By Craig Lindell
Ignoring the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg tells us more about ourselves as a nation, than it does about our current Administration.
Johannesburg is further expression of an ambivalence that thwarts the formation of a common basis for action. That ambivalence leads to indecisiveness and neglect that now threaten the integrity of natural systems on which human communities depend. That the United States had to be shamed into supporting the Johannesburg goal of providing sanitation by 2015 is indicative of how isolated and indifferent a nation state can become.
The 1972 report "The Limits to Growth" challenged conventional thinking and the spirit of western civilization with the conclusion that, "if present growth trends in world population, industrialization, pollution, food production and resource depletion continued unchanged, the limits to growth on the planet would be reached within the next hundred years."
Twenty years later, Donella Meadows (the primary author of "The Limits to Growth") and two of her colleagues published a short article entitled "Beyond the Limits to Growth" (In Context, Summer 1992, p. 10). In it, she reported that an update of their study suggested that after 20 years we were "closer to overshoot and collapse," but that sustainability was still achievable. However it was this idea of "limits" that haunted Meadows and led to her conclusion that the transition to a sustainable world was "technologically and economically possible," but that it was "politically and psychologically daunting."
While it may be difficult to identify with limits at the global level, at the local level we are being challenged by the realities of "overshoot and collapse." I live in southeastern Massachusetts. On Cape Cod, approximately 157,000 homes on septic systems are polluting their own drinking water. In one coastal town, the conflict between a developer's property rights and the public interest in the underlying drinking water resources shows no sign of resolve. In another, the harbor continues to deteriorate into a greener and greener haze from nutrient loading. The entire region south of Boston is under tremendous growth pressure without the political will to do the hard work of rezoning to preserve open space.
If you are reading this editorial, the chances are that you or someone you know can compile a similar list of unsustainable circumstances where you live.
One of five thematic papers commissioned for the Johannesburg Summit concluded that water resources are more in jeopardy because of a lack of water management than water scarcity.
We are now 30 years into the projected 100 years of The Limits to Growth. Of optimists and pessimists there are many. For those actively engaged, the task is, indeed, "politically and psychologically daunting."
The best of our leadership has offered a perspective on the challenging path to integrated water resource and watershed management.
From Larry Selzer of the National Forum for Nonpoint Source Pollution, we have been given the "Origins of a watershed framework for conservation":
"It will be community based and technology driven. It will fully integrate economic reality into environmental protection. It will be based on collaboration, not confrontation, and it will be led by the non-profit and private sectors."
From Tracy Mehan of the EPA Office of Water, we are reminded of the inadequacies of our existing institutions:
"Times have changed dramatically since the existing regulatory framework was put in place. U Today, we must compete in an extremely competitive world market. U Point source controls alone are not capable of achieving or maintaining ambient environmental standards. U The assimilative capacity of our environment is limited and the technological and economic limitations of our existing regulatory framework are at hand. U Complex problems require innovative solutions and entail a change in paradigm."
From Mike Cook of the EPA Office of Wastewater, we are told where to look for leadership:
"Wastewater utility leaders are the ones who will have to take leadership U the mayors won't, EPA won't and Congress won't U only POTW efforts will lead other political leaders to become full partners in the cause of clean water."
From Bruce Babbitt's Keynote Address at WEFTEC 2001, we are mindful of our expanding responsibilities:
"You are in the water supply industry, and you are not only water supply managers, but you are increasingly going to be watershed managers."
The Johannesburg Conference is over. Now we know that in the quest for integrated water resource management, centralized leadership is no more viable than centralized infrastructure. It seems to be within the nature of nation states to resist setting limits on their authority. Will our domestic institutions adapt to the demands of integrated water resource management or will their threatened interests and the reluctance of their leadership prove to be equally resistant to forming the collaborative efforts and assuming responsibilities for change that their own leadership acknowledges is essential?
About the Author: Craig Lindell is a founder and Chief Executive Officer of Aquapoint. He has served as a director and he is now a technical advisor to the Board of Directors of the Coalition for Buzzards Bay, a National Estuaries Program. He is also a member of the Board of Directors of the Water and Wastewater Equipment Manufacturers Association (WWEMA).
