Peter Tom Jones

Dit Engelstalige boekartikel 'Globalization, Ecology and Sustainability: How Sustainable is Sustainable Development?' (Peter Tom Jones & Roger Jacobs) werd gepubliceerd in de reader Postcolonial Europe in the Crucible of Cultures: Reckoning with God in a World of Conflicts, (Hears, Hintersteiner & De Schrijver (ed.); Amsterdam/New York, 2007).   

Globalization, Ecology and Sustainability: How Sustainable is Sustainable Development? (Peter Tom Jones & Roger Jacobs )

The pen is mightier than the sword. Whoever can succeed in creating hegemonic terminology and its allied thought perception, not only determines, to a large extent, how people look at a complex reality, but also obscures the perspective of policymakers and individuals whose goal it is to envisage solutions in order to alter this reality.  This is equally true in the socio-ecological debate. During the last two decades, a gargantuan shift in paradigms has taken place: while in the seventies and the eighties the concept of 'limits to growth' dominated the environmental debate, this mutated into the more ambiguous term 'sustainable development'.  We contend that its current, hegemonic meaning, raises a smokescreen around the real issues concerning the global socio-ecological question. It is our aim in this missive to provide an alternative framework that attempts to unite ecology and justice harmoniously, building on innovative concepts such as 'ecological sustainability', 'ecological debt' and 'environmental (in)justice'.

Limits to Growth

Commissioned by the Club of Rome, scientists embarked on a course of plotting, with the help of a computer model, a number of projections concerning the future of Ecosystem Earth. Their findings were published in the landmark report Limits to Growth in 1972. They concluded that – if the trends in growth of global population, industrialization, pollution, food production and depletion of the natural resources continued – the limits of growth would be reached before the year 2100 with the collapse of the world system as an inevitable result. In contradiction to the caricature that is being made of it today, the report was far from being a doomsday prophecy. In point of fact, rather than making 'predictions', it put forward 'projections' for possible futures situations, based upon selected scenarios. The conclusions of this highly influential document caused an uproar in the environmental debate. Presumably for the first time in history, blind faith in progress was questioned from a scientific point of view. Concurrently, the report clearly highlighted the biophysical limits of the planet Earth, both as a source of renewable and non-renewable resources and as a sink for emission and waste streams.

Although the Limits to Growth report accentuated the potential exhaustion of non-renewable resources, we have since learned that the overburdening of the waste absorption capacity of Earth's ecosystems (e.g. the CO2-absorption capacity of the oceans and the terrestrial biosphere) and their limited regenerative capacity actually constitute more acute problems. Scientific literature demonstrates that since the mid eighties the total impact of the global population on the environment is overshooting the ecological carrying capacity of planet Earth. Currently, this ecological deficit is estimated – roughly, albeit conservatively – to be in the vicinity of 20% (1). Furthermore, the wealthiest 20% of the global population lay claim to around 80% of global consumption. Thus, clearly the limits to biophysical growth have already been surpassed though it is not clear how long this global ecological overshoot can be maintained. Nevertheless, Ecosystem Earth has already been compromised which can be seen by indicators such as the Living Planet Index which has declined by 40% since 1970. (2) From a scientific point of view, Ecosystem Earth is currently residing in a no-analogue state (3), a term that indicates that the magnitude, spatial scale and pace of human-induced changes are unprecedented in the history of this planet.  This signifies that, as the Earth System is being pushed beyond its natural operating domain, we are treading on terra incognita.

