Sustainability depends on shifting production from the material to the virtual, writes Mostafa K Tolba* I am often asked the question, "Are there limits to growth?" My answer is a qualified yes. There are limits to growth, if we continue to heedlessly squander the natural resources available to us, including energy, land and water, to meet the needs and greed of a growing global population. However, if we behave, growth can continue everywhere, north and south, east and west. When the term "sustainable development" was coined more than 30 years ago, it clearly meant that the patterns of development being pursued were unsustainable. We had to refocus our attention and adopt serious plans for achieving development. Agenda 21, adopted at the 1992 Earth Summit at Rio de Janeiro, charted the general path in this direction. We all now agree that the answer to our sustainability problems lies in distinguishing growth from development, where growth is mere accumulation of wealth while development is improvement in the quality of life. A large body of research on the issue of sustainability considers that the root cause of our sustainability problems is the persistent imbalance between growth and dematerialisation rates, leading to growth's runaway demands on the earth's natural resources. There are, theoretically, two kinds of things we could do to rein in runaway growth. One is to stop growth, and the other is to change the way we grow so that the accumulation of environmental damage stops. Can growth be stopped? The answer is certainly no. If we cannot do away with growth, then the only way to make development sustainable is to have growth with minimal negative environmental impact. How do we do this? Essentially, by dematerialising as fast as we grow. What is dematerialisation? Dematerialisation denotes acts that reduce the consumption of materials (energy, water, land, forests, minerals, etc) in each unit of economic output. The dematerialisation rate is measured as the rate of decrease of material intensity, which in turn is defined as units of a certain material consumed (like a kilolitre oil equivalent in the case of energy), per unit of economic output (euros or dollars) or per unit of GDP. Dematerialisation is not a new thing. A part of our evolution has always been to become more efficient, to use less and less energy and materials to produce more and more goods and services. However, dematerialisation needs to be looked at with considerably more care and rigor than in the past. Dematerialisation should always be measured against growth. So if in a given year the energy intensity of a certain country is one kilolitre oil equivalent per euro or dollar, and in the next year the figure went down to 0.97, the dematerialisation rate for that country in that year would be three per cent per year. This is not a measure of achieving sustainability in itself. The dematerialisation deficit (which is the growth rate minus dematerialisation rate), rather than dematerialisation itself, is the important parameter. It is the size of the deficit that measures how close or far away we are from sustainability. We are better off getting a one per cent dematerialisation rate when the growth rate is three per cent with a deficit of two per cent, than having two per cent dematerialisation when the growth rate is five per cent giving a deficit of three per cent. Technology always dematerialises. Historically, each new generation of technologies has almost always been more efficient and less material intensive. So technology by itself is not bad. The trouble is that it has always done a lot more for the growth side of the equation than for the dematerialisation side. When we talk about dematerialisation, we usually associate it with pollution prevention, efficiency improvements, renewable energy, industrial ecology, and other such familiar matters. They are all usually grouped together under the term "cleaner production". Unlike pollution control, which draws on technologies developed for its specific purposes, cleaner production relies to a large extent on pushing harder the dematerialisation attributes of mainstream technologies. But the development of these mainstream technologies is driven mainly by competition and growth purposes. They can become cleaner, for sure, but it is not realistic to expect that these technologies, created for growth reasons, would do more for dematerialisation than for growth. Bits-for-atoms We can see that from the fact that we did not bridge the energy dematerialisation gap even during the energy crisis years. So to bridge the dematerialisation gap we need something outside the realm of the industrial age when cleaner production was spawned. That something is most likely to be found in the information age. Bits are the fundamental units of digitised information, while atoms are the fundamental units of materials. The phrase "bits-for-atoms" is now used to mean the substitution of information for material. It is an obvious fact that our struggle to reach sustainability will take place largely during the information age. Given this fact, sustainable development efforts should move away from the distant position it has taken till now from information, which is surely going to dominate human development for the foreseeable future. What will truly transform our lives will actually be "connection power". At the year 2000 we had about 200 million computers that were connected together through the Internet and other networks. By 2005 the number swelled to 500 million. Non-computer chips, which are already permeating all kinds of products and equipment, totalling six billion today and growing faster than computer processors, are also being increasingly interconnected through wired or wireless means. Available data shows that while heavy industries consume 34 per cent of energy and material, they contribute less than seven per cent to GDP. The present information industry energy intensity is approximately one-eighth of all industry averages, and its water use intensity is in the order of one-fifth compared to industrial age counterparts. If the bits-for-atoms transition in growth doesn't happen, then our only weapon would be cleaner production in the broad sense. If future growth were three per cent a year, cleaner production would have to deliver three per cent