Susheel Rao

I was listening to the Forum on BBC’s World Service the other day, and while I can’t remember the detail now, there was an oceanographer on it and she was taking about how much we don’t know about the ocean, and about it being the blue heart of the planet. And it really struck me, and how little I think about the ocean like that. Yet I have that wonderful picture of the blue planet, the views from space. And I remember an old Friend’s of the Earth postcard which had a picture of the earth on it, and said something on the lines of needs loving new owner.  We still do.

We are made up of about 2/3rd water, and I think the earth surface is too, and it makes me think about the holographic universe theory, that we are a hologram of the universe and perhaps we are a hologram of the earth.

I digress, with the amount of water in our bodies, is it surprising that so many of us feel an attraction to the sea? Or is this an island phenomenon? Yet we pollute the ocean, we don’t think about it. There are mile wide plastic islands in the middle of the ocean. We are killing albatross with long line fishing. We appear to see the ocean as our dustbin, whereas in truth it is our lung or perhaps more accurately our planet’s heart. It pumps things round the planet, it affects the air currents, it is full of abundance which we plunder, without thought of what we do. Our sense of entitlement to take whatever we want, discard whatever we want, without connecting with the impact it has. As a society, perhaps this reflects how we feel about ourselves? Certainly what we do externally is what we are creating internally.

So perhaps now is the time to start thinking about the ocean, about the ocean within ourselves. Thinking about, seeing, feeling, perhaps hearing those ocean waves,  how the ocean affects our world, how it is the circulatory system of the planet, the blue heart for our planet. And as we connect with that, perhaps connect with your own heart and listen….

The word sustainability does tend to be used by people to mean all sorts of things. It is also used within government, for instance in planning, where there is a general expectation of what it might mean. I recently had a conversation about the expanse of sustainability, and I realised that he saw it as much more contained, rather more like a confined planning definition, rather than the potential of how I think of it. My view of sustainability is that it can be all encompassing, and can provide a thread which ensures that all which is done is done with a holistic view, and one which takes into consideration our planet, and our connection with it.

Just because I have an all encompassing view of sustainability doesn’t mean that I think if you don’t want to look at it that way you should not do anything. If you can only do a little, do a little. If you can only look at one aspect of sustainability do that – just be sure that as you do that you consider the wider picture of what you are doing. Its a bit of ‘do what you can, and don’t beat yourself up about what you can’t’. My main thing on this though is to be honest about what you are doing. It the call a spade a spade thing (or is it a shovel…) – if you are only looking at carbon emissions, say so. Reducing carbon emissions is important and is part of creating a sustainable world, but its only part of it.

I was once on a sustainable homes committee, and very often we would be talking purely about reducing the energy use of homes. I had no problem with that, it is a good thing, I just got very frustrated that this was all we were talking about and that some people seemed to think that this meant a sustainable home.

So for me, part of what sustainability is, is doing what you can within the broad remit of sustainablity and being honest about it.

So why a second post on what is sustainability? Well there will probably quite a few more posts on this as I go on. Now, I want to suggest that what sustainability is and means to different people will, in part, depend on their values. What do I mean by values? Well there are our personal values, which link to our cultural values. By that I mean how we relate to the environment, how we connect with the natural world, what is important to us. Yes there is a lot more about values that I might write, and I may do on a later post. I do want to consider another set of values, that of the Clare Graves values system as set out in the idea of spiral dynamics (www.spiraldynamics.com). This sets out an evolution of how individuals, organisations, communities, nations move through a set of values systems. These relate to tribal – the clannish us, empire – every man for himself, passive hierarchy, active hierarchy – materialism, social network – group and cause, functional flow and global flux. Each stage is neither better nor worse that the other, and each has positive and negative attributes. There is a trend to move from one to another, and occasionally to drop back. It is important to move through each stage to fully develop.

So if we consider the differences in how people act in these different stages, it is logical to consider that what sustainability means at each stage is different. The underlying essence of what it is remains the same, that is living in a way that is in harmony with the planet (so we can continue to live on the planet!), how this translates is necessarily different. This, I feel, is a bit of a thesis, and something I am exploring at the moment. There will be more of this to come, as I explore further.

I know sustainability is used by lots of people to mean all sorts of things. It can be used in the sense of being able to sustain something. This is a good way to think about it, as what I really mean by sustainability is being able to sustain our lives on our planet, at its broadest sense, at what you might say a very big picture level. I have seen loads of different definitions, and this used to frustrate me. Everyone one was jumping on the bandwagon. Although, to be honest, when the idea first came about I thought it was a ‘cop-out’, a way of reducing the importance of the environment compared with, say, the economy. It can be used that way, but I feel that if someone is truly thinking, living, feeling in a sustainable manner, that is not the case. The environment is at a higher order than the economy, if there is no planet, there is no us here, its really that simple. A diagram that illustrates this is below. I am experimenting with this, playing with it, and I will update this as I go along! I am coming to the conclusion that what we interpret as sustainability, how we approach it, depends on where we are at, culturally, societally, and personally. I will talk more of that later. For now, have a look at the diagram, and see what you think of it, does it resonate, can you connect to it, does it look right to you? I wonder…..