What does ‘critical sustainability’ mean? A new StACCS project takes shape
The title of our centre, ‘Critical Sustainabilities’, signals that one of our key aims is to hold the very concept of sustainability up to a critical light. The risk that thinking around sustainability could be watered down is hardly a new concern. Just five years after the Brundtland Report (1986) brought the concept of sustainable development into the mainstream, Lélé (1991) wrote, in a paper entitled “Sustainable Development: A Critical Review”:
“The last few years have seen a dramatic transformation in the environment-development debate. The question being asked is no longer “Do development and environmental concerns contradict each other?” but “How can sustainable development be achieved?” All of a sudden the phrase Sustainable Development (SD) has become pervasive […] But murmurs of disenchantment are also being heard […] SD is in real danger of becoming a cliché like appropriate technology – a fashionable phrase that everyone pays homage to but nobody cares to define […] To some extent, the value of the phrase does lie in its broad vagueness. It allows people with hitherto irreconcilable positions in the environment-development debate to search for common ground without appearing to compromise their positions. If, however, this political meeting of minds and the concept of SD are both products of new insights into the relationship between social and environmental phenomena, then it should be advantageous to examine these insights and characterize the concept before it is misinterpreted, distorted, and even coopted.”
The term ‘greenwashing’ had not even been invented! But already the need to hone the concept of sustainability through critical scrutiny was clear. A third of a century later, not much has changed on that front: it’s an endless task.
Being critical doesn’t mean that we need always to find fault. All human work is flawed, and simply pointing out those flaws won’t fix them. A useful critique will recognize where there is excellence and promise, and offer fresh ideas where there is room for improvement.
In that spirit, I’m embarking on a new project that I think neatly embodies our concept of critical sustainabilities. With colleagues Kirstie Ball, Brian Barrett, Richard Streeter and Sarah Watts, we have just recruited to a PhD studentship, funded by NERC’s NETGAIN DFA, on “Surveillance of the Environment”. The aim is to contribute to the development of methods to promote biodiversity recovery in the UK, specifically using drones to map biodiversity change in the Scottish uplands. The technical, mapping side of the project of course aims to be cutting-edge, but what makes this project special is its focus on the social and political impacts of surveillance.
By the Law of Unintended Consequences, all new technologies will have their downsides, and remote sensing is no exception. But the ethical issues raised by remote sensing have received very little attention in the academic literature, or indeed in training curricula (York et al., 2023). Who gets to gather and use remote sensing data? Whose consent is required, and who is surveilled, whether they like it or not? Does remote sensing erode local control over landscapes, to the benefit of centralized administrations? What do we lose when we replace ‘boots on the ground’ with desk-based analysis, algorithms and metrics? How will the way we value our landscapes change?
This is a ‘StACCS project’ in that it aims to make a practical contribution to nature recovery in the UK, in this case through technological innovation; but at the same time, we aim to apply a critical analysis to the way that drone methodologies are employed, to try to limit their potential negative impacts on wider aspects of (social, economic) sustainability. It’s a StACCS project in that it applies social science/humanities perspectives to what could easily be ‘just’ a natural sciences project, recognizing that sustainability is not just about the environment: it’s about people too.
It’s a StACCS project in other ways. For one thing, it embodies what we mean by StACCS being a ‘local to global’ research centre. Tensions around surveillance and power might be (so far) relatively minor in the Scottish uplands, but my work on peatlands in central Africa and Amazonia has made me aware that, in many places, very stark power imbalances are at risk of being exacerbated by the uncritical application of technology. Working in Scotland, where the issues are relatively easy for us to explore in depth, is a springboard for research that will be globally relevant. It’s a StACCS project in its insistence on transdisciplinarity and co-production, through close integration with the land management team at the Corrour Estate. It’s a StACCS project in its interdisciplinarity, uniting all three of our core areas of interest – carbon, capital, community. And it’s a StACCS project in that it wouldn’t have happened without StACCS: the ideas that went into the proposal were gestated during a series of round-table discussions involving colleagues from different schools and visitors from outside the university, all sharing a willingness to venture beyond the comfort zones of our own disciplines.