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GASTARTIKEL von Petra zum Thema “Nachhaltigkeit” (englisch)

Prestory: “The Asp Ladder”

During the last couple of years Uppsala municipality has spent 15 million SEK, 2,5 million USD, to build a fish ladder in the small river of Fyrisån, running through the center of Uppsala. Due to interferences into the river in the centre of Uppsala over centuries when building bridges, terraces and so on, the asp has for 170 years been unable to swim upriver to spawn, and therefore the number of fish has decreased rapidly. The Asp is an official marker of Uppsala County, but has hardly been seen at all for a century. It never was commercially important, and Carl von Linné claimed it had bad taste. However, the fish ladder was built to enable the Asp once again to spawn upriver and increase the number of fish.

The question post: Was it a good or a bad decision on behalf of Uppsala municipality to build this fish ladder? Was it a good or a bad priority to put 2,5 million USD into this – a lot of money in the Uppsala context? Is the Asp ladder really a way to promote biodiversity and to deal with climate change? Does it really promote sustainability? Is it of constructive symbolic importance? Why – why not? Would it have been better to find alternative ways to spend this money?

And if the Asp ladder has not so much to do with climate change and the big ecological problems – what actually does? What could contribute both to environmental and existential sustainability? Which projects would gain public recognition at all?

Environmental vs. Existential sustainability

„To be a citizen is the most difficult job in the world!” How true this sentence appears in times like this. In times where most people fight with existential crises and lack a meaning within their lives, the necessity of environmental sustainability is questioned as well. The responsibility, which is shifted to the individual, is requiring an awareness of the characteristics of an environmental crises as well as the ability to choose the most sustainable paths. Certainly the problem appears that there is no one showing society the right way of how to handle such challenges at all. On the contrary, the current economical system, where the Tragedy of the Commons as Hardin already explained in 1968 is challenging us, locks every man into a system that compels him to increase his herd without limit – in a world that is limited. Associated with existential sustainability, environmental sustainability almost seems impossible to solve, embedded in such a context. To shift a bit away from such a pessimistic view, ideas, meanings and symbols might help to recreate a meaning within our lives. Maybe most people have a meaning within their lives, but just need something or somebody to awake this meaning or find it for them. Of course it sounds rather selfish that someone or something has to affect us so much, in order we will act. Indeed living on a planet where the majority of people have to focus on real existential problems like hunger, deprivation, displacement, war and so on, it seems selfish to even think about the necessity to create meanings within our lives, as we should be happy to be able to live without having to care about having a meal on the table or escaping persecution. On the other hand the ideology in which we are forced to live in – the social metabolic order of capitalism, which is inherently anti-ecological (cp. Clark/York 2008) – makes it hard for us to be able to focus on real meanings within live; an ideology which suppresses the creation of any valuable meaning but the valorization of our nature and surroundings – the quantification of life, meaning and spirit. Indeed it suppresses traditional concepts to be kept alive, as they evaluate meaning in a qualitative sense and might help people to find something beside raw, dominant utilitaristic thoughts. In fact this system creates rifts and shifts which are responsible for degrading natural processes and cycles.

Therefore I believe symbols which try to recreate a meaning within our lives and help to focus on environmental sustainability such as the fish ladder should be valued much more. They might help society to realize that there might be something else beside quantitative values, which we should respect. In fact I believe it’s an imperative for society to spend the most famous exchange sign, in fact unfortunately the only one which affects most people – money – to try to recreate another understanding of our nature. The creation of a social metabolism which allows nature to regenerate and reconstruct might only be achieved by such symbols, which have an effect on us humans, but more important on our nature and the maintenance of it. Therefore the investment of 2.5Mio.$ into the fish ladder project is not to much from my point of view, as the city of Uppsala spends a lot of money and probably over the years much more on celebrations of festivals such as Valborg. Student nations are even supported by the state, when it comes to the acquisition of alcohol. Keeping that in mind and all the money which is for example spend on champagne bottles this special day and the removal of all the garbage produced, I wouldn’t doubt the amount of money invested in trying to protect a species was inappropriate at all. The only problem one has to face is the general grade of popularity considering the fish ladder versus Valborg celebrations. Of course one event is an annual celebration and the fish ladder is a permanent construction, but who decides what creates a symbolic meaning within our lives, both examples might do. Despite one of the biggest challenges environmental projects, like the fish ladder, might face is a general recognition under the population. In fact not a lot of people care or even know about the fish ladder. Attention should have been captured differently, in order to make it a significant symbol in Uppsala. Maybe further investment in more signs and information about it could angle more attention.

However, a premise for being able to achieve such attention is the enlargement of the definition of our moral circles which should be expanded to include rivers, animals, rocks etc. Only then constructions like the fish ladder can create broader symbolic meanings within a population. Therefore a new metabolic order of capitalism broaden within society is needed that projects like the fish ladder can function as a starting point to create care for nature, an atmosphere of rethinking and different honor concerning investments in nature.