I am doing a piece on sustainability in Asia, and this has been an interesting journey. Should I take the American wilderness movement, combine it with Datchevsky and call out the western sustainability movement as shallow and utterly utilitarian? Or should I call out the elitism inherent in the wilderness movement, and in deep ecology, that has no space for the poor, marginalised, the refugee and the displaced people of the planet - by aligning myself with the greens, the bioethicists and the development theorists? Or should I simply stay within the discourse of sustainability within the profession of design and account for the pretty objects (Tree Hugger) and pretty buildings (ArchDaily), with an enumeration of the ecodesigned consumer products for consumption in volumes across the globe? Then there is the ‘real world’ and ‘humanitarian’ narrative of lets go to Africa to help out the less-fortunate with products that will improve their lives. In the writing none of these accounts contained Asia in them. Which potentially implies there is nothing to report on sustainability in Asia. But that can’t be true - there is the fact that the eco-footprint of the typical citizen of Asia is very small. So its possible the western contraction of the problem of sustainability could be about something else - aka Brundtland saying lets not endanger our prosperity. Is it possible there is another way to contract the narrative of the future of this planet without the ‘sustainability’ blame game? Something potentially requires us to have a different point of view. The privileging of the eastern philosophy as holding the solution does not appeal.
So what could this new framework, this new way of constructing a violable and plausible future be? Is there something around us already that is a bit more Asia centric.
Would be good to hear your thoughts.
Dr. Soumitri Varadarajan
Deputy Dean - Industrial and Interior Design, School of Architecture and Design, RMIT University, GPO Box 2476v, Melbourne, VIC 3001, AUSTRALIA, CRICOS provider code: 00122A
BLOG: https://campaignprojects.wordpress.com
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