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.
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