Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
deaf hear, could cure AIDS, cancer and diabetes, and could enable the world to be
waste-free, energy-efficient and clean (Shand and Wetter, 2006). Nanotechnology is
a 'platform technology' offering possibilities for low-cost solar cells and sensors,
faster computers, lighter and stronger materials, crack-resistant paint, self-cleaning
windows and fish ponds, odour-eating socks, anti-bacterial bandages, 'smart cell'
health treatments, and so on. It also offers new toxicological risks operating at a
nano-scale, with unpredictable consequences for human health, the global environ-
ment, and the economic and social well-being of developing nations, who are unable
to afford or to generate nanotech research and development of their own. Whole
industries and employment sectors could disappear overnight. There have been many
calls for caution and further evaluative research. Many companies have undertaken
toxicological studies, but these rarely make it into the public domain. For many
critics, it is the dominance of corporate commercial interests that has driven the
nanotech revolution, with issues of social justice, government regulation and
development needs being relegated in preference to the economic exploitation of the
new technology. Shand and Wetter (2006: 94) write of the need for serious and
widespread public debate, a moratorium and global regulation:
With public confidence in both private and government science at an all-time
low, full societal debate on nano-scale convergence is critical. It is not for scientists
and governments to 'educate' the public, but for society to determine the goals
and processes for the technologies they finance.
For many critics, the same still applies to the science and commercial exploitation
of genetic modification. As the International Risk Governance Council argues:
'Nanotechnology raises issues that are more complex and far-reaching than many
other innovations and poses significant challenges to risk governance structures and
Summary
Understanding sustainable development is perhaps best approached by viewing the
concept, and by extension the practice, as an 'heuristic'. An heuristic is a guide to
problem solving, a speculation that involves learning and engagement, a search for
solutions that may or may not be optimal. This chapter has attempted to explore
how sustainable development has operated heuristically. Consequently, it has
resonances with similar and related notions, such as the noosphere in Russia, and
is closely associated with questions about the nature of knowledge and the ways we
seek to make use of it. Discussions of science, statistics, continuity and change, risk
and uncertainty, cannot be avoided and in fact should be embraced if learning is to
take place and we are to move forward towards a more sustainable world. We must
therefore think carefully about what we take for granted, what we assume we know,
and be mindful that sustainable development probably requires the sympathetic
understanding of many different perspectives, ideas, policies and actions. Science and
technology may offer some answers but it is likely that they will also create new
challenges and problems as they have done so in the past. Sustainability science may
be the answer, but we must wait and see.
