I-1.7 : The Global System for Sustainable Development (GSSD). Distinguishing and Relating the Pieces to Reach a Unitary Vision.

 A. Introduction

My introduction to sustainable development occurred when David Pines invited me to a Santa Fe (SFI) 1990 workshop on sustainable development attended by world class scientists, including several Nobel Prize winners, scholars, business and media executives, lawyers and others. George Cowan, a distinguished scientist, a physical chemist and founder of the Santa Fe Institute, wrote notes on sustainability in 1991 which was a report on this workshop and his own thinking, which is in part summarized below in paragraphs a through e.

David Pines is a distinguished physicist, one of the founders of the Santa Fe Institute (SFI) and colleague of my father-in-law who was the head of the Physics Department at the University of Illinois and a Director of the Radiation Laboratory at MIT during World War II.

Among those attending this SFI workshop was Professor Nazli Choucri, an MIT professor of Political Science and a drafter of Agenda 21 which lists problems covered by the concept of sustainable development. Since the SFI workshop, she developed the Global System for Sustainable Development (GSSD) with some help from me and more important contributions by other academics at MIT, her students and others discussed later in this article. She, along with George Cowan, have been important teachers for me in increasing my knowledge and ideas about how to reach sustainable development.

 

a.      Population

During discussions in the SFI 1990 workshop, one of the major concerns the group had then was of uncontrolled continuing population growth. According to a U.N. study released in 2005, the growth in population could decline after reaching 9.1 billion in 2050 if the fertility rate decreased. This leveling off, if it actually occurs, is at least in part due to more education of women and the increasing use of birth control in less developed countries.

 

b.      Energy

This report underlined the problem and importance of the rapidly accelerating growth in the use of energy and its effect on climate change. By 2050, it is now estimated our energy needs will at least double. He also distinguished the long term problems –the finding and developing renewable and non-exhaustible energy sources required to fuel our modern consumer way of life, which he thought could take up to three generations of research and development.

 

c.       Human Behavior

He also noted the great difficulties in changing "deeply imbedded patterns of human behavior" where change is necessary to reach sustainability. He continued with the idea that "Presumably, the less mobile aspects of human behavior are determined by genes and the more mobile parts by nurture" and added that there is often much resistance to change in governmental and social institutions. Significant change in people's behavior generally occurs when a problem becomes urgent in times of war, financial or other crisis or when there is especially charismatic leadership in a community or nation.

 

d.      Other Problems

His report lists sustainability problems of poverty, migration, conflicts, pollution, deforestation, appropriate management of agriculture and the need for collective security.

 

e.       Science and Technology

Cowan characterized science and technology as being the "the most mobile fields" if one realizes more innovation has happened in the 20^th century than in all other centuries combined.

At this workshop, it became evident to me that if the business community did not take action to help solve sustainability problems, not much would happen. Such action could most easily come about by legislation and market forces if organized to make appropriate action profitable. The business community, in partnership with government, has demonstrated they can get useful research done and attempt to invent ways to find technical fixes for sustainability problems in addition to social solutions. Increase in greater social consciousness, including better ethics in business and a heightened responsibility for the public welfare will be necessary. This is part of being a good citizen so society can work well. Businesses are often our most powerful citizens and their actions cause significant social consequences for the benefit of society or they can cause severe ecological and social harm.

Since the 1990 workshop, with Nazli Choucri's encouragement and her supplying me with a number of important reading materials such as Our Common Future[1] and Al Gores' bestselling Earth in Balance –Ecology and the Human Spirit[2], my understanding of this subject was further advanced. After reading Al Gores' book, due to my early experience as a trial lawyer, I reached another conclusion, i.e. that this subject was too complicated for the average person to understand unless it was broken down into smaller and more comprehensible pieces, and relationships within the system explained. It seemed obvious that we needed to start to educate our children and the average citizen to understand these problems. It will probably take more than one generation to learn how to think differently and to change our culture. So in order to simplify sustainable development enough to begin educating young people, I was inspired by the Chinese saying that a picture is worth a thousand words and tried to draw a simplified picture of sustainable development and its different elements. See Figure 1.

In this earliest sketch, my interest was particularly strong in highlighting the connection or link between different actions indicated by arrows. Note intensive agriculture pollutes ground water due to fertilizers. Increasing agricultural land by deforestation alleviates poverty but reduces the absorption of CO2 by the trees and is one of the causes of climate change. Pestilence limits population growth as does education which also affects ideological beliefs. Human activities, i.e. agriculture and urbanization, eliminate other species at an increasing rate.

