Because resilience may not be obvious without a whole-system view, people often sacrifice resilience for stability, or for productivity, or for some other more immediately recognisable system property.
– Donella H. Meadows
The increasing complexity of our global socioeconomic apparatus inhibits our ability to shape and change it the way we desire. Amid the slow, unfolding ecological crisis we face, this insight supports the notion of an impenetrable and uncontrollable (human-built) superstructure holding us back from a much-needed shift towards sustainability and resilience.
The concept of a superstructure may seem obscure, but it is the natural result of a prolonged period of growth, in which complexity is added onto complexity. This was sparked by the development of rational thinking and science, in the post-Enlightenment era, as a means of controlling nature.
The first industrial revolution (steam power), followed by Taylorism (scientific management of workflows) and the second industrial revolution (electric power), consolidated this process via standardisation, normative behaviours and optimisation. These technical revolutions materialised and engineered this newfound human power over nature.
Essentially, the human sphere, alongside its appendage, the technosphere, has significantly outgrown the rest of the biosphere. The extractive power exerted on the latter has been instrumental in the construction of the superstructure. Planet Earth itself became the object of our optimisation. Scholars named all this the Great Acceleration or the Anthropocene.
Among the most impactful, albeit often invisible, repercussions from this unchecked human activity is a twofold distortion of our presence on this planet:
- “The incapacity of our imagination to grasp the enormity of what we can produce and set in motion.” (The Obsolescence of Man, Volume II, Anders, Günther)
- Our relentless emancipation from nature to the extent of feeling and acting as separate from it.
We have come to perceive ourselves as “exempt from ecological processes” – this is what ecologists refer to as the “othering of nature”.
Is it really worth it, then?
If the narrative so far has not yet sufficiently teased out the sustainability implications, I hope the remainder of this piece will inspire more practical reflections on the matter.
Due to their inner interconnectedness and nonlinearity, complex adaptive systems (CAS) such as ours may exhibit signs of counter-intuitiveness and paradox. The system we have built and populate today is no exception. In the context of increasing efficiency and simultaneous efforts towards sustainability, the mother of all paradoxes is the Jevons paradox.
Does (energy) efficiency actually lead to (energy) saving? It should – but, paradoxically, that is not the case. Improved efficiency in resource use tends to increase overall consumption and demand for that resource (because it lowers the price), rather than a reduction (because we need less of it now).
For practical purposes, I will illustrate this paradox through a number of real-world historical examples where increases in efficiency led to unintended, opposite effects.
- The Green Revolution of the 1940s-80s doubled the efficiency of food production per hectare in developing countries by maximising yields through intensifying production. This eventually increased the number of mouths to feed, worsening food shortage and replaced more nutrient-rich cereals eroding the quality.
- Building more or bigger roads encouraged greater use of vehicles, worsening traffic jams.
- Rising oil prices in the 1970s spurred the production of more fuel-efficient cars, leading American car owners to increase their leisure driving, number of miles driven, and preference for heavier vehicles.
- LED bulbs have significantly reduced the amount of electricity needed per light, but they led to increased use of electricity because everything is now lit.
- Refrigerators have become more efficient but also grown in size.
- Water-efficient appliances and advancements in irrigation techniques have reduced per-unit consumption of water, but the overall usage has increased due to expanded agricultural activities.
- The enhanced ease of creating, sharing and printing with paper-displacement technologies led to a rise in paper consumption.
- Enhanced health prevention brought economic efficiency in the form of saved money, but increased healthcare costs in the long run due to the increased lifespan of the population.
So what?
The problem here is not efficiency per se, but a lack of restraint. Efficiency remains the most powerful driver for improving individual and local material benefits.
For instance, increasing the number of car lanes does indeed provide relief in the short-term. However, in the long-term, it reliably leads to more traffic, worsening pollution and causing spillover effects to nearby areas and communities.
I will leave it to you to iterate on this exercise with the other examples mentioned above and many others in history, especially those yet to come (think AI, electric vehicles…).
The problem is that with complex systems, things operate across multiple scales and dimensions – time, space (local vs. global), nested hierarchical levels. Efficiency usually brings material benefits in the short-term and at the micro level, but it can be harmful in the long-term and at the macro level (collective, wider system).
Sustainability is, by definition, a long-term macro target. And increased efficiency is often considered a milestone to greater sustainability. Yet, efficiency may actually be detrimental to sustainability. As seen, it has often proved to be so in the past. We are closing the circle here – the increasingly efficient supermachine we set in motion is eroding its own safe operating space.
In more abstract terms, in complex adaptive systems, efficiency triggers emergence – doing things better frees up resources for doing different things. The system learns how to optimise resources, generates surplus, and adapts by expanding socioeconomic activities.
This very expansion is responsible for increasing stress on the environment, undermining stability and increasing fragility (eg above all breaching planetary boundaries).
This is the process fuelling the superstructure.
The way out of the trap? Or the way to resilience
We need to balance the trade-offs between short and long-term and between the individual and the whole system – it’s a matter of adaptability in the present to generate sustainability and resilience in the long term.
Our current system is trapped in a trajectory that could lead to further Jevons paradox-like phenomena. Adaptation means increasing the chances of avoiding those outcomes.
Perhaps too simplistically, we have two ways forward:
- Correct for the Jevons paradox after the event by preventing the surplus from increased efficiency circling back into the system (eg via taxation proportional to the savings) – a form of imposed inefficiency (restraint).
- Prevent the Jevons paradox before the event by limiting production (eg prohibiting oil and mineral development, or the cutting of timber on certain lands).
The two points above may be interpreted as more sustainable impositions of ‘human boundaries’. However, history suggests we are not particularly good at self-imposing limits, so if that trend persists, we may need to learn to become increasingly adaptable.
Andrea Caloisi is a researcher at the Thinking Ahead Institute at WTW, a network of asset owners and asset managers committed to mobilising capital for a sustainable future.
