Will women help lead the way to sustainability?
Photo by lecercle
The Ecological Footprint Quiz answers the question of “how many Earths would it take for everyone to live like you?”
Mathis Wackernagel developed the concept as his doctoral dissertation. Since then, he’s worked on sustainability issues for organizations in Europe, Latin America, North America, Asia and Australia. He’s become an expert on the question of embracing limits and developing metrics for sustainability.
Mathis Wackernagel: Ecological assets are not that different from financial assets. We can use the income from the assets more rapidly than the assets replenish. And that would be called deficit spending in government for example, or individually.
There is a solution, said Wackeragel.
Mathis Wackernagel: We don’t have to grow to nine billion people. And I think that can be turned around most effectively by investing heavily into women across the world. We see that when women have more access to education and political choices and can be more actively integrated in the economic and political life of countries, they most likely have much lower reproduction rates and have smaller families and that leads to better educated children, it leads to more economic well being, better health profiles because people have better access to health care and understand better medical possiblities. The environment will win, the women will win, the children will win, their families will win. and everyone will live better.
“If we spend more than what we earn, “ Wackernagel continued, “we run a deficit individually as our household, and as the deficit accumulates it becomes a debt. Same thing for nature. If we continuously exceed what nature can generate, we accumulate a debt, and that manifests in nature in different ways, such as deforestation, or groundwater depletion, or fisheries collapses, or CO2 accumulation in the atmosphere. These are all manifestations of ecological debt.”
Take the Ecological Footprint Quiz
Our Ecological Footprint: Reducing Human Impact on the Earth, by Mathis Wackernagel and William Rees
Watch a video of Mathis Wackernagel explaining the Ecological Footprint
If you want to stablilize the earth’s population, capitalism is the answer. The United States before the current insane immigration both legal and illegal had actually reached a point where negative population growth was imminent. It is really simple. Once it is considered normal for children to reach majority and to longer be considered an economic asset but an economic liability, folks quit having families of 13 plus. We had gotten down to 2.1 children per female of childbearing age.
Where kids can be thought of as an asset (worker or sold into slavery) the impetus is to have piles of them.
There is no government answer short of eliminating socialism, communism, theocracy, ignorant tribal feudalism and the like.
Women are not a separate species from homo sapiens. We are but male and female of the same species. In the theocratic and ignorant tribal cultures, women are chattal and exist only to serve men and to make babies.
Break this cycle and there is a chance. Keep sending money to these cultures and they will continue to reproduce and have wars to control their populations.
Learn from history or you will be doomed to get another lesson.
What Mathis Wackernagel says reminds me of something called microcredit. This is from the wikipedia page, a quote from the Microcredit Summit Campaign:
“1.2 billion people are living on less than a dollar a day. Women are often responsible for the upbringing of the world’s children and the poverty of the women generally results in the physical and social underdevelopment of their children. Experience shows that women are a good credit risk, and that women invest their income toward the well being of their families. At the same time, women themselves benefit from the higher social status they achieve within the home when they are able to provide income.”
Basically, banks give loans to women instead of men, and they make better investments. So it is definitely a capitalist plan, and I think it’s a really cool idea.
Jay, yes, these ideas are really very exciting. We’ve seen a lot of scientific discussion about the role of women in the 21st century, especially in the developing world. As you said, it seems that women are more likely to use their income toward the well being of their families. And as women become wage earners, and as they become more educated, they have fewer children.
Here’s an Earth & Sky radio show about one use of microcredit: In Bangladesh, 100,000 rural poor are phones ladies
Men are finally figuring out that it’s a good idea to “invest” in women? I hope so. But we like to keep the power to ourselves
The masters of the universe in my generation appear to be relentlessly driving our children down a primrose path, at the end of which is a colossal wreckage, the likes of which only Ozymandias, king of kings, has seen.
Patriarchy has had its chance, but has proven itself woefully inadequate in its effort to fulfill the role of sensible and reasonable stewards of life and the Earth; now, perhaps, the time for matriarchy has come….......again.
Will women lead the way…? Yes!
The women of the World don’t have the power to make any of the major changes we need. And, if somehow they got the power, they’d be just as bad as men. Women aren’t any better than men.
Alex, I don’t think anyone is trying to say anything about anyone being better than anyone else. But scientific studies do show that women tend to save more, focus more on the family, and look farther into the future (with respect to the family’s wellbeing) than men. Women rarely gamble or drink away a paycheck, for example …
We’re only speaking in generalities here, of course. Not every woman or every man will follow this trend. But it is a trend.
If you think of the whole human family … then perhaps women’s voice should be heard more …
Deborah
Men and women have different strengths and weaknesses, and I don’t think it will come down to one gender or the other in power and solving the world’s problems. I believe it will be a combination of people and solutions, and living more sustainably will be one of those solutions. Sustainability can start in families and communities, where women already have the power to make changes. And if we invest more in that, the changes can be large enough to gain momentum and keep growing up the ladder…
this is interesting to me. to interpret this in a more metaphoric, joseph campbellian sense (however incorrect): women represent the earth, and the life-giving powers of the earth.
so where women are revered and not subjugated, such an attitude probably reflects (and promotes) a culture’s respect for the natural world.
but where they are controlled and abused — and they are currectly controlled and abused, i think, on a pretty global scale — that speaks to a society’s polluted understanding of the web of life, and where human beings fit in.
Beth, that’s very profound. One might say “universal.” I also believe it’s true …
I think women have proven their leadership and investment capabilities in numerous ways. While we women in the US have achieved great success in almost becoming equal to US men, other countries in the world have much work to do to reach our level. I think only then we will see a change in our environment, not only our earthly environment but in our vision of women’s role in the labor market, religion, politics and family relationships. When this happens, maybe our connection with the Earth will become more positive and nurturing.
I never thought of it quite like that before. There is alot of truth in that.
I feel everyone benefits from education, be it a man or woman, and both, when educated, are more likely to have a smaller family of 2 or less children because it makes sense financially, and there’s no labor purpose is driving the need for kids with educated parents. Knowledge helps society grow as a whole, and the more educated we are, the more we can preserve the environment and lower our environmental debt.
Gretchie,
As you say, women have almost equal rights here in the US, but we have a terrible environmental record. The idea of “Earth Mother” doesn’t hold.
I’m wondering what Wackernagel means by education. I don’t think the women he’s talking about have much time to go back to school. Maybe in this case it means access to basic reproductive knowledge, HIV/AIDS education, financial help… or learning a bigger view of the world and understanding how individual actions and local actions factor globally.
If that’s what he means, we could probably all stand to be more educated.
Hi,
Another valuable Earth & Sky discussion.
Perhaps the future of our children is being mortgaged and ultimately put at risk by a small patriarchy of powerbrokers who manage the unbridled global political economy as a colossal pyramid scheme. All the while, many too many of our elected and appointed leaders maintain their silence about the potential for a calamity — one that is already visible in the offing — by posing as people who are blind and mute. Their deafening silence serves to fill their pockets and pockets of their benefactors and minions with that which is golden…. for now….. and for a while longer, I suppose.
Something is happening; could the patriarchs of endless wealth accumulation and ever expanding business enterprise be adamantly pursuing an unsustainable course to the future that no sensible and reasonable human being would ever choose to take?
What do you see happening?
Sincerely,
Steve