Figure 1

Before one of her talks in sustainable development in France, I showed this sketch to Professor Choucri. She said she thought it was "interesting". With this germ of idea, she returned to MIT and began working on the Global System for Sustainable Development not for children or for the man in the street, but for policy-makers, international organizations, scholars, companies and other entities interested in gaining access to the latest detailed and usually complex reliable knowledge on specific problems of sustainable development. She was right that it was important to direct our attention this way in order to get industries and others moving in the right direction. The education of children and ordinary people should happen in parallel. This effort should profit from the useful knowledge collected, created and disseminated by a knowledge system which she created and called the GSSD. She enlisted the remarkable expertise available in the MIT faculty and the support of its able student body to help create this knowledge network. It took a number of years to design and define the concepts of the elements of the Global System for Sustainable Development (GSSD), to logically organize their relationships and create a useful knowledge network for sustainable development. An indirect method of securing a peer review of her accomplishment occurred when a U.S. patent was secured for the GSSD. This system has not been finished since other useful information needs to be added. In addition it needs to be dynamic and change in order to reflect new developments so it does not become out-of-date.

The work on the Global System for Sustainable Development continued with international cooperation of many people and institutions in order to incorporate websites of other reliable producers of knowledge and to collect, make available and encourage creation of new knowledge to add to the GSSD which will help us to reach sustainable development.

Professor Choucri edited and wrote significant parts in a 2007 book: Mapping Sustainability[3] which describes what she, her students, her colleagues at MIT and other providers of knowledge have accomplished since 1990.

The first part of the book is theoretical and analytical as well as methodological and computational. It is computational in that it explains how the GSSD rides on the information revolution with knowledge networking on the Internet using the power of computers to work on sustainability problems which B.R. Allenby describes as the "mutually reinforcing the dimensions of the human future". See page 48. This book gives a description or inventory of the nature, definition and the construction of what is included in the GSSD described as "ontology" by Professor Choucri, i.e. its "being".

The MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory was instrumental in drawing upon a novel set of computational tools for exploring a range of system design and implementation issues.

Sustainable development is subject to different definitions by different people. It is also difficult and complex because it is not easy to find affordable solutions to many environmental problems and because the way to reach sustainability varies in different localities and depends on what problems occur and upon whether the focus is local, regional or global. In addition, the long term is often required for sustainable development problems to manifest themselves. The fact that most people, including leaders and politicians, are more concerned with immediate problems complicates any solution of long term problems. Immediate problems get attention –long term problems tend to be ignored until they become urgent with the risk that with the passage of time it becomes too late to fix them.

The French government is giving a high priority and actively seeking solutions to unsustainability through legislation, taxation or other governments actions through its Minister for Sustainable Development, Mr. Borloo. It has made instituted committees suggesting 268 commitments to move toward sustainability which subjects have been submitted to its legislature[4].

On the other hand, the U.S. government has in the past been more passive, in part for political reasons, apparently believing that the free market system would provide technological solutions to these problems. In the U.S., both political parties and the particular Republican Party had a preference to avoid government intervention to which many businesses are hostile on the theory that government interference in business through regulation increases costs of operation and stifles innovation.

Ronald Reagan thought that the government was the problem not the answer. He was right because government action is often inefficient and ineffective but there is clearly an important role for government in providing public services and enforcing basic rules when it functions efficiently.

It will be most interesting to see what President Obama can do since he has announced there will be change and policies will be different. He recognizes the unsustainability of relying on foreign oil for energy. His success will depend on whether he can convince the legislature and the major companies, including oil companies, to cooperate with his policies despite the fact that their short term interests may not favor actions necessary to reach sustainability such as inventing cheap new renewable energy sources. Exxon has just invested huge sums to increase its supply of liquefied gas in Qatar where the world's largest natural gas reserves are located. This investment is for profit and is also "green".

 

B. Sustainable Development Defined

The most common definition is found in our Common Future on page 8 where it is stated that humanity has the ability to make development sustainable –to ensure that it meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.

The somewhat expanded definition of sustainable development given in Mapping on page 12 is: "The process of meeting the needs of current and future generations without undermining the resilience of life-supporting properties of nature and the integrity and security of social systems". This definition implies that the action of man has unfortunately begun and continues this process since many, if not most, serious observers note that evidence of this undermining has already occurred.

 

C. What is the GSSD?

The easiest way to begin to understand the GSSD is by looking at the diagrams mapping sustainable development. This is a form of visualization, a technique of representing situations and facts in a way that facilitates understanding and analysis. For a more detailed explanation of visualization, see Carlos I Ortiz's chapter "Visualization" on pages 231 to 261 of Mapping.

Figure 2 shows the different kinds of domains covered by Mapping. The domains are the first framework upon which the GSSD is based and built.

Figure 2

Figure 3 below shows the fourteen domains chosen to represent most of the areas where sustainability problems arise in the form of slices of a circle. These are represented as slices in the circle separated by dotted lines to emphasize the fact that the relationships of these domains are fluid, often overlapping or joined together to create sustainability problems in various ways.

