State of the World 2010-2011
Rating: 
Worldwatch Institute:
State of the World 2010. Earthscan. ISBN 978 1 84971 054 1
State of the World 2011. Earthscan. ISBN 987 1 84971 352 8
There are few more reliable annual guides to the environment than The Worldwatch Institute’s “State of the World” series. This review looks at the two most recent State of the World 2010 and State of the World 2011.Since their inception in 1994, these annual reports have set the benchmark for environmental analysis not just for the topics they cover but also for the quality of the writing (so students win both ways!).
SotW 2010 focusses on the need to address our increasing demand for consumer goods and the importance of examining this in the light of sustainability. As they acknowledge in the foreword, this is no easy matter. We are looking not at an environmental issue but a cultural one and one that has become increasingly embedded into our way of doing business. The book starts simply enough with an examination of the key events from the past year. The issues, from climate change to global amphibian diseases to governance demonstrate the scale of the problems facing us. The start to the body of the text is equally uncompromising. Our ecological footprint passed the planet’s biocapacity sometime in the late 1980s – we are now living on our capital. Put an other way, if everyone were to live to the US standard of living we could only support 1.3 billion people. From here, it’s a simple step to consider if this consumerism is actually doing us good (we have better access to health in richer nations at least) or harm (from an increasingly degraded environment). It’s this thesis that the book explores. It divides its 26 chapters into 6 themes. The first of these considers the use of cultural traditions – religion, taboo, the work of elders etc. to promote a sustainable message. Since many of these traditions have their origins in pre-industrial societies this is a question of re-aligning the present to the past. Education has always been a key force in the environmental agenda; part two captures four cases from early childhood to university to see how we can promote sustainability. This is crucial given that the strongest messages are taken by the young. It follows that business should also take up the cause. In this part, Constanza (who was one of the first designers of the ecosystem health ideas) joins colleagues to consider how business can work in a world already full of consumers – there’s an endpoint but where do we go from there? Judging by the answers in the following chapters it’s towards boardrooms, small-scale production and social enterprise. Government gets the next call looking at the big social issues: security (environmental rather than political), city design and political participation. Finally, media and social movements get a section each to highlight their case: the need to mobilise people to respond to sustainable lives.
If the 2010 version focussed on consumerism, the 2011 edition looks more at a recurrent theme: food and the way we can get more from diminishing resources. We’ve had the Green Revolution and the problems it caused. We’ve had the ideas of a “starving Africa” that turns out to be far more complex (food production actually increased per hectare in the latter part of the C20th). Now the idea is to move in other directions. The text interleaves its 15 chapters with practical examples showing how and where schemes have been introduced. We start with an overview of the issue and the notion that “agriculture” must go far beyond the fields to encourage better storage, education and even incentives for people to become farmers. The array of ideas from here in is startling. There is hardly any area that has not been discussed or where improvements could not be made. There are the obvious ones like better water usage and water harvesting and the need to use more vegetables whilst improving livestock quality (ideas of better protein). Then there are those chapters highlighting what we’ve been doing for years (research and development) and extending it (women’s networks). We still find warnings about issues (soils in Africa, climate change, biodiversity) and the need to be cleverer (city farms). It’s also good to see neglected areas get their rightful place – food spoilage due to bad storage has been an issue for decades with up to 25% losses so any discussion is valuable. Add to this questions of finance and the need for direct investment and the reader has a great overview about farming in the developing world. A final chapter puts it together as a “roadmap” to get things happening.
These are two excellent publications that certainly continue the standards of the past. At a time of web access there are always questions for texts like these but that is to miss the real value. These are not just for reading through but for skipping between. They link ideas in ways it’s difficult to follow on screen. As always, the quality of research and writing sets them apart from other reports. Here are two more highly accessible critiques which should be in any decent educational library.
