Sustainable Society?

Sustainable Society?

What does this mean? We often hear sustainable this, or sustainable that, but does anyone explain to the community what having their social, economic and environmental development planned in ways that are sustainable will mean in ways we can understand? The answer is a very definite NO!

In permaculture terms sustainable means limiting outputs to a minimum and returning everything possible to the environment within which we operate.

When we grow our crops in this way we significantly reduce the requirement for bought in chemical amendments, necessary to improve the soil. One reason why we have a need for so much lime is that we continue to remove huge volumes of milk and bones as food crops. In an ideal food production system all the animal waste products would be returned to the farm where they were grown. In an ideal environment all animal excrement, including that from the human animals, would be returned to the soil.

A good soil is balanced. Too much of any one element, even if it is a necessary and beneficial substance, will not create a favourable growing medium. Nitrogen is important for plant grown, but too much nitrogen leads to sappy weak growth that will not sustain the plant through to develop its full potential as a mature plant.

If we were to apply the permaculture principles to our social environment we would see that a healthy community is one within which there is relative stability. When there are only small to moderate increases from migration into and out of a community the resident community can benefit from the zest of new ideas, new interpretations of their culture. However, when there is very rapid population growth from incoming migration there will inevitably be a breakdown in social cohesion and resilience, as reciprocity is lost.

Reciprocity is an essential ingredient within a healthy community, nowhere is this more important than when that community is located in a remote rural environment. People living in such environments rely on each other far more than the metro or urban resident. Metro man can call on professional services as and when required. Neighbour must help neighbour in a rural location. But reciprocity can only occur where there is trust. Trust is an essential precursor to reciprocity. Without trust there can be no reciprocity.

A rapid growth of incomers coupled with loss of local residents, due to lack of affordable housing and very few local employment opportunities, has created an unstable social environment within this shire that is not sustainable. For many years the professional planning staff of this shire have intentionally recorded insignificant social impacts from the rapid development they recommend. This blindness to the problems they are creating has weakened the social fabric of the community.

In order to live in this shire many families have to rely on the employment available in the north of the State. These Fly-in Fly-out workers cannot make a full contribution to community life. When they are away their families remain here and any support those families need must be supplied by the local population.

To sell the huge number of house blocks that have been created during the past two decades it has been necessary to market the shire as an ideal place for retirees. This has created an imbalance within the community, a community where volunteers provide many of the services necessary for the care of the aged.

These social issues, and many others, are not merely uncomfortable for the community, and liable to result in conflict as the long term residents begin to realise that they are expected to support the newcomers, they are also totally unsustainable. Going forward what will be required is more professional services.

We have already seen the rapid growth in the number of shire rangers, who now report through an emergency services manager, who reports to another more senior manager within the shire.

Why are so many shire rangers needed?

In part to deal with tourists, but much of their work is related to compliance with bush fire requirements throughout the shire. The emergency services manager is tasked with organising resources to cope with bush fires, and to a much lesser extent any other disaster, and to ensure that the community can respond appropriately and also recover from those disasters.

The emergency services costs are high. We are now buying expensive trucks, helicopters, and communications networks in an attempt to make this hostile corner of the State habitable. All this technology and professional staffing is taking the place of local wisdom and a common-sense approach towards living on the land here.

The effect of such spending is to push up taxes and rates. The result of this shift to the use of professional emergency services is to share the costs among all the residents, which might, at first sight, appear fair and equitable.

It is not fair and equitable.

The long term resident who, during their youth and middle years, spent many hours as a volunteer and good neighbour assisting with the necessary work of prescribed burning and suppressing bush fires, or cutting sandwiches and making flasks of tea to sustain the front line firefighters, now finds that their rates have inflated to pay for professional services. These long term residents did not spend their working lives earning large salaries in the city, or enjoying security of tenure in a well paid public service role. They were making a living from the land, and growing a family, and developing a strong cohesive, resilient community. Now, in their retirement years, they discover that outsiders covet what they have created here and have decided it should be shared out much more widely.

No consideration is given as to whether the chap who gave forty years of voluntary service to the bush fire brigade can actually afford to pay the charges for emergency services he is now presented with. Nobody now remembers that during the forty years of service he was giving to his community freely, without charge. All the hours he was risking his life attending emergency call-outs, his new neighbours were making money in the professions that placed them in a financially secure position when they retired to Margaret River. 

No consideration is given to the many hours of voluntary service that community members invested in their local progress associations and CWA groups. Today those long term residents will have to pay through their rates for a Community Development Team, because the amateur community development they participated in without payment is no longer adequate for the newcomers who have much higher expectations.

Other communities, within Australia, and across the world, have experienced similar rapid growth that this shire has. It has never been comfortable, and it is not sustainable. 

Of course this shire will continue to exist, and so the public administrators can scoff at the notion of social sustainability, but to return to the question I started with; What is social sustainability?

Does it just mean that the name of a place continues? 

Or does it mean that the values and culture of that place remain intact, evolving naturally, slowly, and in ways that are ethical and respectful towards the people of that community? For this community to be developing sustainably it must mean that each one of us puts back into our communities as much, or more, than we take out. There should not be an expectation that we will be paid for services we give to our community. However, if that is now the way of the world here I know a lot of old timers around this shire who are owed a lot of back pay. If they received that then maybe they could afford to pay the inflated rates bills they are now receiving.

The planning for this shire is not socially sustainable, and it is set on a course of total professionalisation that will eradicate all self-efficacy, self-reliance, and capacity of this community. 

Many times I have been told by councillors and shire planners that they cannot participate in social engineering, and yet that is precisely what they are engaged in when they approve inappropriate development.