The dark side of economic growth: Professor Shih Choon Fong on the need for sustainable solutions

1.75 earths. That is how many planets it will take – on average – to keep up with the rate at which humanity is exhausting the earth’s natural resources.

It is a dire statistic, and NUS University Professor Shih Choon Fong’s public lecture foregrounded what is at stake for our survival. Titled “Championing Sustainability Across Global Divides”, the talk on 15 March 2024 drew a sizable crowd of 150 staff, students, and alumni despite it being a Friday evening.

Prof Shih is former President of NUS, and an engineer and mathematician by training. It is perhaps why he is passionate about showing proof of humanity’s devastating impact on the environment. Deforestation in the Amazon rainforest, melting glaciers in Central Asia’s Tien Shan mountain range, Chilean landscapes made barren by mining – the list goes on.

The results will be catastrophic, from rising sea levels to pollution to deadly viruses unleashed from the permafrost. The upshot: the environment is everybody’s problem.

“No region, no country, stands alone,” Prof Shih said. “Bridging global divides is crucial to devising solutions to global challenges.” 

Don’t fall into the ‘progress trap’

To understand the environmental crisis, one must dig down to its greasy roots: the current economic-industrial system and its well-oiled machinery of extraction, production, consumption, and waste, said Prof Shih.

Every day, for example, we announce how much Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth has been achieved, he added. GDP is widely used to measure a nation’s economic health.

But an insatiable desire for growth could lead humanity to phosphorus futures, rather than prosperous ones. This is the “progress trap”, a term coined by Canadian author Ronald Wright. It refers to a chain of successes which, upon reaching a certain scale, leads to disaster, and is a topic explored by Wright in his book A Short History of Progress.

“(This book) is what started me on sustainability,” said Prof Shih. “It talked about how progress created built environments that overwhelmed natural environments. We see it happening now – a vicious cycle of ecological destruction.”

Refining frameworks of understanding

Sustainability frameworks such as the triple bottom line – people, planet, and profit – have gained prominence in recent times. But for Prof Shih, they do not precisely capture the issue at the heart of saving the planet.

“It is not (profit) that is the problem, it is overproduction and overconsumption,” Prof Shih said.

From overfishing for food to over-extracting minerals for batteries, the earth’s resources are being excessively consumed. This results in huge amounts of waste which is then exported to places like Africa and Latin America, said Prof Shih.

That’s not the only way inequality is baked into the sustainability equation. Carbon emissions produced as a result of overproduction and overconsumption are often attributed only to production.

Resolving these issues cannot be left to the market. Government regulation is key for any sustainability framework to have bite, said Prof Shih.

“Regulations will internalise environmental concerns and social considerations, and find the optimal way forward for profit,” he said.

No magic bullet, just silver linings

When asked by the audience whether there is a specific technology he would like to see perfected, he replied: “I don’t think there’s a magic bullet. We need a myriad of solutions, and over time, we’ll find out which one works best.”

Many solutions are already commercially available, such as solar photovoltaic panels. Others are getting there, from artificial leaves to small-scale nuclear reactors.

It will be a collective effort. “Universities need to synthesise the best ideas and practices from around the world to enrich the community,” he said, adding that universities are a critical node in the “innovation-cycle”, in which ideas and knowledge are transformed into tangible solutions such as products, services, or business models.

Youth have a part to play, he added. “The best people to (spark change) are students – they’re young, energetic, creative, and most impacted by the consequences of sustainability,” he said, noting that inculcating a global mindset in students will help them “learn from everyone and everywhere, from Stanford to Surabaya”.

For Mikiko Abigail Joni, a first-year science student from NUS College, the talk inspired her to consider the environmental aspects of pharmaceutical science. “There is a lot of waste in the industry because we need to keep things sterile. Even if we can’t completely prevent (plastic waste), we can at least reduce the harm it causes,” she said,

Daniel Le Mai Tan Dat, a second-year science student also from NUS College, said that Prof Shih’s sharing had given him a different perspective. “It’s not just about hard skills, it’s also about how we break down complex problems. Some problems are interconnected, and we can’t approach them from a purely scientific background.”
 

This public lecture, Championing Sustainability Across Global Divides by Professor Shih Choon Fong, was organised by NUS College, Residential College 4 and the Office of Alumni Relations. The three partners have previously collaborated on another public lecture titled, “Nativism in Ecology: A Xenophobic Metaphor” delivered by Professor Maharaj K. Pandit, Ngee Ann Kongsi Distinguished Visiting Professor at NUS.