Figure 3

Next comes the Dimensions, in Figure 4 below, which have circles overlaying the slices. The center circle represents the human activities which cause or have caused the problems in the next circle. Once these are described, then solutions are considered. First comes the circle of technical solutions, i.e. scientific answers. The next circle is devoted to social solutions which include laws, regulations, social solution, ethics and other solutions human beings can contribute to reaching sustainability as distinguished from technical or scientific advances.

Figure 4

This separation into separate circles does not imply that both types of solutions, technical and social, do not need to be applied to the same sustainable problems, which is often the case. On the contrary in most cases, solutions require both technical, financial, economic and human solutions to solve a problem.

Figure 5

It should be specially noted that the outermost circle relates to international responses which includes both Domains and Dimensions but also includes references to international agreements, conferences, and other rubrics containing a mixture of many technical and social solutions but on an international level. Within this circle on the top is Agenda 21 which was released at the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio and the program was adopted by 178. The program lists the (1) social and economic dimensions combating poverty, changing consumption, population concerns, integrating development and environmental concerns, (2) conservation and management of resources, combating deforestation, correct agricultural practices, (3) strengthening the role of major groups –women, children, workers and (4) deals with means of implementation –financial resources, transfer environmentally sound technology, using science, international institutional arrangements, legal instructions and the spread of information. Thus Agenda 21 at the top of this circle encompasses many elements already found in the GSSD but focuses on the international formulation of these problems. But it is a necessary complement to the other parts of GSSD.

 

Figure 6 shows a further break down into cells, concepts and subconcepts that are found in lists in Appendix A "Guide to Core Concepts" by subjects shown in each slice throughout the various fourteen domains.

Figure 6

Figure 7

The GSSD serves as a framework for organizing in an inclusive way, as possible, the different elements in sustainable development and seeks to make explicit the connectivity logic of the system, how different pieces in the system are connected and dependent upon others. It is hoped that the connections between the different concepts and subconcepts will be automatically integrated in the GSSD computer system as further progress is made, i.e. these relationships will be part of the system and be searchable electronically. Thus relationships not necessarily obvious will be delivered to researchers.

 

D. How Does the GSSD Work?

Chapters 2, 3, 4 and 5 of Mapping go into the details how the GSSD is organized to process the knowledge considered worthy of entering the system, the preparation of abstracts (see Figure 8 for a sample abstract) and the transition from one language to another.

Figure 8

The Global Workflow Strategy is found in Chapter 3 which includes selection and content provision, identifying content and coverage. This chapter also lists the type of materials which are included, i.e. agreements, bibliographies, reports, journals, case studies, definitions/theories, events, indicators/data, models and organizations. The multilingual workflow process is described in detail in the chapter in Figure 3.2, including non-English submissions and English submissions requiring a non English version.

Chapter 4 focuses on the types of cyber partnerships that constitute the GSSD among other subjects such as GSSD operational roles and functions. The various partners are also outlined, i.e. content partner, translation partner, mirror site partner, development collaborator and general support. This chapter also raises the necessity to transcend the dominance of English.

 

E.   The GSSD is the Result of Extensive Cooperative International Effort

Colleagues at MIT and other universities, undergraduate and graduate students, both inside and outside the United States, Lotus-IBM and other companies and organizations have worked with Professor Choucri, who masterminded Mapping, edited it and wrote substantial parts of it.

The development of the GSSD has served as a useful tool for educating students who have worked with the faculty to create and operate the GSSD on the web.

A network of different actors participates in this activity in their own self-interest to increase their knowledge and/or in the public interest by contributing their own knowledge. These actors are governments, universities, the United Nations, companies, non-governmental organizations and others. They are a consortium of prestigious and carefully chosen knowledge contributors through their own websites or parts of them which are chosen to become part of the GSSD. These entities are expected to update the information they provide on their website and, to the extent they do not maintain this reliability and quality of their information or do not remain current, they are removed from the system.

The subject of sustainable development is especially attractive to many young people who seek to work in activities in the public interest rather than for private profit. These efforts also serve to help private enterprise become a part of a sustainable future. This is essential because if business does not actively participate in trying to reach sustainability it will not happen.

Thus the efforts in creating and operating the GSSD serves several purposes which include the education of undergraduate and graduate students who work on it. In addition it provides government policy makers with an effective tool to help them recommend solutions to politicians, allows industry to help solve its sustainability problems, and helps to educate the public which needs to understand and induce politicians to take appropriate action to move towards sustainability. This is essential to a properly functioning democracy.

 

F.   Other Important Sustainability Subjects Analyzed

(i)          In part II of "Mapping the GSSD, ARABIC", Chapter 7 outlines problems and opportunities in the Arab world of creating an Arabic GSSD system in Lebanon at the American University of Beirut.

