Factoring sustainability into South Africa’s future

Martin de Wit

Address delivered to World Future Society, 6 May 2010, BMW Pavillion, Cape Town.

Sustainability

• Sustainability in its shortest definition is the capacity to endure

• To endure one does not only need material goods, but also a mental and spiritual resilience and set of skills on how to cope.

Biophysical stress

Indicator Result for SA Key aspects Outcome

Ecological Footprint 2.8 ha/pp/yr vs. target of 1.8 ha/pp/yr

91st out of 134 countries (2009)

CarbonCrop land

Grazing land

Ecologically unsustainable

Environmental Performance Index

0.508/1.0

115th of 163 countries (2010)

Environmental burden of disease

Climate changeAir pollution on

ecosystems

Environmentally unsustainable

Serious stress on human wellbeing

Indicator Result for SA Key aspects Outcome

Corruption Perceptions

Index

55th out of 180 countries (2008)

Increase in perceived corruption in last 2 years

Moderately sustainable

Subjective Well Being

41st out of 79 countries

Happiness, life satisfaction Moderately sustainable

Human Development

index

129th out of 182 countries (2007)

Life expectancyLiteracy

Education

Humanely Unsustainable

Quality of Life Index

92nd out of 111 countries (2005)

Material well-being, life expectancy, political stability, divorce rate,

community life, climates, unemployment, political freedom,

gender equality

Humanely and politically unsustainable

Happy Planet Index

118th out of 143 countries (2009)

Human well-being and environmental impact

Humanely Unsustainable

Recent progress in material wellbeing

$7500

$8100

$8700

$9300

$9900

$10500

1972

1974

1976

1978

1980

1982

1984

1986

1988

1990

1992

1994

1996

1998

2000

2002

2004

Figure 2: GDP per capita (PPP, constant, 2000$)Figure 1: Gross National Income per capita (constant 2005 prices, Rand per annum)

Source: Nationmaster.com based on World Development IndicatorsSource: SA Reserve Bank

Insufficient savings

-0.20

-0.05

0.10

0.25

0.40

1976

1977

1978

1979

1980

1981

1982

1983

1984

1985

1986

1987

1988

1990

1991

1992

1993

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2001

South AfricaChinaBrazilRussiaIndiaAVG World

Figure 3: Adjusted net savings, %

Source: Based on World Bank data

Declining exchange rate

-20%

-15%

-10%

-5%

0%

5%

10%

15%

1990

/02

1990

/04

1991

/02

1991

/04

1992

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/04

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/04

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/02

2009

/04

Figure 4: Nominal effective exchange rate of the rand: Average for 15 trading partners (quarterly % change)

Comparative optimism

Source: Pew Global Attitudes Project Survey Source: BBC World Service Poll, 2004.

Figure 6: Figure 5:

Recent optimism

Nov 09 May 09 May 08

Country is going in right direction

Male 60% 45% 47%

Female 53% 41% 44%

Source: IPSOR Markinor, Pulse of the People Public Opinion Series

Table IV: South Africans believe the country is going in the right direction

Hope and the future

Once you choose hope, anything is possible - Christopher Reeve

We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars - Oscar Wilde

To eat bread without hope is still slowly to starve to death - Pearl S. Buck

Who hopes for what he already has? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently - Apostle Paul in letter to Romans (Rom 8:24-25, NIV)

From hope towards an ethics of sustainability

• Factoring sustainability into South Africa’s future is in the first place to start acting on the individual and collective hope we have as a nation.

• This hope can translate into deep changes in attitude and behaviour.

Wedges for change

• material wedges to start bending the trends of material and resource use as well as the generation of pollution and waste.

• lifestyle wedges, such as pressures on conspicuous consumption

• behavioural wedge to change attitudes and behaviour

Time will tell whether that optimism (quoting Václav Havel) is...

not the conviction that something will turn out well,

but the certainty that something makes sense,

regardless of how it turns out.