Human Empowerment and the Sustainability Challenge
Report by Chris Welzel at the LCSR regular seminar
Dr. Christian Welzel, the leading LCSR professor, presented a report titled “Human Empowerment and the Sustainability Challenge” during the LSCR`s regular seminar on October 4th.
Recently Dr. Welzel finished the book manuscript devoted to the study of human empowerment syndrome. He presented the results of his chapter on the influence of human empowerment on ecological sustainability during the seminar.
Human empowerment doesn’t have a long history. It is connected with the advent of the industrial revolution and the development of democracy and civil rights in different countries, starting a mere two and half centuries ago.
Accordingly to Prof. Welzel, human empowerment includes itself three components. The technological component measures access to intellectual resources, education and knowledge. The institutional component refers to democratic achievements and development of citizen rights. Finally, the third component is emancipative values, which motivate people to exercise universal freedoms. All the components are closely related and interact with each other.
Countries with human empowerment appear to possess two advantages. First, such countries exhibit high levels of subjective well-being, more legitimacy and stability of the political regime. Second, human empowerment natures creativity and hence provides technological and system capacities, primarily high-tech, but also including advanced military capacities, for instance. However, it also brings a challenge for ecological sustainability.
Increasing GDP also consumes an increasing amount of resources. That leads to a larger ecological footprint. The technological and, to a lesser extent, institutional components of human empowerment are positively related to the ecological footprint. However, the cultural component is positively related to Yale Enviromental Performance Index which includes quality of air, water and so on. Overall, the net effect of the three components together on ecological sustainability seems to be zero. The positive effect of emancipating values influence is thus at least as large as the negative effect of technology.
Trying to answer the question, what is the “magic” driving these observations, Dr. Welzel interprets it this way. Emancipative values contribute to translating environmental concern into action, for example, into choosing green party on election or forcing politicians towards a more ecological program of development. So in societies with emancipative values people’s concern about ecological problems has more capacities for real actions.
Dr. Welzel’s report aroused great interest from the audience. There were many questions and comments. For example, one of the possible explanations of the puzzle is the removal of critical polluting industry from developed countries and moving it to developing countries. Also the distinction of electoral system as a moderator of emancipative values – action relation was suggested.
Pby Irina Vartanova