Futures Foundation

WILL AUSTRALIA SURVIVE?

At the start of a new year, after the party hangovers have cleared, we typically reflect on the year just past and contemplate the ways in which we can make the coming year more successful and happier.  National leaders contemplating how to make Australia more successful would do well to reflect on the lessons learned by Pulitzer Prize and double National Science Book Prize winner, Jared Diamond, in his two recent books that document his comprehensive research into why societies have prospered or failed over the last 13,000 years.

In his 1997 book, “Guns, Germs and Steel”, Diamond attempted to answer the question as to why some societies have grown in population, wealth, culture and science while others in different parts of the world have not. In his 2005 book, “Collapse”, he focuses on the complementary question of why some societies crash and burn after promising starts or indeed after centuries of great prosperity and global influence.  In both books, Diamond devotes considerable space to Australia and to how it stacks up against the “dos” and “don’ts” of history that determine whether a society will continue to prosper – or even continue to exist at all.

In essence, Diamond argues that modern civilisation began its development some 13,000 years ago in geographic zones (including “the fertile crescent” that is now modern Iran and Iraq; in Mexico and the Andes in South America; in parts of China; and in north-west Africa) that were characterised by a natural abundance of plant and animal species that were suitable for human consumption and cultivation or domestication.  Civilisation expanded from those sites where these naturally suitable species and their domesticated variants could spread easily to other regions with similar climates because they were located on continents with east-west axes.  The growth of domesticated plants and animals led to food surpluses in these regions that, in turn, nurtured stable population growth and allowed the development of creative, scientific, artistic, military and administrative classes within a stratified society. These classes that were freed from the toil of hunting or food-gathering then catalysed further societal development, prosperity and expansion.

For several reasons, Australia did not develop the large, non-itinerant social structures nor the technology and agricultural practices that had developed in the northern hemisphere until the arrival of the English settlers in 1788.  Firstly, all the large marsupials capable of domestication disappeared or were killed by the early human settlers some 40,000 years ago.  Australia’s geographic separation from other countries, the extreme fragility of its ecosystems, its highly variable climate and the relative infertility of its soils also made it difficult for large, stable communities to become established until the arrival of the horses, plants and farming technology brought from the northern hemisphere by the English.

Diamond found that societies that got off to a good start (as Australia has done) subsequently collapsed as a result of five sets of factors:

i)                    the society inadvertently inflicts irreversible damage on its natural environment, through over-cultivation, excessive logging of natural forests, over-fishing, etc. 

ii)                  changes in the climate that result from long-term natural cycles (such as the advance and retreat of the polar ice caps) or infrequent natural events (such as volcanic eruptions) that were not obvious to or anticipated by the members of a society.  “In many historical cases”, Diamond found, “a society that was depleting its environmental resources could absorb the losses as long as the climate was benign, but was then driven over the brink of collapse when the climate became drier, colder, hotter, wetter or more variable”.

iii)                hostile relationships with neighbouring societies; e.g. Rome’s overthrow in the fifth century by the “barbarian” tribes who lived in northern Europe and Central Asia beyond the borders of the “civilised” Mediterranean Europe.

iv)                decreased support by friendly neighbours either because of the emergence of political or trade tensions or because the neighbours have become weakened themselves in some way.  Diamond felt that this “is a familiar problem today because of the First World’s dependence on oil from ecologically fragile and politically troubled Third World countries”.  The growing dependence of America on the countries (such as China) that currently purchase its Treasury bonds and thereby finance its ballooning trade deficits is another case in point.

v)                  the society’s willingness to confront and deal positively with the effects of the above four factors once their effects start to threaten the society’s prosperity and continuing viability.  This could require a society to redefine the values and traditions and government policies on which its previous identity and its economic and social structures had been built.  However, Diamond found that a society’s ruling elite would often attempt to deny the existence of a threat or would respond in ways that protected their own interests (for a time) but which did not address the threat the overall society was facing.  These actions simply ensured that the elite would be the last to perish.

We see signs of some of these precursors of societal collapse in Australia and other countries today:  e.g. problems with rising salinity levels in our soils, widespread soil erosion, water shortages, dying river systems, over-fished rivers and oceans, rejection of the Kyoto protocol for reduction of carbon emissions into the atmosphere, global warming.  However, we can also see (as Diamond highlights in his books) a growing questioning by some sections of Australian society of how we can better adapt to and sustain our extremely fragile eco-systems and build more positive relationships with our Asian neighbours while retaining our important, long-established trading links with England, Europe, Japan and America.  

As Australia grapples as a nation with the challenges of the 21^st century it would be wise to keep in mind what a society must do to avoid making the mistakes that have led to the decline and disappearance of other nations that once considered themselves “lucky”.

The lessons of history for sustainable national prosperity would also seem to be relevant to the creation of sustainable government and commercial organisations:  e.g. care for your natural environment; build good relations with neighbours; monitor the external environment and prepare for cycles of “tough times”; and develop governance processes that are sensitive to signals that a change in direction is needed and that act in the best long term interests of the whole rather than particular elites, lobby groups or the privileged “haves”.

We should all keep the findings from Jared Diamond’s painstaking and monumental research in mind when charting our course in the years ahead.  The urgency for us to do so was recently emphasised by Jim Hansen, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies and George Bush’s top climate modeller when he said that we have “at most 10 years” to make the drastic cuts in carbon emissions that might head off irreversible climatic convulsions that pass critical tipping points and then become driven by positive feedback effects.