Towards the Genesis of Sustainable Development

Nevertheless, in recent decades the perception of finiteness (the unsustainability of endless growth) has been changed. A new ideology of 'sustainable development' has replaced the former, and the mind boggles as to how this was so swiftly achieved in political-economical circles. In the early eighties, the UN commissioned a new body on environmental and development matters. In 1987, under the presidency of the Norwegian politician Gro Harlem Brundtland, this World Commission on Environment and Development published its final report Our Common Future. Even today, whenever talking about sustainable development, one still refers to the canonical definition put forward by the Brundtland Commission: 'a development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs'. The United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) that took place in Rio De Janeiro in 1992, can be considered as the second milestone in the consolidation of the term sustainable development. Although this conference did look at both the environmental crisis and the call for global justice, it did not dare to face the tricky issue of the relationship between these two questions.  As a result, both the problem of the unrelenting economic race in the North and the unconditional mimicry of this model in the South were not subjected to a much-needed microscopic investigation. 
 Whereas in the past the term 'sustainability' referred to the biologically sustainable use of renewable 'resources', such as forests or fish populations, it had now transmuted into an adjective being suffixed by the world 'development'. However, the waters have been muddied around the content of development, as this can mean almost anything from the construction of exotic hotel resorts in pristine natural environments for prosperous segments of the population to elementary water supplies for the 1 billion souls who don't have easy access to this blue gold; or from intercontinental 'ecotourist' flights to pristine islands such as the Seychelles to elementary mobility for the majority of the world populations who don't own cars or jet around the world. In a nutshell - is development to be measured in terms of an increase in Gross National Product or does it concern the qualitative improvement of the life of the millions of have-nots on this planet? Unfortunately the former has gained the upper hand, as accurately highlighted by Herman Daly and Kenneth Townsend:

The Earth ecosystem develops (evolves), but does not grow. Its subsystem, the economy, must eventually stop growing, but can continue to develop. The term sustainable development therefore makes sense for the economy, but only if it is understood as ‘development without growth’, i.e. qualitative improvement of a physical economic base that is maintained in a steady state by a throughput of matter-energy that is within the regenerative and assimilative capacities of the ecosystem. Currently the term sustainable development is used as a synonym for the oxymoronic sustainable growth… a culture dependent on exponential growth for its economic stability. (4)

The Revival of the Development Discourse

Because of the vagueness of the concept 'development' no questions were asked in Rio about the fact that, from an ecological point of view, the 'North' is 'overdeveloped'. Given that it is biophysically impossible to replicate the consumption patterns of the Northern consumer class to the entire world population, this was an unforgivable omission. Immanuel Kant would have described this situation as by definition 'undemocratic' as the resource consumption of the rich can only be sustained by appropriating carrying capacity from other parts of the world and, unfortunately, from future generations. Nevertheless, according to the hegemonic economic gospel a country can't be overdeveloped; it is either developed or underdeveloped, the barometer of this reasoning to be expressed in GNP figures. We hear echoes of Harry Truman's inaugural address to Congress in 1949 when he crammed the immeasurable heritage of the Southern Hemisphere into one single category: the underdeveloped countries that need a helping hand.

What Truman and his proponents did not take into consideration was that development-as-growth is a race without an end. In Ecofeminism (1993) Maria Mies and Vandana Shiva argue that the development-as-growth ideology justifies itself as a project that relieves poverty.  Poverty was the problem; economic growth the solution, the alpha and omega of society.  The North was put forward as the reference model to be attained as soon as possible by the countries in the South, referred to by the concept of ‘catching-up development’. Precisely because the synergistic interaction between the ecological and the global justice crises was not seriously taken into account during the Earth Summit in Rio, the global economic race and the Western development model, with its accompanying consumerist lifestyle, were not fundamentally questioned.  The growth fetishists felt strengthened in their global grasp for ideological power: 'sustainable development' became the new buzzword. Environmental problems in the South were (and are still being) presented as a result of insufficient capital, obsolete technology, lack of expertise and slackening growth figures. The solution, i.e. the growth-oriented development paradigm, is predetermined by the actual definition of the problem.

What was ignored was that local elites and the upper middle classes of these countries mopped up the benefits of any kind of high growth figures in the South. Although growth was supposed to relieve poverty, in reality the development age resulted in a dual polarization, both between and within countries.  Since the onset of neo-liberal globalization, this trend has of course been substantiated, to the detriment of the world's have-nots.  This dual polarization goes hand in hand with the formation of a 'trans-national consumer class'. According to the Worldwatch Institute, 362 million Chinese and Indians currently enjoy the same affluence level, with the associated environmental impact, as the 'average' European, Northern American and Japanese consumer. (5) Clearly, the divide between North and South is no longer geographic. A high level of consumption (water, fossil fuels, meat, materials, etc.) is no longer a strictly Western affair. The true divide runs between the global, integrated trans-national consumer class and the large group of 'local poor', the redundant, the unwanted and the dehumanized, those who don't count in the global supermarket because of their lack of spending power.

