmental institutions and legal systems to promote sustainable resource use and environmental conservation.

But how much has the planet changed since then? To answer this question, I embarked on an extensive empirical research to assess the nature and extent of environmental degradation across the world, including the world’s largest economy, the United States, and the world’s fastest developing country, China, which is also the world’s second largest economy after the United States. The result of the assessment reveals that environmental degradation poses a serious threat to sustainable development in the world today and achieving environmentally sustainable development remains one of the greatest challenges of human civilization. The root of the problem lies in how we perceive the environment and our place in it. Among the most influential moral mental representations of our planet are ethical beliefs about the rightness and wrongness of our actions toward our Earth system. Clearly the philosophical principles of environmentalism provide a strong foundation for this line of enquiry. In digression, the Earth system is itself an integrated system which may be subdivided into four interconnected spheres, namely, the geosphere, atmosphere, hydrosphere, and biosphere.

1.3 The ethics of sustainable development

Rightly the ethics of sustainable development constitutes one of the most valuable pointers in what direction our scientific investigation should stretch to reach deterministic and persuasive results. Fundamentally the ethical content of sustainable development matters because environmental sustainability issues are about the relationship between humans and the natural world. Although global environmental consensus created through the adoption or ratification of international agreements is a vital aspect of an effective global response to environmental degradation, they cannot be relied on exclusively as impetus for action. No number of international environmental conferences or agreements will have any enduring or lasting effect if most member countries fail to undertake a real and genuine commitment for effective actions. However, a real and genuine commitment to environmental preservation is impossible without any indication of appropriate concern for, values in, and duties to the natural world (Rolston, 1999: 407).

This book attempts to conceptually and theoretically assess the ethical constraints to sustainable development by considering human responsibility to the natural world with the aim of providing a philosophical framework for rethinking our relationships with nature. The philosophical implications of proenvironmental behaviors are empirically reified based on evidence drawn from field research with the forest dwelling indigenous people in Malaysia. It is demonstrated that the philosophical concepts of environmentalism which are holistically mirrored in the culture of the indigenous communities, have an important role to play in promoting global environmental sustainability.

It is instructive to note that moral principles per se may end up in a rhetorical or symbolic gesture of environmentalism if it is not activated in the minds of humanity. In other words, human moral attunement to nature requires a means of activation that contributes to its application in a real-world system. It is argued that the means of activation are premised on the effective implementation of environmental and moral education which serves to bring to the forefront the practical implications of human moral views of nature on proenvironmental behaviors. In plain language, environmental and moral education constitutes a conditio sine qua non for transforming changes in human environmental attitudes and behavior toward environmental sustainability. The rest of the book will explore how this can be systematically achieved.

1.4 Structure of the book

Most of the chapters to follow have the environmental worldview thesis as their common feature. Chapter 2, The United Nations’ Journey to Global Environmental Sustainability Since Stockholm: An Assessment, explores comprehensively the evolution of the concept of sustainable development since the 1972 Stockholm Conference as a main framework for understanding the relationship between the economic, social, and environmental problems confronting us today. The UN Scientific Conference on the Conservation and Utilization of Resource held in 1949 to examine sustainable management of natural resources provides a good starting point for this analysis. The analysis is then divided into three distinct periods: 1970–1980, 1990–2000, and 2001 onwards. Each period is embedded in one or two path-breaking conferences which produced important environmental documents that spurred the development and rapid expansion of international environmental rules and principles, and reinforced the high aspirations of sustainable development as the fundamental guide for our common environmental future.

Chapter 3, The United Nations’ Journey to Global Environmental Sustainability Since Stockholm: The Paradox, takes this theme further by assessing the principles of sustainable development in addressing the precarious state of our environment. Drawing from global environmental evidence on the state of our planet, it demonstrates that the implementation of sustainable development has hitherto proven to be daunting. The assessment reveals that the roots of the many massive environmental problems facing us today are the lack of an ethical vision of resource use in the utilitarian pursuit of economic growth and the lack of an awareness of the moral causes of our environmentally destructive practices in our dealings with nature.

