The postgraduate studies department of the Faculty of Engineering organized a webinar on sustainability to discuss the problems and challenges facing development today. Two specialists invited us to rethink how we perceive the world and proposed new ways of understanding sustainable development.
The webinar was opened by Environmental Engineer Iván Eglis , director of the Environment area of the Faculty of Engineering , who shared a historical overview of environmental management to understand how we got to the current situation where it is necessary to propose new development paradigms.
We are currently exceeding planetary boundaries: humanity is outpacing Earth's capacity to sustain life. The following graphic shows where each planetary boundary falls:
This context helps us understand that the current development model is incompatible with the Earth's capacity to sustain, in the medium and long term, the living conditions we know . Furthermore, sustainable development strategies are proving insufficient. Given these conditions, what can be done going forward?
To answers to this question, Gonzalo del Castillo, executive director of Club of Rome Argentina and the Sustainability Center for Local Governments (CeSus) shared new development models that do not threaten life. Among these, He introduced us to the world of regenerative development, which presents a an ethical perspective that puts the care of life at the center. Gonzalo emphasized that we are at a unique moment in the history of humanity in terms of knowledge: we are a society founded on technical rationality, science has never been as evolved as it is today. Despite this, what the Club of Rome warned of as a possibility in its report "The Limits to Growth" (1972) has now become a reality: we are on the verge of planetary boundaries. If current civilizational models are not modifiednn drastically, we run the certain and imminent risk of descending into a process of systemic collapse in which both the human population and its levels of well-being and consumption will no longer be able to sustain themselves.
Gonzalo shared an excerpt from the report The Limits to Growth (1972), by the Club of Rome:
“The set of possible futures encompasses a wide variety of trajectories. There could be a sudden collapse, or a smooth transition to sustainability, but none of the possible futures include indefinite growth in physical production levels under any scenario. This option is not possible on a finite planet. The only real options are to reduce the production levels that sustain human activities to sustainable levels through conscious decision-making, technology, and human organizations, or to let nature force the decision through food, energy, or material shortages, or through increasing environmental degradation.”
The alternative model that was already being discussed in the 70s has yet to be implemented… why? Gonzalo pointed out that it's due to society's short-term focus, fueled by an exacerbated model of resource production and consumption. Over the last 50 years, there has been an unprecedented increase in resource availability, and therefore, in human well-being. This led to a development model centered almost exclusively on economic and technological aspects, but one that ignored and obscured the associated environmental costs and impacts, which are now undeniable.
In this context, regenerative development argues that the model of the last 50 years has been degenerative, with all environmental indicators reflecting tremendously negative results. The change must be drastic: the conventional model, with its logic of mitigating impacts and consuming moderately, is no longer sufficient. A further step is needed: humankind must be understood as an integral part of nature, to be a co-participant in the process of life's diversification. This is the most disruptive aspect of regenerative development.
According to the expert, the Sustainable Development Goals set in 2015 are now insufficient in terms of sustainability. Progress on the goals has not been even; those related to protecting the planet have not improved. Gonzalo proposed a new way of organizing the goals, placing at the base those that are most important, as they are prerequisites for the other goals: climate action, biodiversity conservation, and marine life. The current model has forgotten that nature is the foundation for all development.
A new way of framing the Sustainable Development Goals:
Scientific knowledge is now on everyone's lips: we are in the midst of a multi-faceted environmental crisis. The most problematic aspect is that it is a conceptual problem, defined by the specialist as a "cosmological problem." Modern humankind , based on its instrumental capacity, has posited as one of its main cosmological principles the idea of being something distinct from nature. In doing so, it has reduced nature to a source of matter and energy, ignoring that humankind itself is an inseparable part of it: "It is a factual matter that we are one with nature," argued del Castillo.
Regenerative development seeks to enable human societies to collaborate in nature's natural processes of regeneration. To achieve this, del Castillo proposes revisiting biomimetic thinking to design any project or public policy based on nature's principles. Some of the proposed principles include: 1) using locally available resources (a break from globalization), 2) generating no waste and recycling everything , 3) recognizing that everything is symbiotically connected, 4) prioritizing cooperation over competition , and 5) promoting diversity.
The expert shared several success stories of initiatives aligned with regenerative development. To learn more about these projects and rethink how development is currently being carried out, we invite you to listen to the full webinar at the following link.
About Gonzalo del Castillo
Gonzalo del Castillo holds a degree in Political Science. He is the Executive Director of the Club of Rome Argentina and the Center for Sustainability for Local Governments (CeSus). He is an Associate Member of the Club of Rome International and a member of La Ciudad Posible (a certified B Corporation). He is the Co-Director of the Circular Economy Laboratory at the National University of Rafaela (UNRaf) and of the Diploma Program in Ecosystem Development and Circular Economy (UCAECE and UNRaf). He consults for public and private, national and international organizations and is a regular contributor to the newspaper La Nación.