Insufficient Attention for Intragenerational Solidarity

If sustainable development is perceived as 'sustainable economic growth', the issue of justice with regard to relations between the ‘North’ and the ‘South’ fades into oblivion. In Western countries, ecology is often looked at too one-dimensionally as being a question of justice for future generations; this can also be seen in the classical Brundtland definition of sustainable development, which refers to the 'needs of future generations'. (6) Implicitly, this means that the injustice in the present division of the ecological pie remains unattended. To put things differently: intergenerational solidarity is clearly mentioned, but intragenerational solidarity does not receive the attention it is entitled to. Although an eye to the future is of course crucial important, this vision can come at the expense of the attention that is badly needed for intragenerational justice. This is the reason why proponents of ecological justice highlight the fact that it is equally important to account for the way in which today’s pressure on the environment and the associated risks are being divided between 'North' and 'South', between poor and rich.  In The Environmentalism of the Poor (2002), Joan Martinez-Alier speaks of ‘ecological distribution conflicts' which arise over the use of the available environmental space.  As this space is biophysically limited, subsistence needs often directly compete with luxury wants. A typical example of this conflict can be found in the ‘mangrove versus shrimp’ debate. Due to a growing worldwide demand for shrimps, mangrove forests in the South are increasingly sacrificed for commercial shrimp farming, with all the associated ecological shadow costs. This includes a decreased coastal defence against cyclones and tidal waves, a connection which is not often made by Western consumers enjoying the taste of shrimp based dishes.  Who has the advantage and who has the disadvantage in the exploitation of natural resources? Who wins and who loses? 

The disregard for intragenerational solidarity becomes blatantly evident in, for example, the discussions on the dangers of global warming. While Western environmental scientists correctly point to the potential catastrophic effects of abrupt climate changes within decades (e.g. shutdown of the North Athlantic thermohaline circulation, the collapse of the West-Antarctic ice sheet etc.), they often forget to focus on the fact that global warming is already leading to a number of slow, insidious consequences, especially for the poorest in the world. Even though it is precisely the industrialized world that is responsible for the major part of the emissions of greenhouse gases, most of the victims will fall, especially initially, in the countries of the South. Despite the fact that the effects of climate change will be worse in that part of the world, people with little purchasing power are less able to protect themselves from the consequences of floods, hurricanes, contagious diseases, drought etc. For communities living on the periphery of the global economy, social and ecological problems often go hand in hand. For the people whose livelihood is directly related to their access to forests, land, pastures or oceans, the fate and health of these ecosystems is evidently of vital importance.  When the ecosystems they are dependent on are degraded or hijacked for cash crop production, their subsistence rights (food, health, shelter etc.) are undermined. The environment is not so much a luxury of the rich as a necessity of the poor. (7)

The Contest Perspective

In Planet Dialectics (1999), Wolfgang Sachs correctly states that the term sustainable development, in the hegemonic meaning of the word, is essentially a term of repression. Although continuous growth is something that needs to be absolutely maintained, it is silently accepted that this will remain geographically as well as demographically limited. Sachs refers to the scope of sustainable development as a contest perspective, where the blame for the degradation of the environment is being attributed to the 'poor' in the ‘South’.  Their 'explosive birth rate' serves as a convenient explanation for the two most acute problems facing the Western world: environmental insecurity and migration. Once more this view overlooks the fact that the Western population is in itself almost overshooting the total ecological carrying capacity of the planet: overconsumption and overdevelopment should be considered as being part of the root causes of the contemporary socio-ecological crisis.  Although the globalization process has clearly led to a situation where many of the environmental burdens caused by exuberant consumption levels in the ‘North’ are shifted to the ‘South’ and the future generations, it is now evident that the separation line, both in space as in time, between winners and losers, is no longer absolute.  The first signs that the globalized rich are (and will be) increasingly exposed to the less pleasant side of a world characterized by inequality and lack of sustainability are: terrorist attacks, flares of violence, war, migration, exhaustion of essential resources, extreme weather phenomena etc. If the international society does not succeed in constructing another type of globalization, the multiple dividing line between 'North' and 'South' will hit back like a boomerang against the transnational consumer class.

