Sustainability Criterion #4: Meet Basic Human Needs

What does sustainability have to do, if anything, with social justice? If Lawrence Township is to become a truly sustainable eco-community, its 32,000 residents will have to feel their basic human needs are being met. Food, shelter, safety, freedom – all these and more. You’re not going to think and act sustainably if you’re cold, hungry, endangered or disempowered.

Previously in this feature we covered the other three necessary conditions for sustainability, namely the importance of eliminating three things: dependence on fossil fuel and rare minerals, prevalence of synthetic (human-made) substances in the environment, and destruction of natural eco-systems.

Now we want to explore the fourth and final condition for sustainability: social needs. This will complete our survey of the four conditions for sustainability known as The Natural Step, developed by 50 Swedish scientists and used widely in Europe and North America, as well as here in Lawrence Township.

Sustainability is not simply an environmental issue. It’s not only about “being green”, although we certainly won’t make much progress without a sharp increase in our environmental smarts. But that’s not the whole challenge. At bottom, sustainability requires us to adopt a fresh perspective on the way we relate to the natural world. And we’re going to have a hard time re-focusing ourselves if we cannot see our way clear to meeting everyone’s fundamental needs.

What are these needs? Here’s a list of nine published by the eminent Chilean economist Manfred Max-Neef. It’s a pretty fair compilation. If you’re missing satisfaction on one or more of these for any length of time, you’ll really feel it. And notice: the only one of the nine you can satisfy with material objects is the first.

• Sustenance: food, water, clothing, shelter, health care.
• Safety: protection from physical assault and against physical violation.
• Appreciation, affection, devotion: love and rich, nourishing companionship.
• Understanding, clarity: opportunities to be seen clearly for who you are.
• Participation: awareness that your voice contributes and receives acknowledgment of its contributions.
• Leisure, relaxation, rest: recreation and more, including moments to stop and put everything down for a time.
• Creativity: self-expression through art, culture, cooking, conversation, anything.
• Identity, meaning: call it higher purpose, or just a good reason to get up each day.
• Freedom, liberty: assured rights of self-expression and action.

You may recognize something else about these items. It’s impossible to satisfy any of them permanently all by yourself. We need others to understand the value of these and to cooperate with us in making sure opportunities to meet these needs will be available and will continue.

And one more thing. They cut both ways. If we expect to have our needs met, we’re going to have to chip in to make sure the needs of others are met as well. Sustainability, like community, is indivisible. It’s a two-way street. If you wait around for other people or institutions (governments, employers, religious congregations) to do it all for you, it won’t happen. Never has, never will.

Archive:
Blog Entry on Natural Step Criteria
Blog Entry on Criteria #1
Blog Entry on Criteria #2
Blog Entry on Criteria #3
Blog Entry on Criteria #4