By way of illustration, the book, drawing from the environmental worldview of Francis Bacon, also examines the philosophical concepts underscoring the United States government led by Donald Trump in articulating the global direction on key environmental issues of common concerns such as climate change and sustainable resource use patterns. It shows how the dominant anthropocentric view of nature and the American first policy as embraced by the current administration has led to what we call here the Donald Trump environmental protection rollback which threatens to roil back global efforts in arresting the increasing scale of human impact on our fragile Earth system.

The unprecedented scale of environmental problems confronting the world today call for serious philosophical and ethical soul searching aimed at addressing unsustainable development practices. This will be the main focus of Chapter 4, Greening for a Sustainable Future: The Ethical Connection. The main task is to explore the philosophical and ethical concepts of environmentalism so as to broaden and expand our environmental perspectives in challenging and fruitful ways. With this end in view, this chapter examines what contribution environmental philosophy and ethics can make toward achieving environmental sustainability. It attempts to examine the moral principles based on theoretical analyses of contemporary environmental ethics ranging from anthropocentrism to biocentrism and ecocentrism.

Taking the theoretical base as a vantage point, this chapter ventures deeper into exploring the philosophical rationale for environmental conservation based on Aldo Leopold’s land ethic, Albert Schweitzer’s reverence for life ethic, and Immanuel Kant’s deontological concepts. These philosophical thoughts provide very rich practical clues and holistic inspirations for a profound understanding of the theoretical and conceptual underpinnings of human proenvironmental and moral behaviors. They demonstrate clearly that environmental philosophy constitutes an indispensable element in harnessing a more expansive human appreciation of the complexity and beauty of the Earth system. They also represent an important driving force for sustainable environmental attitudes and ethical behavior to guide our actions toward fostering a harmonious relationship with the natural world, with love and respect, in Aldo Leopold’s words.

However, acknowledging that the theoretical argument and the practical importance of environmental ethics in promoting environmental sustainability may be less than convincing in the absence of empirical verification. Chapter 5, The Nexus of Environmental Ethics and Environmental Sustainability: An Empirical Assessment, presents the extensive field research embarked on to investigate into the indigenous worldviews of the moral relationship between humanity and the natural world, conducted in the state of Sarawak in Malaysia.

The field research is related to the theoretical concepts developed in the previous chapter, and contributes to deepening our understanding of the crucial role of environmental ethics in turning the tide of environmentally unsustainable human behavior, while also reinforcing the theoretical argument as discussed in Chapter 4, Greening for a Sustainable Future: The Ethical Connection. The theoretically discussed and empirically substantiated ethical frame of environmental sustainability provides a moral wake-up call on the urgent need for our ethical engagement with nature in addressing global environmental problems.

However, whether this wake-up call resonates well with humanity hinges on environmental and moral education to increase public awareness on environmental problems and their inevitable consequences which impact on human civilization. This theme which constitutes the last section of this chapter will be discussed in relation to the theoretical and empirical studies carried out earlier. It argues that environmental education plays a crucial role in raising public environmental awareness which is a precondition for inducing changes in environmental attitudes and moral behavior. This would probably translate into a real commitment to environmental conservation against the throes of the current environmental catastrophe.

The emphasis is on promoting ways of thinking about the aspects of environmental sustainability through environmental education. This will be the focus of Chapter 6, The United Nations Environmental Education Initiatives: The Green Education Failure and the Way Forward. Tracing the beginnings of the environmental education programmes launched by the United Nations/UNESCO since Stockholm, it critically examines to what extent they have succeeded in promoting environmental awareness and proenvironmental behaviors. As the United Nations/UNESCO environmental education agendas have largely fallen short, we turn to Émile Durkheim and René Descartes’ theoretical insights to understand their flaws, and also to gain valuable advice on how they could be improved.

By now, the repertoire of the analytical frames developed can be applied to critically examine how and to what extent global efforts in promoting environmental sustainability may be enhanced.

The last chapter, Chapter 7, Summary and Conclusion, drawing from the preceding chapters, provides an overall assessment of the United Nations’ efforts at addressing global environmental problems. It reveals succinctly that, for more than 45 years since Stockholm, the United Nations has developed progressively through its continuous efforts in creating and developing international agreements, treaties, and guidelines in addressing global environmental problems. However, evidence shows that all this change and progress have failed to halt the escalating rate of decline in the state of the global environment. It may well be that global debate on environmental issues has fundamentally concentrated on scientific and economic concerns while the more important ethical issues of environmentalism have often been ignored in global discussion. Thus it has been impossible to trigger a dramatic shift in how nations consider their ethical concerns about and moral responsibilities for the environment when optimizing its economic use.