 Other, and better, definitions of sustainable development are therefore necessary. At the core of the term, in its uncorrupted meaning, are two concerns which will significantly define the 21st century: the growing gap between 'North' and 'South' as well as the continuous pollution, depletion and degradation of the global ecosystems on which humanity is ultimately dependent for its existence. The challenge lies in finding a way to address both problems at the same time, without falling into the biophysical trap of 'sustainable economic growth'. According to Wolfgang Sachs, one can distinguish, besides the dominant contest discourse described earlier, two other visions on sustainable development. While the astronaut’s perspective recognises biophysical limits to growth and tries to create a global framework to solve both the crisis of justice as that of the environment, the home perspective pleads for structural adjustments in the ‘North’ (far-reaching moderation), so that space can be created for global justice (a redistribution between ‘North’ and ‘South’). In what follows, we propose a thoughtful synthesis of these two visions.

The Astronaut’s Perspective

This perspective is based on the scientific assessment that planet Earth is one integrated, non-growing, materially closed ecosystem. (8) Due to the accelerating development of scientific ecology, significant progress has been made during the last decades in setting up new observation techniques to map the condition of the globe. Sachs uses the image of the astronaut who observes, from space, the blue, fragile planet earth against the cold and dark background of the universe. The concern is no more or no less than saving the Earth. This perspective therefore focuses on the major, life threatening, global environmental problems. From the astronaut’s perspective, sustainable development is being interpreted as a problem of global management. Especially in scientific journals such as Nature and Science, the necessity of monitoring and managing is often being emphasized. It is the task of experts and scientists to bring the planetary environmental impacts of humans in harmony with the ecological carrying capacity of the earth. This 'ecological sustainability' forces humanity to respect the biophysical limits imposed by the finiteness of the global environmental space, referring to Mathis Wackernagel's definition of sustainability as 'living within the regenerative capacity of the biosphere’. (9)

This view clearly differs from the contest perspective as it recognises the necessity for a new balance between ‘North’ and ‘South’. The unity of humankind is based on a shared dependence, not only with regard to biophysical sources and sinks but also concerning crucial life-support systems such as a stable climate and a protective ozone layer, expressed through the metaphor of Spaceship Earth that must be kept on course by intelligent and visionary pilots. By analogy with the reconstruction of Europe after the Second World War, environmental scientists call for a Global Marshall Plan: a union of all interested parties on the planet to deliver common efforts to limit population growth, design eco-efficient technologies, install fairer trade rules etc.

Several criticisms have been advanced towards this vision on sustainable development. On the one hand, it goes without saying that it is somewhat of a conundrum to fully define the carrying capacity of the earth quantitatively and thus set safe limits for the exploitation of nature. As a result of the complexity of ecosystems, the mutual dependence of system segments, the existence of hard to calculate non-linear feedback mechanisms and the irreversibility of several system evolutions, it is a momentous task to determine the exact position of crucial thresholds, never mind managing and controlling them. (10) In opposition to the rise of the science of ecology, Wolfgang Sachs states that the rapid development of ecological science, which places the management framework on a platform, has given the green light for the technocratic recuperation of the struggle of the environmental movement for the recognition of limits to growth. (11) Sachs presents this poetically as follows:

‘Satellite pictures scanning the globe’s vegetative cover, computer graphs running interaction curves through time, threshold levels held up as worldwide norms are the language of global ecology. It constructs a reality that contains mountains of data, but no people. (..) They provide knowledge that is faceless and placeless, an abstraction that carries a considerable cost: it consigns the realities of culture, power and virtue to oblivion. It offers data, but no context; it shows diagrams, but no actors; it gives calculations, but no notions of morality, it seeks stability, but disregards beauty’. (12)

In our opinion, Sachs is too one-sided in this respect, as will be shown in the next paragraph. Nevertheless, there is another fundamental criticism on the astronaut’s perspective.  Some authors have suggested that this perspective is fundamentally anthropocentric: the natural world is seen in a purely utilitarian way. One asks: what can nature do for us? In that sense the term 'natural capital' – which is central in the astronaut’s perspective – is a huge misconception, as if nature has asked to be abstracted in economic terms. Once again it becomes clear that language in itself can already be repressive. In this vision ecosystems are considered as material resources created for consumption by humans. The unbridled materialism of Western culture is being forgiven, as long as it respects the carrying capacity of the Earth.

