Sustainability Challenge from the "Poorest" President in the World

This excerpted BBC article on the World's "Poorest" President is noteworthy. The article is inspiring for its lesson by example (living simply voluntarily) and for its challenge to the world's leaders at Rio+20 regarding their over consumption model of sustainable development; but does living simply and consuming less go far enough for sustainability success? I found the question intriquing and offer a perspective and some resources for a strategic sustainability approach that is gaining momentum. It scales the noble goal of "living simply" (balance with nature's limits) to the global level with an economic decoupling strategy anchored in innovation, doing more with less, and biomimicry.

Living Simply - Is it the Answer?

President of Uruguay, Jose Mujica, has shunned the luxurious house that the Uruguayan state provides for its leaders and opted to stay at his wife's farmhouse, off a dirt road outside the capital, Montevideo. The president and his wife work the land themselves, growing flowers.

This austere lifestyle - and the fact that Mujica donates about 90% of his monthly salary, equivalent to $12,000 (£7,500), to charity - has led him to be labelled the poorest president in the world. His charitable donations - which benefit poor people and small entrepreneurs - mean his salary is roughly in line with the average Uruguayan income of $775 (£485) a month.

Elected in 2009, Mujica spent the 1960s and 1970s as part of the Uruguayan guerrilla Tupamaros, a leftist armed group inspired by the Cuban revolution. He was shot six times and spent 14 years in jail. Most of his detention was spent in harsh conditions and isolation, until he was freed in 1985 when Uruguay returned to democracy.

Those years in jail, Mujica says, helped shape his outlook on life. . . .  I don't feel poor. Poor people are those who only work to try to keep an expensive lifestyle, and always want more and more," he says "This is a matter of freedom. If you don't have many possessions then you don't need to work all your life like a slave to sustain them, and therefore you have more time for yourself," he says.

The Challenge to the Over consumption Model of Sustainability

The Uruguayan leader made a similar point when he addressed the Rio+20 summit in June this year: "We've been talking all afternoon about sustainable development. To get the masses out of poverty.

"But what are we thinking? Do we want the model of development and consumption of the rich countries? I ask you now: what would happen to this planet if Indians would have the same proportion of cars per household than Germans? How much oxygen would we have left?

"Does this planet have enough resources so seven or eight billion can have the same level of consumption and waste that today is seen in rich societies? It is this level of hyper-consumption that is harming our planet."

Mujica accuses most world leaders of having a "blind obsession to achieve growth with consumption, as if the contrary would mean the end of the world".

The Real Sustainability Challenge

Living simply is one answer. It is likely part of the answer, possibly in a different form. But in this world of increasing ecological resource depletion and ecological services destruction, our present trajectory of catastrophic climate change unless we change course substantially by 2018, and the 50% increase in global population of +3B to a total of 9B by 2050, will it be enough?

The "living simply" of the future will likely look different than the present. It will require scaling solutions that allow for a net zero and environmentally restorative economy at a global level. And on this point, President  Mujica is absolutely correct. The over consumption model is not a model for an ecologically sustainable, wildly prosperous and secure economy with equity and community well-being for all.

The sustainability challenge humanity faces involves the following:

1. A 150-200-year mitigation program to reverse climate change and stabilize it at mid-twentieth century condtions or better, and using methods that also maximally advance the sustainability transformation of our economy and society.

2. An equivalent climate adaptation program to defend against the "soft" landing during the 200-year mitigation period, using methods that also maximally advance the sustainability transformation.

3. Creating an equitable ecologically sustainable society and economy that can support 100% of humanity at standards that realize each individual's maximum human potential and self awareness, with net zero or restorative environmental and social effects.

4. Doing so by 2050 at the same time that the planet's population increases by 50% (roughly from 2000), from 6B to 9B, with the arrival of the next 3 billion travelers on spaceship earth by 2050, and hopefully a point of global population stabilization according to demographers.

Meeting this challenge effectively will require a massive, Marshall Plan-like effort, but globally and focused on sustainability, a la Thomas Friedman (Hot Flat & Crowded) and others (Lester Brown). It will require mastering the "chess game" of strategic sustainability, and buying as much time as possible and making as much progress as possible by using the four key strategies of natural capitalism, particularly as applied in RMI's Reinventing Fire program designed to get the U.S. economy (or any economy) off oil by 2050, thereby meeting the imperatives of reversing climate change to avoid catastrophe, and growth the economy by 50% too.

That is the trick, decoupling economic production, consumption, and growth  from systematically destroying the environment, the regenerative biospheric life support system of the planet. This is possible by using the goals of zero negative or restorative impacts as the design principles in redesigning our economy, our production and consumption. Each of us can learn this method of strategic sustainability, and in combination with technical experts, apply it in our own lives, businesses, government agencies, etc. This path requires innovation, and productivity increases that actually will increase real and durable wealth, thereby attaining humanity's long sought goals of economic sufficiency and security for all. Sustainability is the concept kernel, the DNA, of durable economic prosperity and security, and community well being for all. Sustainable development is the innovation mode and platform that gets us there. 

This knowledge and these strategies show humanity how to stop "killing the golden goose" with the very economy that they think is "fattening" it. By stopping the destruction, and by shifting human production and consumption to mimic the principles of nature, of the biosphere, that is, the economic principlesof a regenerative life support system, humanity will finally tap the holy grail of the real "golden goose." The real "golden goose" is the infinite supply and abundance from cycling materials driven by solar energy, and without systematically adding toxic material to the biosphere that bioaccumulates in an ever-increasingly toxic food chain or otherwise continually poisons humanity's environment to the point of no return and systems collapse. This infinite supply of cycled materials is not a silver bullet and does not imply the absence of material limits to the biosphere's capacity to support life and humans. But it does illustrate that the boundaries of those limits are not fixed, but can be moved on a sustained basis, first by syncing the human economy with the material cycling, nontoxic, solar-energy-driven economic principles of regenerative life support systems, and then by increasing productivity within that system, up to a point.

Designing an equitable social system around the ecologically sustainable economy will be rooted in a system that is barrier-free to humans meeting their fundamental human needs. Doing so will eliminate all sources of poverty, including voice, representation, and non-exploitative participation in society and the economy.

In addition, doing so will require recognizing the role of mental models in understanding the nature of the challenge and an effective response as Donella Meadows so eloquently summarizes in Beyond the Limits. To those who say there is not enough time or resources, Donella Meadow responds that there is "just enough" time and resources if we begin now, full speed ahead; the choice is ours; our future is not pre-ordained (see the end of this post) but we must begin now.