Norton, B.G. (2003). Searching for Sustainability: Interdisciplinary essays in the philosophy of conservation biology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Hattingh, J

English

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Southern African Journal of Environmental Education,Vol. 20, 2003 2003 Environmental Education Association of Southern AfricaNorton, B.G. (2003). Searching for Sustainability: Interdisciplinary essays in the philosophy ofconservation biology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.… the idea of sustainability cannot be fully captured in the theories and concepts of anyone of the diverse disciplines that contribute to environmental science. In particular, theidea cannot be captured by any science that is understood as an exemplar of objective,descriptive and value-neutral science, whether natural or social. The understanding ofscience as value neutral, it is now agreed, is at best an abstraction – an ideal that is neverachieved by any real science … (Norton 2003:457)… sustainability has an inevitable normative aspect, which cannot be fully appreciatedunless it is contextualized within an action-oriented situation in which real peoplecompete, conflict, and deliberate about what to do in response to real environmentalproblems. (Norton 2003: 457)These are two of the strong formulations with which Bryan Norton, Professor of Philosophy,Science and Technology at the School of Public Policy, Georgia Institute of Technologysummarises the conclusion of his book with the rather subtle title of Searching for Sustainability.I say subtle, because with this title, Norton suggests that even after more than 20 years after theintroduction of the terms ‘sustainability’ and ‘sustainable development’ into the public domainin 1980 with the IUCN’s World Conservation Strategy, and in the wake of numerous worldconferences on this theme, we are still grappling with their meaning and practicalimplementation.The converse of this point is, that we are still in the process of learning whatsustainability and sustainable development means, and Norton more than competentlydemonstrates that this process is far from complete.By any standards, these are provocative points to make, but Norton nonetheless makes themto debunk the claims of those in the environmental or economic sciences who think that theyhave finally captured the meaning of sustainability, and know exactly how to define, implementand measure it. A special target for Norton’s critique is positivist science – or, the idea thatscience is a valueneutral enterprise in which we only work with hard facts, in which objectivityis fully guaranteed by the rigorous application of a strict methodology, yielding universal truthsBook ReviewSearching for Sustainability: Interdisciplinary essays in thePhilosophy of conservation biologyby Bryan G. Nortonreviewed by Johan HattinghEEASA_14_Bk Review_p149-157  3/10/04  9:55 AM  Page 149150 JOHAN HATTINGHthat can stand for time and eternity and cannot be tainted by any evaluation or normativeconsideration – which is rejected as subjective and open to opinion and therefore relativism.For Norton, there is an interpretive, even a normative side to all sciences, even in the naturalsciences, and in these interpretations no fact is value-free. In this book, he demonstrates throughvarious examples in a non-technical manner that facts are produced in processes of observationand interpretation in which a multiplicity of values, interests and perspectives intersect, and inwhich some seem to dominate others. Accordingly, Norton emphasises the importance offoregrounding these values, interests and perspectives, and to critically question any pretence tohaving a monopoly on the truth.As such, these points are important to understand what Norton describes in this book,which is his own intellectual journey of more than a decade and a half as a philosopher andenvironmental ethicist, grappling with the meaning of sustainability.This journey of his startedearly in the 1980s when he first realised that environmental philosophy and ethics have to enterinto serious dialogue with activists, managers, policy-makers and the various disciplines ofenvironmental science if it wishes to make any meaningful contribution to finding solutions toreal-life environmental problems.Norton is, and always has been, an environmental philosopher, but he is extremely critical ofa variety of environmental ethics that seeks to do nothing more than converse with itself,generating highly abstract meta-ethical theories about universal principles and ultimate values –something that could be interesting to other philosophers, but has little to say to those of uswho are interested in a resolution of the concrete environmental problems of the world.For Norton, environmental philosophy and ethics can serve a number of very importantpractical purposes, one of which is to clarify the language in which we articulate ourenvironmental concerns and seek to resolve them.To achieve this, he suggests that philosophersand ethicists should focus on the public discourse that is already in place in the practical contextof communities taking action to address environmental problems, and in this discourse to focuson the controversies and policy wars about how to define terms like ‘environmental signifi-cance’, ‘environmental risk’ and ‘sustainability’.This is important for Norton because it is in thispublic discourse that we can study the way in which a variety of multilayered, cross-cuttinghuman values interact in our efforts at environmental-problem solving.The second important practical task of environmental philosophy and ethics for Norton isthat of building some bridges between the various interdisciplinary islands of the broad class