Sustainable Development and the Home Perspective

From the home perspective, sustainable (Western) development is considered as a contradictio in terminis. The central problem today is the absolute overdevelopment of the North, which owes a major ecological debt to the South. A fundamental position of the home perspective implies that, given the real biophysical limits to growth, the crisis of justice can no longer be resolved through the classic Keynesian growth strategies pursued in the sixties. According to this vision, the crisis of justice could be 'solved' by enlarging the economic pie. Rather than (re)distributing the existing pie more fairly, the left as well as the right pleaded for enlarging the pie through economic growth, so that everyone would be able to achieve a larger piece. Likewise, the Brundtland report (1987) called for the augmentation of the World Economic Product by a factor of five or ten, so that the 'poor' would also be able to attain Western levels of affluence. Unfortunately, this vision is outdated today. The economic pie cannot grow endlessly in size. Therefore the home perspective states that we have to abandon this classic growth strategy. Instead of more economic growth, a radical redistribution of the existing economic pie on a global scale is necessary. The struggle against poverty is impossible without a simultaneous struggle against excessive wealth.

Through the home perspective the more radical parts of the Western global justice movement meet the local movements and organizations of the South (personified by charismatic figures such as Vandana Shiva and Walden Bello). On the global scale they call for fair trade relations between North and South, for the abolition of the financial debt of the third world or for technological transfers from North to South, as a compensation for its ecological debt. The Western development model is being considered as part of the problem.  Adherents of the home perspective plead for local, endogenous development paths as an alternative to export oriented growth strategies. This development paradigm contains concepts like economic deglobalization, relocalization and decentralization of a restorative economy, decommodification etc. (13)

In the home perspective the biophysical limits are evidently recognized. Rather than looking at these limits as confinements, they are considered as challenges that encourage us to rediscover the art of living. Limits are thus being fashioned into opportunities so that a new, less materialistic and less anthropocentric culture can endure. This does not call for the idealization of small scale traditional societies, or for the restoration of old provincialism and the indulgence in splendid isolation of a village mentality. We do, however, require nothing less than a new paradigm of civilization, in which human development can step into a direction which respects life in the broadest sense. The Brazilian liberation theologian Leonardo Boff pleads in his A Etica Da Vida (2000) for a new cosmovision, beyond the classical, modern and reductionist world view.

Searching for the Synthesis

The criticisms that the home perspective infringes on the astronaut’s perspective are, according to us, only to a certain extent correct. In its unalloyed form, the home perspective also suffers from shortcomings. Given the seriousness and the nature of the current environmental crisis, some kind of global eco-management is indispensable. Global environmental problems such as climate change demand far reaching, global cooperation, monitoring and coordination, regardless of the way the problem came into being in the first place. Besides, as a result of the rise of ecological sciences, there are also many positive things to mention. It is from ecoscience that we have gained the current insights with respect to the unpredictability of the functioning of dynamic ecosystems. Recent developments have shown that, given the omnipresence of non-linearity and a multitude of critical threshold values (‘tipping points’ (14)), the precautionary principle is still the wisdom of Solomon. This principle is extremely relevant in light of the climate issue. Even though there is still considerable uncertainty about the position of certain critical threshold values and the inherent non-linear reactions in the ecosphere-climate system, it is better, given the possibility of catastrophic outcomes, to be on the safe side and ensure that the climate system is not challenged as to react violently and abruptly. The European Council, in keeping with this precautionary approach and presumably influenced by the recognition of multiple threshold values, has adopted a long-term policy goal of limiting the global average temperature increase to 2°C above preindustrial temperatures. (15) In a growing number of studies, this tipping point is designed as a temperature limit above which ‘dangerous climate impacts’ may occur.  In order to avoid such ‘dangerous anthropogenic interference with the climate system’, leading environmental scientists have, therefore, called for effective measures to be undertaken today without hesitation or delay (such as a reduction in CO2 emissions of at least 60%).