It is concluded that in contrast to the ecological history of naturally induced environmental disasters over the past billion years that were beyond human control, the environmental problems we face today are fundamentally caused by humans and are practically within our ability to control or prevent. International environmental conferences or agreements alone, no matter how sophisticated or extensive, will never be sufficient to contain our persistent and increasingly destructive impact on the global environment. Mapping the way forward necessarily calls for ethical and moral change in public attitudes, and policies toward more environmentally sustainable modes of resource use and management. This could be enhanced through the promotion of environmental and moral education. It is also demonstrated that how the Coronavirus pandemic, currently wreaking havoc around the world, has much to teach us about how we should deal with the global environmental crisis confronting humanity today.

Chapter 2

The United Nations' journey to global environmental sustainability since Stockholm: An assessment

Abstract

This chapter seeks to clarify or extend the arguments elucidated in Chapter 1, Introduction: Sustainable Development—A Preliminary Reflection and to provide a detailed review and coherent picture of the United Nations’ environmental initiatives from a historical perspective. Particularly, it aims to explore comprehensively the evolution of the concept of sustainable development since the United Nations convened its first international conference on sustainable resource use in 1949. This serve as the basis for understanding the relationship between the economic, social, and environmental problems confronting us today. This chapter also discusses a number of major efforts made at various United Nations conventions such as the Stockholm Conference, the World Summit on Sustainable Development (2002) and the Rio+20 Summit (2012), among others, to reinforce the operational perspectives of the concept of sustainable development.

Keywords

Holling sustainability; North–South greening conflicts; Founex Report; Cocoyoc Symposium; Stockholm environmental impacts

2.1 Introduction

Conservation and sustainable management of the natural environment, including its biodiversity, is critical for sustaining long-term human existence. Acknowledging this, and in response to the increasing threat of environmental degradation in the west, the United Nations convened its first and paradigm-breaking global environmental conference, the Stockholm Conference in 1972 to launch a new liberation movement to free men from the threat of their own thralldom to environmental perils of their own making (United Nations, 1972: 45). The Conference also sought to inspire and guide the peoples of the world in the preservation and enhancement of the human environment (United Nations, 1972: 3). Since then, a multitude of international environmental conferences and summits have been held and hundreds of multilateral agreements, treaties, and declarations adopted, generating the momentum needed to promote sustainable use and management of natural resources and environmental protection globally.

As a result, the environment has become a major issue on the international development agenda, and developed and developing countries alike have also been galvanized into action. Countries across the global divide have set up their ministries or departments of environment and produced their national development agenda with great emphasis on environmental protection. To reinforce environmental protection efforts, countless environmental laws and regulations have been enacted by all member states of the United Nations. This has been instrumental in shaping the international environmental legal regimes and sustainable policy agenda to reverse environmental degradation on our planet. The main purpose of this chapter is to assess the United Nations’ impact on the evolution of global environmental regimes in promoting environmental sustainability.

The term environmental sustainability is associated with responsible human decisions and actions in interactions with the natural environment. It may well be that many natural systems can withstand human disturbances or external pressure only up to a certain threshold (or tipping point) beyond which ecological discontinuities and possibly irreversible consequences may occur (Srebotnjak et al., 2010). Thus within the present context, environmental sustainability may be defined as sustaining the ecological integrity of the natural system while optimizing its economic use (Choy, 2015a). Conceptually, ecological integrity may be explained using Holling’s concept of sustainability which is expressed in terms of ecological stability and resilience (Holling, 1986).