of‘environmental sciences’.This is because he found, from practical experience, that one of themajor stumbling blocks in formulating sound environmental policy is that many of the social,natural and management sciences that study environmental problems have developed isolateddiscourses.It is here that Norton’s academic interest in the philosophy of language and communicationintersects with his interest in the philosophy of science – and where his emphasis on the need fordialogue between theory and practice, between science and action, intersects with the pragmatistnotion of truth, according to which different theories and disciplinary paradigms can be comparedwith one another – and be evaluated – on the basis of their practical effects in the real world.EEASA_14_Bk Review_p149-157  3/10/04  9:55 AM  Page 150BOOK REVIEW 151Taking us through the different phases of his own intellectual development since the mid1980s as a philosopher with such a practical agenda in mind, Searching for Sustainability recountswhat Norton refers to as his ‘tentative interactions’ (2003:2) with other disciplines, and what helearnt not only from scientists, but also from environmental management practitioners –embedded as they are in the maelstrom of environmental problem-solving.What unites the 27 essays of this rather long book (is total length is 554 pages), is Norton’seffort to establish the meaning of ‘sustainability’ in so far as it could be used as a unifyingconcept to anchor normative theories of environmental protection. In this book ‘each papertaken individually, tells one aspect of the story of sustainability from a given disciplinaryviewpoint, clarifying value issues as they arise within the context of specific policy-relevantscientific disagreements that emerge within management conflicts’ (Norton 2003:3). Takentogether, these essays form a rich interdisciplinary tapestry that can help us to form a richermultidisciplinary approach to sustainable living.Searching for Sustainability is divided into six sections that are clustered around a centraltheme. In each section, Norton presents us with a number of essays in which the trajectory ofthe evolution of his own ideas about that theme is followed across time, demonstrating howthese changes were brought about by engaging with more and more disciplinary vocabularies.In the first of these sections, Norton chronicles his changing approach to philosophicalproblems, demonstrating how he moved away from the ideal of environmental ethics as a meta-ethical discipline and redefined it as a pragmatic philosophy of policy discourse. In a series of fivehighly revealing essays in this section, Norton demonstrates how he discovered pragmaticdimensions in the work of Aldo Leopold, one of the founders of environmental ethics in theUSA,and how a pragmatic approach – that moves beyond abstract questions and arguments aboutthe general nature of environmental value – can help us to improve communication, cooperationand problem formulation in the search for sustainable policies in particular situations.To widen the scope of his pragmatism, Norton turns in Section II to a discussion of science,policy and policy science, focusing in particular on the ‘problems of cross-disciplinarycommunications that hinder environmental policy discourse and decision making, denyingdecision makers the integrated science they so desperately need when the time for judgmentand decisions is at hand’ (Norton 2003:4).In Section III,Norton enters into dialogue with economists, arguing that different paradigmsof economic thinking exist, and that some of these paradigms (e.g. neo-classic economics) arejust not able to take on board the wider social and ecological considerations that we need toformulate and implement sustainable policies.Scale and sense of place values are the central themes of Section IV, where Norton asks, fromthe vantage point of different disciplinary perspectives, how we can sort out the multitude ofclashing perspectives, interests and values that characterise environmental disputes. In what isarguably the most complex set of essays in this book, Norton makes the important point thatthe science of ecology provides us with a means (hierarchy theory) to represent environmentalproblems in terms of multi-scaled models, thereby laying the basis to differentiate betweendifferent temporal and spatial scales that are important for social values, and also for disputeresolution.EEASA_14_Bk Review_p149-157  3/10/04  9:55 AM  Page 151152 JOHAN HATTINGHBuilding on the insights of hierarchy theory, Section V is devoted to a discussion of elementsof a philosophy of sustainable living. Practical ethics comes into focus here in one of the essaysin which the meaning of the idea of caring for nature is discussed with special reference toanimal stewardship. In an essay focusing on the values informing the Earth Charter,Norton asksthe question: Can there be a universal earth ethic? The third essay in this section addresses theissues of global ethics with reference to international equity and sustainability.Throughout thissection, Norton emphasises the importance of a plurality of ecologically scaled values, and iscritical of standard, single-value approaches to defining sustainability and our obligations toothers – whether they are future human beings, other humans living now or other livingentities such as animals.In the last section of his book, Norton turns to the very practical question of environmentalevaluation. Pulling together the various multidisciplinary and multiscalar threads of hisargument, he argues that there are limits to the quantification of the value of biodiversity, andthat we need a new approach to environmental evaluation. In this new approach, he argues, weshould build on what the