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Social sustainability: Satisfying human needs - YouTube
Channel: Sustainability Illustrated
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Hi Alex here which human needs do we
have to satisfy to live a sustainable life?
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Interestingly enough most definitions of
sustainability mention meeting needs
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the Brundtland Commission of the United
Nations in 1987
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defined sustainable development as
development that meets the needs of the present
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without compromising the ability of
future generations to meet their own needs.
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In a previous video we used natural
science to see that sustainability can
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be defined
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as meeting human needs within ecological constraints and one of our
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four sustainability principles
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says in a sustainable society people are
not subject to conditions that
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systematically
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undermine their capacity to meet their
needs so what are these needs?
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how can they help us become sustainable?
You may be familiar with Maslow's
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hierarchy of needs
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I won't get into it here but there are
many resources available online if
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you're interested
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and here is another interesting theory
about human needs that was developed by
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Chilean economist Manfred Max-Neef
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he published in 1991 a book called
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human scale development demonstrating
that human needs
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are finite and classifiable; there are nine
fundamental human needs
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that are constant through all human
cultures and across historical time
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periods;
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what changes is the ways
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these needs are satisfied. So these nine
human needs
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are: subsistence we need food water
shelter
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protection we need a safe place to live
social security
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participation being part of decisions that
affect our life
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idleness some free time relaxing
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affection we need friends love understanding
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learning meditating creation
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cooking designing inventing identity
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a sense of belonging knowing oneself and
freedom
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being able to choose how we live our
lives although these needs
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are the same than the Romans or the
native people used to have thousands of
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years ago
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some of the ways we satisfy say our need
for protection
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participation or freedom can be very
different today
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than they were then. While some satisfiers
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satisfy only one need for example
insurance provides us with protection
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some satisfy several needs at once
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for instance breastfeeding satisfies a
baby's need for subsistence
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but also protection, affection and
identity these are called synergistic
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satisfiers
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Max-Neef also differentiates other types
of satisfiers called
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destroyers by supposedly satisfying a need
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they stop us from meeting several others
for example
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censorship pretends to satisfy our need
for protection
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but it actually stops us from meeting our
need for
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understanding participation creation
identity
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and freedom some are pseudo satisfiers
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for example fashion and trends can
generate a false sense of identity
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and finally Max-Neef also organized
satisfiers in four categories
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being having doing and interacting
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depending on how we satisfy our needs so
how is this helpful to become
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sustainable?
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first when working towards reducing and
eventually eliminating
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our contribution to conditions that
systematically undermine people's
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ability to meet their needs
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we now have a framework to organize our
thinking we can scrutinize our
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activities
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products and services through the lens
of these nine human needs
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and associated satisfiers, pseudo-satisfiers
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and destroyers secondly when looking for
ways to improve
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or replace an unsustainable practice we can step back
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and take a different perspective: why is
this product here in the first place
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which needs does it satisfy? can we
satisfy these
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needs as well or even better with a
different product or service?
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for example a music festival gathers tens
of thousands of people
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who join to meet their needs for
participation idleness
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creation and identity. Can we invent a
totally different way to meet the same
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needs
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with fewer carbon emissions due to
transportation
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and less impact on the local ecosystems
just asking the question
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opens a whole new way of thinking. Can we invent new ways to satisfy our needs for
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identity and freedom
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that do not require buying and consuming
so much stuff?
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Can we imagine other ways to satisfy
our need for idleness that do not
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require flying halfway around the world
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and intruding on other people's culture
and land?
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when we do find a sustainable satisfier can we improve it
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to make it a synergistic satisfier and
meet several needs at once with the
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same amount of resources?
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at the end of the day being sustainable
is about meeting our needs within
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ecological constraints
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and Manfred Max-Neef's human needs can
be very useful
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to find ways to satisfy needs using
fewer resources
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they provide a new lens and help us take
another look at the system we're trying
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to change
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which is crucial to stimulate innovation
and to avoid superficial problem solving
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if you're interested in reading more
about this the book human scale
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development
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is available as a free PDF online the
link is in the description below
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you can find all our engaging sustainability
videos to learn and teach
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