(ii)         Chapter 8 "GSSD China Collaboration on Knowledge E-Networking" focuses on the work of the Administrative Center for China's Agenda 21 in the government of China Ministry of Science and Technology, the first international collaborator in the development of the GSSD.

(iii)        "Strategies for Re-Engineering Global Knowledge E-Networks" is the subject dealt within Chapter 9. The work in this chapter reviews and assesses GSSD performance.

(iv)       Chapter 10 deals with the value of knowledge for extended commercial enterprises –a crucial element in decision-making necessary for survival.

(v)        "GSSD - Enterprise for Multinational Corporations" in Chapter 11 deals with knowledge –linkages between subsidiaries and central management in large international companies who are themselves meta-networks of smaller knowledge networks in subsidiary nodes.           
Part III of Mapping continues with explorations of new areas of research relevant to sustainability.

(vi)       "Visualization", the subject of the next chapter, highlights current visualization technologies relevant to globalization and the global system.

(vii)      "Exploring E-Governance - Salience, Trends and Challenges" is the subject of Chapter 13. The subject is important because individuals and institutions rely more and more upon automated systems to produce better government.

(viii)    "Growing Clean?" Property Rights, Economics Growth and the Environment" of Chapter 14 examines the elusive relationship between levels of economic growth and environmental outcomes and finds that neither economic growth nor property rights protection appears to lead to an improvement in environmental quality.

(ix)       Chapter 15, "Globalization and International Trade", utilizes insights from graph theory or the study of networks which is a representation of a system stability and instability in the contest of sustainability. The graph theory as it develops appears to new and interesting directions for research in sustainability.

(x)        "Synergy for sustainability - Law, Science and Computability" is the title of Chapter 16. This chapter examines the role of law and ethics, often embodied in law, in the GSSD and its use in combination with science, technology, medicine and the social sciences. This chapter also deals with the question "Who controls the Internet?" which, like the law itself, is a complex adaptive systme.

(xi)       Chapter 27, "Financial Risks and Climate Change", examines how the banking system is beginning to take into account the risks associated with financing infrastructures in light of climate change and limitations of the production of CO2.

(xii)      "Interactive Gaming and Simulation of World Politics" is the subject of Chapter 18.

(xiii)    Chapter 19 compares basic and complex logic in international relations.

(xiv)    Chapter 20 provides a conclusion to Mapping.

 

G. Ethics of Sustainable Development

In the Dimensions (circles) just outside those technical solutions appear social solutions which include the social sciences, regulatory solutions, economics, politics, philosophy and ethics.

But more generally and more importantly, implicit in the underlying purpose of the GSSD is the assumption that all of this effort is to safeguard the best interest of our planet and the societies of the people living on it. The GSSD is a guide for companies who, in addition to earning profit, are given the knowledge on how they can be responsible civic minded ethical citizens. They are responsible for avoiding harming our planet and its inhabitants. Up to now, we have exploited our natural surroundings, generally ignoring the harm done to the earth's systems and the damage to our citizens.

The GSSD focuses on useful knowledge necessary to avoid harm to the earth's systems and human beings. The GSSD itself encourages ethical conduct by maximizing knowledge. One person should not pretend to serve another if not knowledgeable and competent. Now economy of resources will need to emphasize saving money and resources.

This implies a new kind of ethics that lead to sustainable development. We need a different way of thinking about the world and our roles in it. The primary focus in the past was on rapid exploitation of the earth's resources without seriously taking into account negative effects.

In order to reach such an objective, new laws and regulations are required and new ethics to supplement them. We have also recently seen much soft law –declarations of principles and creation of norms which, although not laws or regulations, often are the first step to national laws or international treaties. Laws and regulations, establishment of norms and declarations and ethics are designed to protect the interest of society as a whole. Our western culture is largely dominated by individualism, self seeking and competition –not a bad thing in itself provided it does not seriously damage the interests of society as a whole and is balanced by actions improving social wellbeing. Sustainable development seeks to strike a reasonable balance between these two goals. Unless we choose to live in a police state where laws and regulations govern almost every action, government regulation should only cover basic rules and to the extent possible, encourage social responsibility and ethical conduct in the interest of society. Economic freedom within reasonable limits and encouraging entrepreneurship are also important values in a society since they encourages the production of wealth. Other forces help induce ethical conduct on the part of businesses –leadership, criticism in the press of bad conduct, public opinion and litigation where laws are violated.

So, ethics, law and order are a fundamental part of the raison d'être of the GSSD; not only are they reflected in the circle of social solutions but they also underlie the whole system. Failure to insure that development is sustainable in the future could result in great damage to or the end of the human race. It is surely unethical to do serious harm or exterminate the human race. 

 

 

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