by By James Gustave Speth
Yale University Press, 2005
The author of this remarkable book states that his goal is “to present an accurate account of the seriousness of today’s global environmental challenges…and to offer a strategy for moving beyond today’s stalemate, one that is comprehensive and feasible.”
Gus Speth is one of very few people on the planet capable of achieving that bold objective, having the international experience and proven ability to understand the complex scientific and policy dimensions of the environmental crisis facing our world. He is dean of the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies at Yale, with past roles as founder and president of the World Resources Institute, co-founder of the Natural Resource Defense Council, chief executive officer of the U.N. Development Programme, and advisor to several U.S. Presidents.
The book is divided into four parts: a concise description of today’s global environmental challenges; a review of recent international responses to these challenges; an in-depth analysis of the underlying causes of environmental deterioration; and a strategy for attacking these root causes and making a transition to global sustainability.
Part One is a grim account of accelerating environmental degradation. The facts he presents are staggering, warning that “we have entered the end game in our traditional, historic relationship with the natural world…Whatever slack nature once cut us is gone.” But while the situation Speth describes seems almost hopeless, he cautions that “abandoning hope is precisely what we must not do.”
The several chapters of Part One are the most concise, yet comprehensive, reviews of the global environmental situation written to date. Speth concludes that the commitment to the environment of the 1970s has faded, perhaps as a result of having solved some of “the acute, obvious, and local pollution insults, thereby creating the illusion that the problem is solved. Yet we merely created a fool’s paradise for ourselves, for the more serious pollution problems are chronic, insidious, and global.”
Part Two chronicles a quarter-century of effort at “global environmental governance,” and the complex reasons for its failure. Here Speth looks at the “underlying drivers” of deterioration such as population, technology, consumption, market failures, and the neglect of “the social and political context” of environmental problems when crafting international agreements. He is especially critical of America’s persistent “negative role” in international efforts, be it health, human rights, weapons control, or climate change. While especially critical of the present Administration, he concludes that “the failure has been truly bipartisan.”
Part Three tackles the question: “What are the… drivers of large-scale environmental deterioration, and what is behind these drivers?” This is an in-depth look at the underlying root causes that must be understood to move beyond the failed attempts examined in Part Two, viewed in the context of present-day “globalization” and the goal of “sustainable development.”
In Part Four, Speth describes a series of interlinked transitions to sustainability that must be achieved to define a “qualitatively new epoch,” the most fundamental of which “is the transition in culture and consciousness.” This is, without doubt, the most hopeful and challenging of his transitions to achieve. Any attempt to paraphrase Speth here would be a mistake. This is a book that must be read on the author’s terms.
Few books on this immense topic come close to Speth’s achievement of building a sound case for international policy on a solid scientific foundation, concisely written in a lively, readable style.