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Making Sense of Local Sustainability

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Linking Local and Global Sustainability

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Abstract

What does it mean to live sustainably at the local level? How can we assess whether our local behaviors to try and live sustainably make sense when looked at in the broader global setting? In this chapter, we use Ecological Footprint Analysis to help find answers to these questions. A series of tests are presented that assess local Footprint Analysis data in terms of a global sustainability goal. The South Australian setting is used as a case study. The discussion also explores how the standard Footprint Analysis data presents an overly optimistic picture of humanity’s use of the Earth’s renewable natural resources and argues for an alternate view of these data. The alternate data show that the extent to which humanity is exploiting the Earth’s renewable natural resources in excess of what it is safe to do is much greater than the standard data reveal. This has significant implications for how we assess local sustainability in the global context.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    This Reformist-Transformational characterization is acknowledged as simplistic in that it masks the variance of thought that exists within these general classifications, including approaches that sit at the extremes. For a detailed discussion on the Reformist-Transformational approaches, see Clifton (2010a).

  2. 2.

    The dominant socio-economic system referred to here is that of an economic growth model encompassing free trade, globalization, a key role for multinational corporations, a focus on technological advance, and wellbeing through increased personal income and consumption. This paradigm goes under a number of tag-names in the literature including the technological social paradigm or technocentrism (Bell 2009; Gladwin et al. 1995), and liberalism (or neo-liberalism) in the sense of liberalism being “a view of order linked to material progress, endlessly stimulated through science, technology, and corporate innovation within the lax constraints of the marketplace” (Laferriere and Stoett 2006, p. 7). It also embraces ideas consistent with human exemptionalism (Bell 2009) and modernism (Gare 2000). In this sense, socio-economic system dominance can be seen in terms of the system that is currently dominant in the world by way of its economic and political power.

  3. 3.

    The Reformist view of human population is oriented to maximizing the population that can be supported within sustainable world criteria, with a stabilization strategy based on containing very high population growth rates in some (mostly developing) countries and preventing population decline in some (mostly developed) countries (Bodian 1995; Connelly 2008; Nordhaus and Shellenberger 2007; UN 2008; WCED 1987).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. International Graduate School of Business, University of South Australia, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia

    Don Clifton PhD, MBA (Advanced), MABP, BA, GAICD

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  1. Don Clifton PhD, MBA (Advanced), MABP, BA, GAICD
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Correspondence to Don Clifton PhD, MBA (Advanced), MABP, BA, GAICD .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. School of Management, University of South Australia Business School, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia

    Sukhbir Sandhu

  2. School of Management, University of South Australia Business School, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia

    Stephen McKenzie

  3. School of Management, University of South Australia Business School, Adelaide, South Australia, Australia

    Howard Harris

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Clifton, D. (2014). Making Sense of Local Sustainability. In: Sandhu, S., McKenzie, S., Harris, H. (eds) Linking Local and Global Sustainability. The International Society of Business, Economics, and Ethics Book Series, vol 4. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-9008-6_9

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