dematerialisation a year to achieve the sustainability balance. That's a 20 times improvement in 100 years, and 400 times in 200 years. The general feeling is that cleaner production cannot keep delivering these kinds of improvements. We all know that the cleaner the production process becomes, the tougher and costlier it is to become cleaner. Sooner or later, further improvements in cleaner production will run out. How soon we would come to this kind of dead-end depends on how fast we dematerialise. Even if we dematerialise at close to the current rate of growth, we will run into a dead-end, most probably in the next 30-50 years. Bits-for- atoms must build up steam by then because it is likely to be the only solution left. We are already quite a number of years into the information age and the bits-for-atoms shift has not even made a dent on the material content of our growth. If there is one thing that rapidly advancing information age technologies have brought it is increase in our productivity, and therefore greater acceleration in growth, not dematerialisation. What is essential is that information power should become so potent as to be able to make growth so scarcely material dependent that it begins to promote dematerialisation faster than it does growth, until finally it erases our dematerialisation deficits. From idea to application Two examples of where we can apply dematerialisation come to mind: first, the North/South issue is one of the most complex and politically charged issues in sustainable development. It boils down to this: How much extra responsibility should the North bear so that the South may be given enough room to grow? For decades, we have been mired in international wrangling over the famous 0.7 per cent of GDP aid given by the North to the South. The debate has been conducted often without common grounds or metrics, which are prerequisites for meaningful negotiations. For the dialogue to be meaningful it must be based on a scientific approach. Can we put a number on how much extra the North should do? If we cannot put a precise number, quantitatively meaningful answers are not difficult. To start, we can divide the world into two -- a North bloc representing economies that have per capita incomes above $10,000 per year and a South bloc below that level. Both are growing now at approximately three per cent a year. Sustainability is achieved when dematerialisation equals growth that is three per cent per year. If the North can dematerialise at one per cent beyond its minimum requirements (three per cent), the South would gain approximately two per cent of extra growth. How much difference would this two per cent growth surplus make? Recent studies show that the South would be able to expand its 50-year growth from 4.4 times under the baseline scenario to 11 times. At this rate, North/South income disparity at the end of the 50-year period would be reduced from approximately 4:1 to 1.5:1. Human ills far beyond sustainability problems would be greatly relieved if this would actually occur. This demonstration, while simplified, should give us a quantitatively meaningful feel for the size of the North/South issue of sustainable development. The answer to the question I raised, "Can we put a number on how much the North should give?" is yes, we can. The answer is one per cent extra dematerialisation beyond meeting its own minimum requirements for sustainability. This is an ambitious goal but attainable. Second, another major problem facing the future of our planet is climate change and global warming. We all know the potential catastrophic impact of such change. Current policy for the reduction of greenhouse gases causing climate change is mainly concerned with energy saving, shifting to the use of low-carbon fuels and the implementation of sustainable energy technologies. Recent studies show that a strategy directed at dematerialisation could make a considerable contribution to reducing carbon dioxide emissions. Moreover, these studies show that the costs to society as a whole of such a measure appear to be very low. Such an approach was considered as a positive means to achieving a reduction of carbon dioxide emissions in European countries. The Dutch government has made a start. It incorporated efficient materials management as a theme to be expanded upon in new long-term agreements between the government and business community in the quest to meet the reduction targets for greenhouse gases set by the Kyoto Protocol. Towards a sustainable future If we start now, dematerialisation rates could reach a sustainability balance in 30- 50 years. Cleaner production began quickly but slowed down, running into increasingly higher costs and diminishing returns. Bits- for-atoms started more slowly but began to accelerate as people's wellbeing is increasingly derived from virtual things. At the same time, as underdevelopment is gradually disappearing due to stimulated globalisation and to development in the developing world, growth rates across the globe are expected to slow down. Those who advocate dematerialisation claim that sometime during this century the contribution by cleaner production will have run out and bits-for-atoms will take over. Growth will no longer be materially dependent. Dematerialisation deficits will be automatically erased and sustainable development achieved. * The writer is former secretary general of the United Nations Environment Program. 2000 GHG Emission by country (MMT CO2e) source WRI What does CO2 eq mean? ï The standard method of counting greenhouse gas emissions is defined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) with 6 types of greenhouse gases. ï Each gas is assigned a 100-year Global Warming Potential (GWP) that says how much warming the gas produces compared to carbon dioxide; the bigger the number, the greater the warming. The following are the most important of the global warming gases. They are listed by name and chemical symbol or acronym, along with their GWP. ï Carbon dioxide (CO2), GWP = 1 ï Methane (CH4), GWP = 21 ï Nitrous oxide (N2O), GWP = 310 ï Perfluorocarbons (PFC), GWP = 6,500 to 9,200 ï Hydrofluorocarbons (HFC), GWP = 140 to 11,700 ï Sulfur hexafluoride (SF6), GWP = 23,900 ï The emissions of each gas are multiplied by their GWP to vie the carbon dioxide equivalent emissions, or CO2 Eq.
