Imagine yourself in the year 2050. As you hear the alarms being sounded, your mouth waters because that siren means brunch for you and everyone. The society you now live in allows only two meals per day. After the man before you got his ration, you step into a rusting machine that measures your vital statistics to determine the calories you need to survive. The machine makes it computations for a few seconds then you hear the mechanical wheezing of a shelf. Alas! Your lifeless master has spoken. You get a cup of bland instant noodles to satisfy your hunger. 

To many, the obvious solution to the growing problem of food security is to limit human consumption. As the world population nears the 8 billion mark, the challenge of balancing supply with demand is becoming a lot harder. A disciplined future like what I have revealed here might soon be realized if we do not mobilize fast enough. 

Reinforcing Lester Brown’s Plan B 4.0, the article Another Inconvenient Truth: The World’s Growing Population Poses a Malthusian Dilemma by David Biello reminds us of how population growth can become humanity’s next pitfall in terms of food security. Interestingly, it also warns us about another obvious (but definitely unsustainable) solution-clearing lands to increase the number of farms. Biello then connects the dot from this unwise solution to the multiple dots leading to growing environmental concerns.

The constant increase in the rate of population growth can easily be connected to the environmental issues we now face. Humans reproduce daily, but the world we live on is not expanding. Demand for food increases, but supply (if business as usual continues) will soon be chasing behind. Corporations practicing unsustainable practices such as mono-cropping will falter. 

One of the most important things that I have learned in Hawai'i and in Colorado is the importance of the small. One of our visits in Boulder included a visit to the Cure Organic Farm. Despite being just 10 acres, the farm has more than a 100 variety of produce, more than 60 flower varieties, and 6 animal species being grown in the area. The farm also does community-supported agriculture (CSA), which currently has about 150 members. Paul and Anne Cure, the owners of the farms, occasionally run camps for kids in the farm. This unconventional way of running a farm means income for the whole year for their family. 

Seasonal change for farmers all over the world means that crops can't be grown all year round. Come winter, only a few, if not none, varieties can be grown. A result of this is unstable living. Reports say that the average farm household in the US earns 90% of its income from external sources. This means that only a tenth is derived from farming! We can then correlate this with the decrease of people pursuing farming as their job. Why not just sit in a cozy chair in the middle of a corporate office? The dilemma of having less workers in the world's most important job continues.

What then needs to be done? Sustainable development, as we have called it, remains a big challenge for the entire global community.

The following is my reflection paper on A. Terry Rambo's  1997  paper, "The Fallacy of Global Sustainable Development." Enjoy!

Sustainable development has been a very common theme in the past decades. The World Commission on Environment and Development in 1987 defined it as "meeting the needs of the present generation without compromising the ability of the future generations to meet their own needs." From the environmental agenda, it has now penetrated the world of politics and economics. Despite the resounding call for such form of development, we still see how the growing demands of the world population overwhelm efforts coming from supporters of sustainable development. Should we be discouraged by this lack of progress? Let us examine sustainable development from the context of Baguio City.

In the beginning

Baguio City, located in the northern part of the island of Luzon, was established in 1900 at the site of an Ibaloi village known as Kafagway. With the help of American expertise, Baguio slowly transformed as the summer capital of the Philippines. Every year during the months of March to June, the entire American government personnel moved to Baguio to escape Manila's summer heat. Tourists going to Baguio will notice that a lot of roads, parks and barangays have American names. To mention some of the most popular, we have Burnham Park, Kennon Road, Wright Park and Camp John Hay. Historically, Baguio is also the site of the formal surrender of General Tomoyuki Yamashita and Vice Admiral Okochi. The High Commissioner's Residence (now the US Ambassador's Residence) in Camp John Hay was witness to the giving up of the entire Imperial Japanese Armed Forces to American authorities on September 3, 1945, marking the end of World War II.

After years of independence from the US, Filipinos soon enjoyed the front seat in the development of their country. Time passed, and this became out of control. The thirst for profit fuelled what most considered as development. As a result, other aspects, such as the environment, had been neglected. Baguio City’s Camp John Hay, which was once a hill station used for rest and recreation for personnel and dependents of the US Armed Forces in the Philippines, is a good example.  After more than a decade of being fully turned over to the Filipinos, Camp John Hay has slowly lost its appeal due to intensive commercialization.

Reality Check

The city, which was originally intended for a population of 30,000, is now home to a whopping 300,000. Coupled with this are problems, which are not given enough attention. Susan Nool enumerated some of the major environmental problems of Baguio in her article, “The state of the environment: Quo Vadis Baguio? (2010)”. She states that:

“Clean air is a major issue because a large number of motor vehicles, which proper maintenance is not ascertained, ply the central business district (CBD). Clean water is also an urgent concern because of issues on quality and adequacy. Human and industrial activities, increasing number of settlements, agricultural run-off tainted with pesticides and fertilizers, and use of organic chemicals remain as the causes of water pollution. Land quality continues to deteriorate as solid wastes, toxic chemicals, and hazardous wastes are irresponsibly dumped on it.”
 