various disciplines of the environmental sciences can provide us with,and take seriously the multi-scaled plurality of values that exist in societies as they relate tohistory, culture and notions of what we owe future generations.What does this rich texture of perspectives and critical dialogue about the meaning ofsustainability amount to for the practice of environmental problem-solving? It would be aninjustice to the scope and depth of Norton’s book to try to capture this in one line, and alsobecause he concedes that the experience of one person can never be definitive. However, in hisown words, referring to the need to recognise the variety of perspectives in the public discourseabout environmental policy, Norton summarised it as follows:If we become reflective, it becomes possible to learn from these differing viewpoints,allowing us to create understanding collage-style, recognising the strengths andweaknesses of various types of analyses, sifting and integrating insights from specificsciences. … People from multiple disciplines, if allowed to speak in abstractions to eachother, will talk past each other because of the assumptions that shape their disciplinaryperspective. If, however, the same individuals coming from multiple disciplines, focus theirshared attention on a real problem or crisis – how best to characterise it, what causes it,and what they should do about it – the multiple perspectives become multiple resourcesfor envisioning new models and new solutions. (2003: 6)To achieve this end, Norton has come to see the policy process as an iterative process.As auseful fiction, he proposes that policy choice should be viewed as embodying two phases: anaction phase and a reflective phase. In the action phase ‘we consider what to do, given adoptedgoals, current rules and laws, and current knowledge’; in the reflective phase ‘we reconsidergoals, reconsider indicators and monitoring practices, and consider evidence from recentmanagement interventions’ (Norton 2003:7).For Norton, this alteration between action and reflection creates a space for environmentalphilosophy and ethics to adopt a new, practical problem-oriented approach; and at the sameEEASA_14_Bk Review_p149-157  3/10/04  9:55 AM  Page 152BOOK REVIEW 153time for science to identify and call into question its (often hidden) disciplinary assumptions.But, above all, this alteration between action and reflection makes possible what Norton refersto as adaptive management. Adaptive managers, he argues, are committed to experimentationbased on the best insights of the environmental sciences – and to the ongoing formulation andreformulation of both management models and management goals, taking as their point ofdeparture that cultural and natural systems should be modelled in interaction with one anotheron multiple scales of space and time, and orienting themselves to address place-based concernsof communities about resource use and its impacts (Norton 2003:517, 522, 523).With this in mind, it becomes clear why Norton does not endeavour to provide us with anultimate definition of sustainability. He rather would like to equip us with the intellectual toolsand strategies of social learning that would enable us to chart a course towards sustainability thatwill tend to preserve valued place-based features, rather than destroy them (Norton 2003:544).Written in a clear, non-technical language that strives to realise ‘the transdisciplinary,ordinary language discourse in which scientific knowledge and social evaluation must beintegrated if we are to find a viable environmental morality’ (Norton 2003:8), this volume ofessays will appeal to those who are frustrated with the abstract approach of mainstreamenvironmental philosophy and would like to see how one can make philosophical and ethicalanalysis practically relevant to resolving real-life environmental problems.In the last instance, I believe that Norton’s Searching for Sustainability is also a challenge to ushere in the southern part of the continent of Africa to become more reflective about our ownprocesses of environmental problem-formulation and -solving; to transcend our own territorialwars between the different environmental sciences with a view to finding a public discourse inwhich we can learn from one another, and formulate new goals with new justifications that wecan experiment with and learn from in the practice of environmental management.In this process of learning, Norton’s book can serve as an invaluable field guide, because theintellectual and political battles that he has fought on the North American continent are notdissimilar to the ones that we fight in Africa with a view to environmental problem-solving.Other books by Bryan Norton include:Why Preserve Natural Variety? Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press. 1987.Toward Unity Among Environmentalists. New York: Oxford University Press. 1991.See also the searchable bibliography of the International Society for Environmental Ethics at<www.phil.unt.edu/bib/> for secondary sources about Norton’s environmental pragmatism.Note on the ReviewerJohan Hattingh is Professor and Chair of Philosophy at the University of Stellenbosch, SouthAfrica.As Head of the Unit for Environmental Ethics in that Department, he specialises in hisresearch on the sources, nature and resolution of value conflicts in environmental disputes anddecision making.EEASA_14_Bk Review_p149-157  3/10/04  9:55 AM  Page 153

Book Review: Searching for Sustainability: Interdisciplinary essays in the Philosophy of conservation biology

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Book Review: Searching for Sustainability: Interdisciplinary essays in the Philosophy of conservation biology

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