There is another reason why the home perspective offers insufficient guarantees for sustainability. Local events and excessive ways of life can have detrimental consequences in other parts of the world. This often leads to the ironic result that people in the most isolated parts of the world are being exposed to the risks and dangers that have been caused in the centre of the global economy. For instance, scientists were baffled when they encountered the highest PCB-concentrations ever measured in the mother milk of Inuit women in northern Canada. PCB's (polychlorinated biphenyls) interfere with the functioning of our hormones and can cause serious health risks. In the meantime we have learned that 'persistent organic pollutants' (such as PCB's) are capable of travelling distances of thousands of kilometres through the air currents in the direction of the polar regions. Through this process PCB's can accumulate in the ecosystems at the North and South Poles, especially in the fat tissue of mammals like polar bears and whales, as they are close to the apex of the food chain. The research showed that PCB's had also 'bioaccumulated' in the breast glands of the Inuit women. A similar example is that of the hole in the ozone layer, which was caused by the massive use of CFC's (chlorofluorocarbons) almost exclusively in the industrialized world. Yet the (seasonal) hole in the ozone layer was situated close to the South Pole, in the exact region where no CFC's were being applied. Global warming is another famous example. The slum dweller in La Paz, the fisherman in Senegal, and the shepherd in Ethiopia are in no way responsible for global warming, yet they are the first and most likely victims. These examples illustrate immediately why we are obliged in one way or another to bring the reach of our responsibility into accordance with the reach of the effects we create. The astronaut’s perspective remains, therefore, sorely needed and must be combined with the best elements of the home perspective.

 
Footnotes

      Jonathan Loh & Mathis Wackernagel (ed.), Living Planet Report 2004, WWF, Gland, 2004; Mathis Wackernagel, et al., ‘Tracking the ecological overshoot of the human economy’, in PNAS, 99 (14), 2002, p. 9266-9271.
2       Jonathan Loh & Mathis Wackernagel (ed.), Living Planet Report 2004, WWF, Gland, 2004
3      Cf. Will Steffen, et al., Global Change and the Earth System, Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 2004.
4   Herman Daly, Kenneth Townsend, Valuing the Earth: Economics, Ecology, Ethics, MIT Press, Cambridge-Mass., 1993, p. 267.
5 State of the World 2004, Worldwatch Institute, New York/London, 2004; Norman Myers, Jennifer Kent, ‘New consumers: The influence of affluence on the environment’, in PNAS, 100 (8), 2003, p. 4963-4968.
6  Note, however, that in other parts of the Brundtland report, clear attention is given to the needs of the present, poor generations. Nevertheless, in the famous Brundtland definition of sustainable development this is not sufficiently highlighted.
7  Joan Martinez-Alier, The Environmentalism of the Poor, Cheltenham/Northhampton, 2002.
8  For a scientific description of this so called ‘Earth System Analysis’, Cf. H. John Schellnhuber, ‘Earth system analysis and the second Copernican revolution’, in Nature, 402, 1999, p. C19-C23.
9  Mathis Wackernagel, et al., ‘Tracking the ecological overshoot of the human economy’, in PNAS, 99 (14), 2002, p. 9266-9271.
10  For a scientific description of these new insights, cf. Marten Scheffer, et al., ‘Catastrophic shifts in ecosystems’, in Nature, 413, 2001, p. 591-596.
11  Wolfgang Sachs, Planet Dialectics. Explorations in Environment and Development, Zed Books, London/New York, 1999, p. 62.
12  Wolfgang Sachs, Planet Dialectics. Explorations in Environment and Development, Zed Books, London/New York, 1999, p. 44.
13     See for example Walden Bello, Deglobalization: Ideas for a New World Economy, Londen/New York, 2002.
14     See for example Gabrielle Walker, ‘The tipping point of the iceberg’, Nature, 441, 2006, p. 802-805.
15    Nevertheless, the 2°C ‘tipping point’ remains a relatively arbitrary threshold value. See also Stephen Schneider and Michael D. Mastrandrea, ‘Probabilistic assessment of “dangerous” climate change and emission pathways’, PNAS, 102 (44), 2005, p. 15728-15735.

(published in Postcolonial Europe in the Crucible of Cultures: Reckoning with God in a World of Conflicts, Hears, Hintersteiner & De Schrijver (ed.), Amsterdam/New York, 2007)

Peter Tom Jones (1973) is Burgerlijk Ingenieur Milieukunde, Doctor in de Materiaalkunde en werkzaam als postdoctoraal onderzoeker aan de KULeuven. Hij publiceerde in diverse tijdschriften omtrent thema’s als globalisering en ecologie. Hij is auteur van de milieuwetenschappelijke rubriek Terra Incognita in het tijdschrift Oikos.

Roger Jacobs (1954) studeerde filosofie en menselijke ecologie en werkt sinds 15 jaar in het Centrum Basiseducatie in Hasselt. Hij is coauteur van het boek Het pomphuis van de 21ste eeuw (2000) en auteur van diverse artikelen en boekbijdragen over linkse politieke theorievorming, sociale ecologie en emancipatorische educatie.