Sustainability has become the mantra of our time, but in reality there cannot be a one-size-fits-all approach. We need variations of sustainability so that we speak of “sustainabilities” to suit the circumstances in different parts of the world.

This was the call made by Professor Maano Ramutsindela, holder of the University of Pretoria-University of Cape Town (UP-UCT) Future Africa Research Chair in Sustainability Transformations during a public lecture titled ‘Sustainability: An intersection of science and ideology’.

“The meaning of sustainability in the Global North is very different to that of the Global South,” Prof Ramutsindela said during his lecture, which took place on 3 April at Future Africa, UP’s pan-African platform for collaborative research. “To assume we are in one spaceship is to avoid the reality that we are on completely different levels socially, economically and environmentally… in many cases what is sustainable in the Global North is inappropriate to our context.”

He offered the example of a conference he attended in the Netherlands in 2024, where no meat was served during meals – the explanation given was that this boosts sustainability based on the carbon emissions of cattle.

“I struggled, not with the food, but with what it would mean in Africa not to have meat or cows to pay lobola or for funerals,” Ramutsindela said. “Many people in Africa eat beef on special occasions, and the cow has multiple meanings here, so you have the concept of sustainability on one continent clashing with the reality of life on another continent.”

He explained that what the whole world does have in common is that the environment needs to be repaired. “If we don’t repair it, we destroy ourselves… So how do we address this shared problem given that we come from such varying levels of resource extraction and development, but we are all expected to pursue the same approach to sustainability?”

He said it starts with understanding ideology. “Many people don’t want to talk about ideology, claiming it’s to do with politics and not science, but it encompasses everything. Sustainability itself is an ideology that drives the natural and social sciences in different directions. Only by exploring and understanding it can we achieve transformative thinking about sustainability.”

Prof Ramutsindela also outlined some of the history around the concept of sustainability. In 1972, four scientists used computers to model the future of the world. Based on this they published the highly influential report Limits to Growth: The 30-year Update, which explored the consequences of exponential economic and population growth coupled with finite supply of resources. Along with other globally influential groups such as the Club of Rome, which commissioned the report, this report was key to shaping the way we think about sustainability.

“… [Today] we have very powerful, well-funded groups of sustainability scientists and futurists determining the future of sustainability,” Ramutsindela continued. “They measure what we have to do so as not to exceed what are known as the ‘planetary boundaries’. There are already warning signs that if we go beyond this limit we will face catastrophic climate change, ocean acidification and stratospheric ozone depletion. The science of today is making sure we don’t go beyond these boundaries – but it is easy for us to be so locked into the science that we aren’t looking at what happens to people. What happens when poverty and inequality go beyond their current status?”

At the other end of the spectrum, he explained, we have the less-funded social scientists looking at the past to explain why we have sustainability crises today. They argue we have to historicise sustainability to understand the origins of the climate and environmental crisis. Their standpoint is that we cannot build a sustainable future without linking it to the past.

“For example, if you take Sandton and Alex, or Pretoria and Hammanskraal, the futures of these places cannot be the same. Why? Because of their history and economic circumstance. So how does one establish a uniform system of sustainability when you have people who have lived under unequal systems? People who are struggling to get a daily meal would not understand why meat is not being served at a conference, as it is so far beyond their lived reality.”

Sustainability is inextricably tied up with broader societal, economic and environmental questions. We know that economic development is destroying the environment, but how do we get development and environmental conservation to join hands to achieve sustainability? “It’s a very important concept, but the approach is generally proposed by countries that are already developed,” Ramutsindela said.

“We have to avoid looking at sustainability from the perspective of the wealthy and middle classes; people who can choose to drink tea or coffee or decaf… These are people who can afford [modern sustainability practices] and in many cases these are countries and companies who ran away from the destruction they caused such as acid water from mining gold and diamonds.

This isn’t only something that happened in the past, it is still happening today. A good example is lithium and cobalt mining for technology in Zimbabwe and the DRC. Should we not be questioning the role of technology in the sustainability debate? The destruction that is happening does not speak to sustainability, it speaks to environmental degradation and violence.”

Ramutsindela added that we need to address these anomalies and open our minds to the fact that conceptions of sustainability are tied up with ideology. “People do not want to hear other worldviews if they don’t flow with their lives and beliefs. They develop cognitive rigidity, which is a barrier to knowledge that freezes our minds and entrenches the way we react. If we are to achieve something transformative, we have to find a bridge between different worldviews, between the natural and social sciences, and bring human beings into the variable to map out goals for appropriate sustainabilities depending on where you are in the world.”