Stability and resilience are descriptive concepts which posit the dynamic properties of a system. Stability refers to the ability of a natural system to return to its equilibrium state or viable level of regeneration after a temporary ecological disturbance has resulted from, for example, an act of economic exploitation (Holling, 1973; Choy, 2015a). The criterion is that the more rapidly the system restores itself and the less it fluctuates, the more stable it would be (Holling, 1973: 14). The term resilience is a measure of the persistence of systems and of their ability to absorb change and disturbance in the face of human perturbation while maintaining its organizational structure (Holling, 1973: 14). It may be technically defined as the magnitude of disturbance that can be absorbed before the system changes its structure by changing the variables and processes that control behavior (Holling and Gunderson, 2002: 4). Thus a system may said to be Holling sustainable or ecologically sustainable if and only if it is able to revert to its stable or resilient position when exposed to external disturbances.

However, it must be noted that in a real-world system, determining the critical ecological thresholds requires an in-depth understanding of the ecosystem dynamics underlying uncertainties around multiple and stochastic disturbances (Sasaki et al., 2015). Granted, given our very limited scientific understanding of the complex system dynamics of natural systems and the ecological surprises arising from the interaction between ecological and the social systems, it would not be easy, and may be practically unfeasible to decide when, how and to what extent to intervene to enable the ecosystem to absorb various shocks and disturbances and reorganize itself into a Holling resilient state. Despite being confronted with uncertainty, we must apply the precautionary measures based on the philosophical principle of environmental conservation as discussed in Section 4.41 to avoid irreversible anthropogenic disturbances of our global ecosystem, that is, the resilience-based precautionary strategy.

2.2 The United Nations’ journey to global environmental sustainability: The evolution of the Stockholm green era

Environmental issues were not a major concern of the United Nations in the period following its establishment in 1945. In 1949, the United Nations convened its first conference on the environment, the UN Scientific Conference on the Conservation and Utilization of Resources, to address the urgent issue of the improvident use of the earth’s dwindling resources against the background of dramatic population growth and increasing resource demand (United Nations, 1950). The Conference focused primarily on six major themes—land, water, forests, wildlife and fish, fuels, energy, and minerals. However, the main thrust of the Conference was on ways to manage these natural resources to sustain economic and social development rather than from a conservation perspective (Jackson, 2007) (Timeline 2.1).

Timeline 2.1 The evolution of the Stockholm Conference.

Acknowledgment of international environmental problems as distinct from the conventional resource-use issues arose in the late 1960s spurred by several widely publicized events. These included the environmental and ecological damage caused by massive oil spills such as that caused by the grounded Liberian Torrey Canyon supertanker which poured 120,000 tonnes of heavy crude oil onto hundreds of miles of British and French coastlines in 1967. Two years later in 1969, another tragic oil spill occurred from an offshore well in California’s Santa Barbara Channel (M’Gonigle and Zacher, 1981).

Other environmental issues were the cross-border air pollution and acid rain in Europe in the late 1960s, the widespread use of pesticides and fertilizers and other sources of pollution such as water pollution. Severe industrial pollution in Japan in the 1960s also fueled growing concerns about human unsustainable activities (Kapur, 2015). The Big Four industrial pollution-related diseases in Japan were Minamata Disease and Niigata Disease, both caused by mercury poisoning, Itai–Itai Disease caused by cadmium poisoning, and Yokkaichi Asthma caused by air pollution. The publication of the paradigm-breaking books and articles such as the Silent Spring on the use of potentially harmful pesticides (Carson, 1962) and The Tragedy of the Commons on widespread ecological degradation and unsustainable resource use has also contributed toward shaping the perception of critical environmental issues (Hardin, 1968).

The first major sign of global environmental concern was reflected in the convention of an intergovernmental world conference, the Biosphere Conference, held in Paris in September 1968 to consider the effects of human activities on the biosphere, including the effects of air and water pollution and deforestation and to promote rational use and conservation of the biosphere resources (Sands et al., 2012). A report on Problems of the Human Environment, published in the year after the Conference, suggested that the world should undertake serious action to address air and water pollution, soil erosion, and the profligate use of natural resources (ECOSOC, 1969; Haq and Paul, 2012). The biosphere conference led to the establishment of the Man and the Biosphere (MAB) program in 1971. The MAB is an intergovernmental scientific program which aimed to establish a scientific basis for the improvement of relationships between man and the environment and to curb biodiversity loss (Haq and Paul, 2012).

