Technology for Sustainable Development

Believe it or not - written in 1999 by Shankar Ranganathan, Chairman, Ion Exchange (India) Ltd, but SO relevant today.



The Brundtland Commission defined sustainable development as development that met the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet theirs. There are two parts to sustainability :

a) Enabling the environment sustain human and other forms of life by preventing further degradation of the environment and repairing the damage done to it;

b) Sustaining economic growth.

Everybody in the world suffers from the neglect of the environment and there must be few who continue to think that we are not part of nature and not subject to her laws. The capacity of the earth to absorb more waste or more energy is fast getting exhausted. Environmental damage has already caused the extinction of hundreds of species of plants and animals. Human beings themselves now face extinction. There is an urgent need to protect the water we drink and use, the air we breathe, the soil on which our plants and crops grow.

But while there is little need for discussion on the first aspect of sustainability, the second, which has been taken to be axiomatic, needs some comment.

Three quarters of the world’s population lack basic amenities, let alone the conveniences that affluent people now regard as necessities. These basic amenities must be provided if we are interested in a harmonious world built on cooperation and the affluent must share in the task of making this happen.

Human civilisation (if not all life on earth) will be destroyed within a few more generations if nothing is done to alter the present single-minded pursuit of money, ignoring the environmental degradation, growing unemployment and resultant social tensions. It could result in a plethora of goods cluttering the earth without human beings making them or capable of buying them. The economics of the future must give more importance to the quality of life because human beings cannot breathe, drink or eat money but they do need air, water and food to sustain life and these essential commodities are getting scarcer or more polluted.

A change is necessary in the present mindset of ever increasing sales and profit to adequate sustainable profit without inflation which would make growth unnecessary. Growth in all forms of life after maturity is incremental and ends with death and matter is recycled by the environment providing nourishment for new life. Uncontrolled growth, growth which cannot be arrested, is a form of cancer.

The world needs a change in quality to enable society to provide human satisfaction by environmentally sustainable means. Industry faces the challenge of proving that a clean environment and economic well-being are mutually compatible; adding value while reducing the use of resources and energy.

It is imperative to redefine growth to mean an improvement in the quality of life; not through the proliferation of goods but by an improvement of services. This is already happening in the market place due to the constraint on money. Services can reduce the proliferation of products which should be made to last much longer. It would make recycling easier and reduce the burden on the environment. No more built-in obsolescence! Energy saving systems already available can reduce energy use to a fourth and even a tenth of what is used. This would be equivalent to setting up four to ten times the number of power stations and avoiding the resulting pollution. It would give the world more time to change from the present form of economics which has ignored environmental and social costs and brought the world to the brink of ruin.

To quote from A Blueprint for Survival: “The activities of industrial man are having a serious effect on society. They can be shown to be leading to its disintegration and it can also be shown that such pathological manifestations as crime, delinquency, drug addiction, alcoholism, mental diseases, suicide, all of which are increasing exponentially in our major cities, are the symptoms of this disintegration.”

Lester Brown in his book World Without Borders says: “Irrigation projects in tropical and sub-tropical countries expand the production of food, but they also create an ideal habitat for schistosmiasis, a rapidly debilitating disease now afflicting an estimated 200 million people. The rising incidence of emphysema is a by-product of man’s expanding energy consumption. Mercury poisoning comes from pesticides and industrial wastes. Lung cancer, bronchitis and reported cases of lead and cadmium poisoning, occur with increasing frequency. As of 1970, the victims of environmentally induced diseases number in the hundreds of millions, substantially exceeding the population of North America or Western Europe. New technologies are creating problems but not the institutions capable of solving them.”

Our problems remain unsolved, deteriorate even, mainly because education today is not related to living. As Alvin Toffler says in his book Future Shock: “Why must teaching be organised around such fixed disciplines such as English, Economics & Mathematics? Why not around stages of the human life cycle, a course on birth, childhood, adolescence, marriage, career, retirement, death? Or around contemporary social problems? And in India, I would add: Why not about the environment? About conservation? About agriculture? “What sort of education is this,” asks E.F. Schumacher in his book Small is Beautiful, “if it prevents us from thinking of things to be done immediately? What makes us think we need electricity, cement and steel before we can do anything at all? The really helpful things will not be done from the centre, they will not be done by big organisations, they can be done by the people themselves.”


Sustainable development requires new approaches in the use of technology. Technology that focuses on areas that will improve the environment (and the quality of people’s lives). Avoiding anything that converts pollution from one form to another, we must develop cleaner technologies that reduce the pollution of air, water and soil; technologies for recycle and conservation; for energy and resource reduction. Along with the development of alternative sources of energy such as from wind, solar, fuel cells, etc., there is an even more urgent need to increase the efficiency of all equipment used for transport, production, heating and lighting. According to Factor Four it is already possible to reduce energy use of most devices by a factor of four i.e., by 75%. This would be equivalent to increasing production four times and obviously help sustainable development without further damage to the environment.

 About the Author-
"I have been interested in nature since childhood and it was natural for me to become an environmentalist after reading three major books which made me keenly interested in the importance of the environment - Rachel Carson’s `Silent Spring’ which came out in the early `60s, The Ecologist’s : `A Blueprint for Survival’ and `Limits to Growth’ written for the Club of Rome by Meadows both published in `72 and `73" - Mr. G. Shankar Ranganathan.

A writer in one of his multi-talented persona, this is one of his many papers on environment related issues.