The Sustainable Good Life

“If you have an expensive mortgage and a family to support then theoretical objections to the environmentally damaging commute to work or of the triviality of your job can quietly evaporate. Desperate people from all levels of wealth are hungry for better alternatives.”
~Eric Dudley~

In defining poverty many people will say that it’s at least in part characterized by a lack of opportunity and choice for a better life. I’ve been thinking that if we define poverty as a lack of choice, than even better-off people face the same problem of constraints. How many people want a better job? How many people want more vacation time? How many people feel they lack material comforts compared to their neighbors? Are the constraints these better-off people are facing wholly internal (relating to the attitudes and capabilities of the individuals themselves) or are they the result from inequality of opportunity within rich societies?

The point is that many people in the rich world are facing similar challenges to much poorer people. In my mind, this distinction between “us” and “them” erodes as neither have currently achieved or even has a clear picture of the “sustainable good life” (a high quality of life people are happy with that doesn’t degrade the resources we ourselves and future generations depend on).
On my host family’s wall is a picture that says “the village life is too difficult to maintain.”

Given the choice my host family mother, Chikonde, would choose to live in the city. She lived there for a few years with her brother after she divorced. This attraction to the city cuts across generations, and is perhaps more prevalent in younger generations. In conversations with many of the DAPP fieldworkers they say that the youth want to live in the cities as well.

Mungaila, the accountant at DAPP told me the attraction to the city results from the youth’s view that city life as easier and modern: “The youth, they want good communication services, good food, electricity and running water.” If village life could be easier and people had more opportunity in the rural area, would they want to stay? For me that is a fundamental question. I know that globalization is a powerful force and judging form the prevailing attitude of the youth, many are clearly attracted to the city and its promise for a lifestyle of mass consumption.

Is mass consumption the highest form of human development though? If people are leaving poverty into something more comfortable then it is essential to consider the environmental consequences of this. In 2007, the UN reported the percentage of people living in cities has climbed over 50% for the first time in human history. I cannot help but feel unsettled by the problems that remain as people choose to leave the rural areas for the city. I’m not convinced that some sustainable middle-ground exists yet. Even if the truly sustainable lifestyle exists and the only problem is implementing it at various levels in society as well as at the global level, I’m even less convinced that implementation can be achieved.

Some people may say as an urbanized mass-consumer myself, it’s hypocritical for me to say environmental considerations should be included in all development projects, programs and policies while my own country didn’t become rich that way. In response to this, I feel it’s short-sighted to believe it’s possible to develop while degrading the resources that poor people depend on and changing the climate in ways detrimental to poor small-scale farmers. I do believe that people should have a choice of whether they want to stay in the rural area or live in the city, but if people flock to cities for jobs this will create more environmental problems that will need to be tackled urgently if countries proceed along the same developmental paths that China and India are currently on.

Wangari Maathia, a prominent female leader in Kenya who started the Green Belt Movement and was awarded the Noble Peace Prize in 2004 said the good African society is like a traditional stool with a round top and three legs. The first leg represents a democratic space where people’s, women’s and children’s rights are respected. The second, sustainable management of resources and the third leg is a culture of peace and tolerance. The top represents a healthy society, and if any one leg is missing the society cannot be stable. To me, this analogy and the work of Wangari Maathia illustrate that community development and sustainable management of the environment are intertwined. I sometimes wonder if EWB fully appreciates this connnection.