Another major breakthrough in the late 1960s was the formal inclusion of the environment for the first time into the list of international concerns at the 45th session of the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) held in 1968 as a result of the relentless efforts of Sweden to push for international policy action to urgently address the extremely complex problems related to the human environment (Howe, 2014: 70). The proposal to hold a conference on the human environment was raised by Sweden at this 45th session through a convincing memorandum outlining the purpose of the Conference aimed at raising public awareness among governments and society around the world on the seriousness of environmental problems (Ivanova, 2005). Sweden also extended its offer to convene the conference in its capital city and to make a significant financial contribution (Howe, 2014). As a result, ECOSOC passed a resolution [resolution 1346 (XLV) of July 30, 1968] to recommend to the General Assembly to convene a United Nations conference on the problems of the human environment. In digression, it may be noted in light of the above that in 1967, Inga Thorsson, a Swedish diplomat, and Sverker Äström, Sweden’s permanent representative to the United Nations, objected to the United Nations plans to convene a conference on the peaceful use of atomic energy, the fourth in a row, on the grounds that it would benefit mostly the limited number of nuclear industries in the North (Ivanova, 2005; Howe, 2014).

The General Assembly, noting the continuing and accelerating impairment of the quality of the human environment caused by such factors as air and water pollution, erosion and other forms of soil erosion, secondary effects of biocides, waste and noise (United Nations, 1968: 2), decided to pass a resolution, Resolution 2398 (XXXIII) in response to the need to convene a global conference, called the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm (the Stockholm Conference). The main purpose of the Conference was to encourage, and to provide guidelines to governments and international organizations to design policy actions to protect and improve the human environment and to remedy and prevent its impairment by means of international cooperation (United Nations, 1969).

In the meantime, to lend force to the urgent need for the Conference, four major collaborative and overlapping interdisciplinary studies of the global climatic and ecological effects of human activities were produced more or less concurrently between 1969 and 1972. They are: (1) Man’s Impact on the Global Environment which studied a wide range of environmental issues including desertification, pollution of the air and oceans, and other harms, and warned of the impending risk of global warming (SCEP, 1970); (2) Following up SCEP 1970, a meeting on the Study of Man’s Impacts on Climate was held focusing on the analysis of climate change and warned further of the dangers of anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases (GHGs) and particle pollutants (SCEP, 1970; Matthews et al., 1971); (3) Global Environmental Monitoring focused on the accumulation, review and assessment of available information on human-induced environmental changes and their impacts, and also sought to assess methodologies of measurement of environmental parameters, among others (SCOPE, 1971); and (4) The Limits to Growth, produced by the Club of Rome (Meadows et al., 1972). Except for The Limits to Growth, each of these studies was undertaken explicitly for the 1972 United Nations Conference on the Human Environment (Sohn, 1973; Howe, 2014).

2.3 The Stockholm impediment and the Founex Report

The developing countries were, however, wary about the North’s environmental movement. They feared that the humanitarian concern for environment can far too easily become a selfish argument for greater protectionism (United Nations, 1971: para. 54, p. 27). They also feared that the concern for environment may become a priority unto itself in the developed countries and that this would hinder or slow down their economic development (United Nations, 1971: para. 58, p. 29). To the developing region, the North environmental protection initiatives were no more than a neo-imperialist ploy to keep former colonies in a poor state of development (Gaines, 1997). Many developing countries distrusted Stockholm as an attempt to ratify and even enhance existing unequal economic relations and technical dependence, miring them in poverty forever (Hecht and Cockburn, 1992: 849). They therefore threatened to boycott the Conference (Selin and Linnér, 2005). Several developing countries such as Brazil charged that the global conference was a rich man’s show to divert attention from the real needs of developing countries (Engfeldt, 2009: 41).

The developing countries also asserted that major environmental problems identified for the Stockholm Conference such as industrial pollution, uncontrolled urban development, and wilderness degradation, were a consequence of unrestrained industrialization in the United States, Europe, and the Soviet Union. While these nations were concerned about the impacts of environmental degradation on the quality of life of their people in relation to, for example, recreational open spaces, clean air and water, and endangered species, the developing countries were more concerned about the problems of poverty and related issues such as access to clean water, malnutrition, and proper sanitation.

The developing countries, especially in Latin America and Africa, were worried that the