Despite being delightful to the ears of many, the promise of sustainable development may be hardly realized in the city. Baguio is yet to catch up on these environmental problems. If ever these problems are given temporary remedy, the government still has to deal with changing the behavior of residents. After a while, traffic in the central business district will just re-emerge because residents will still prefer private transportation over public ones, which save more road space. Deforestation will continue if government officials will still give in to the sway of bribery from corporations hoping to gain protection. The next waste facility will be filled unless residents find a way to decrease their garbage outputs.

Nool (2010) also added that a 2004 study revealed that the use of alternative fuels is not appreciated well by Baguio motorists, and documentation show that usage is very minimal. Allegations that there is proliferation of fake Certificates of Emission Compliance are heard, and some private emission testing centres are not even connected to vehicle registration centres. It seems that people have begun to neglect the environment, coming even to the point of cheating Mother Nature herself.

The promise of sustainable development

In 1989, the Philippine Strategy for Sustainable Development (PSSD), a national plan of action for sustainability, was adopted. In 1992, the country signed on to the Agenda 21 which was formulated during the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The Philippines developed its own version in the form of the Philippine Agenda 21 (PA21), also called the National Agenda for Sustainable Development. This was then followed by programs from the succeeding administrations, such as President Fidel Ramos’ Philippines 2000 and President Joseph Estrada’s Angat Pinoy 2004.

Decades after, the question of what these programs have accomplished remains. At the turn of the 21st century, 40% of the population, or 31.3 million Filipinos, were officially poor. At least 80% of the land area of the country, including Baguio, has been deforested. The population growth nationally is not decelerating anytime soon. Looking at the data, can we still ascertain that we would be able to meet our needs without compromising the ability of the future generations to meet theirs?

What needs to be done?

I have shown the plethora of environmental issues that haunt Baguio earlier. It is apparent that the condition of the environment is getting worse, not better. The top-down approach in Baguio has been unsuccessful in coming up with solid solutions. We are seeing a Baguio which is blindly navigating towards a shadowy path with no map to guide her. Just like in most of the cities and towns in the Philippines, sustainable development remains as another jargon locked up in the filing cabinets of the government.

What then should be done if the so-called sustainable development that the Philippines have pledged to, together with other nations, is not working for the greater good? A. Terry Rambo, in his 1997 paper, “The Fallacy of Global Sustainable Development,” spoke of adaptive development. Rambo describes adaptive development as “devoting resources to improve our capability to cope with inevitable but largely unpredictable changes.” He also adds that to develop adaptively means “to stop wasting so many resources on major international efforts to stop change in the global environment.”

While it may seem that Rambo was throwing away sustainable development to the trash bin, I believe that he was just placing to it a new and fresher label. The sustainable development that he has spoken of so grimly was the one spearheaded by the governments through central planning. Adaptive development is simply shifting sustainable development to a bottom-top paradigm. Let us examine non-government organizations (NGOs) in Baguio. Recently, the earth-balling of trees in a hill in Baguio has triggered rallies by local residents. A look at the frontline of rallies will reveal NGOs, not government agencies. This may simply imply that when it comes to mobilizing local people to solve environmental problems, the private sector is more efficient than the officially responsible government agencies.

The Future ahead

As the demands of the world population increase, we cannot help to think of where we will be heading in the next decades. 2015, the target year of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) set by the United Nations, is fast approaching. The world cannot afford another disappointment. We need to act now- this time smartly- if we are to realize these goals. Accomplishing MDG 7, or ensuring environmental sustainability, needs a more holistic approach that is inclusive of both the public and private sectors.

Finally, I have chosen to end this paper with a thought-provoking statement from Rambo, which describes in a nutshell what me may consider as the smart way:

“Talking about sustainable development as if it were within our grasp raises unrealistic hopes and keeps governments and people from doing what they can to prepare for the future… The real job ahead is to slow environmental degradation where we can and to improve our capabilities to adapt to the changes that we can’t prevent.”

References

Nusperos-Nool, S. (2010, September 5). The State of the Environment: Quo Vadis Baguio? Baguio Midland Courier. Retrieved April 30, 2012 from                 http://www.baguiomidlandcourier.com.ph/anniv10_article.asp?mode=baguio_day2010/supplements/nool.txt

Rambo, A. (1997, March). The Fallacy of Global Sustainable Development. AsiaPacific Issues no. 30.