Neal’s Yard Annual Lecture, Nature v 9 Billion of Us! The Cultural and Design Challenge

The most recent, sobering population statistic tells of a 9 billion strong population by 2050.

UAL hosted the annual Neal's Yard Lecture titled Nature v 9 Billion of Us! The Cultural and Design Challenge.

That’s right, there’s another sobering forecast on the horizon – a staggering 9.7 billion people are expected to inhabit the Earth by 2050 – this, the statistics tell us, might be slowing, however, even if the rate of increase slows, the impending population increase is certain.

Tony Juniper, Special Adviser to the Prince of Wales Charities’ International Sustainability Unit, Senior Associate with the University of Cambridge Programme for Sustainability Leadership and the author of What Has Nature Ever Done For Us, questions if we’re currently capable to support 5 billion people – eventually bringing a political point of view to the debate.

Physicist Robert Langlin is quoted early into the evening “Earth didn’t replace dinosaurs after they died she just moved on and became something different… Even if we weren’t to survive this... the Earth will move on from us, but at what cost? What waste!”

The evening continues with thoughts surrounded with the complexities of how we might be able to align current needs of the population within environmental capacities.

We were told that the last landmark point in population growth was when the Earth reached 7 billion – this was for Juniper’s generation - he puts it into perspective, as the ‘landmark’ for his dad was in 1960, when the world population reached 3 billion, which is an astonishing x1000 rise in total population since the agricultural and industrial revolution began.

Juniper continues that the current population demands a fast paced (unsustainable) system, meaning the Earth is having to ‘boost its yields’ which is over-stretching its capacities. And boosting yields, or the speeding up of a natural process does have its own cumulative effects, often negative. This is why a desired, sustainable system is often referred to as a slow(er) system.

Our consumption in the West is noted and spoken of, which is a challenge that faces us. The Western 'standard' of living is the highest in the world and according to a traditional economist's point of view of more equals better, the West and its people are doing very well indeed, although you only need to swim in the shallows to discover that inequity is everywhere and that our 'standards' are in actuality highly superficial and biased, noncomprehensive statistics.
Here's a quote that springs to mind, from the book Small is Beautiful by E.F. Schumacher, published in 1973, which highlights the above point beautifully, taken from Chapter 4, one of my favourite chapters in any book I've read, Buddhist Economics.

"...The modern economist is used to measuring the "standard of living" by the amount of annual consumption, assuming all the time that a man who consumes more is "better off" than a man who consumes less. A Buddhist economist would consider this approach excessively irrational: since consumption is merely a means to human well-being, the aim should be to obtain the maximum of well-being with the minimum of consumption.... The less toil there is, the more time and strength is left for artistic creativity. Modern economics, on the other hand, considers consumption to be the sole end and purpose of all economic activity." 
~ E. F. Schumacher, Small is Beautiful

The definite ideal that is discussed during the evening is that economic growth needs limiting. And a point is made that the impacts on Earth would be more imminent if Western ways of living are adopted everywhere in the world.

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Professor Anthony (Tony) Ryan OBE, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for the Faculty of Science at the University of Sheffield and author of “Project Sunshine: How Science Can Use The Sun To Fuel And Feed The World” speaks about his opinion and fascination from a “reductionist” point of view, primarily being a chemist.

Ryan states that a more sustainable system should be reliant on the sun for its energy, alike 400 years a go when we lived primarily on sunshine.

“1 hour of sunshine will run the economy for one year! What if we made a cycle of systems based on energy systems from solar fuels. We need to get back to being a solar economy again.” 
~ Tony Ryan

Ryan touches on the largely unarticulated fact that organic agriculture can’t feed 7 billion, so we need to think beyond it. And indeed our meddling with nature, and speeding up its processes to boost its yields has had negative knock-on effects. For example, grasses used to interact with the soil, although years of using pesticides have trained the crops to only take what they need from the chemicals, lessening their functioning ability to ‘talk’ to the soil and gain nutrients from it, and the sun. So we now need to 're-train' these crops.

Anthony Ryan has an interesting perspective I never considered before about GM tech, that is GM technology COULD be used to re-train the crops and be used in a benevolent manner, however, the ethical issues for this remain, and the corruption of powers that be, i.e. the hands that hold many of these powerful tools aren't trusted with them, leaving us all wary and associating GM with completely negative association.

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The Cultural & Design Challenge 
We swiftly moved onto what focus an arts and design person plus the arts industry are able to contribute, before we all got swallowed whole into the uncertainty of political agenda.

The Art and Design industries have responsibility to communicate issues and agitate as an industry, if we wish to instigate change.

A definite underlying message is clear, in whichever way the discussion turned, we all agree that our cultural narrative needs to change, and this is why it’s imperative that the arts industry should take action.

Culture, past and present, is defined by its art; art and design works intrinsically within influencing culture, and as its mirror - acting as a reflection of the current times; of the current needs and desires of the masses. The industry has a definite responsibility to protect and maintain itself, while protecting the very structure and people that support it.

We left the event with more questions than answers, like any good debate... but feeling equally inspired. 

"What if we built mathematical models of recreating cultures, to suit a nation?" ~ Tony Ryan

We end the evening focusing on lessons learnt from the past - i.e. the Elizabethan peak wood crisis; could we learn something from past systems?

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Can we learn something from present systems?

If we take a look at indigenous cultures and their rapidly reducing rate, for example, one thing remains true, which is that we need more emphasis on protection, of people and culture. 

Our crisis could have much to do with our own reducing culture into uniform and globalized entities...

again, this leads us to political and nationalized agenda. 

Everyone agreed that corruption is ubiquitous, and tyrannical democracy is not working for the people, and the consequential unjust inequity is much to blame. 

Another more upbeat point that is made, that I'll leave you on, is that the power of one person is great. One person can do much and inspire another to do the same.

Here's a video of the event posted on YouTube.