Sustainability for the Forgotten

By Gary E. Machlis

Opening with the extraordinary story of a young French priest working in 1968 amongst impoverished villages of northeast Brazil, struggling to bring sustenance, sustainability, and hope to these disregarded and willfully ignored communities, this book asks a broad and far-reaching question that challenges the contemporary sustainability movement: What about sustainability for the forgotten?

Sustainability for the Forgotten is an incendiary book that confronts the history, policies, and practices of sustainability. It interrogates the usefulness of current sustainability approaches for the poorest of the poor, the chronic underclass, victims of natural disasters, refugees, the oppressed, and asks, how can we do better? With examples that range from the coffeelands of El Salvador to the coal country of American Appalachia, from the streets of Detroit to refugee camps in Greece and the upscale metro centers of the affluent, sustainability is examined with a critical eye and with an emphasis on insuring that the forgotten are heard.

At once well-researched and passionate, wide-ranging and sharply focused, Sustainability for the Forgotten is unlike any other book on the sustainability movement. Written with a distinctive voice that is reasoned, unflinching, and often poetic, the book challenges the sustainability movement to follow "a just and necessary path." The result is a provocative statement on the future of sustainability and a call to action that is ultimately hopeful.

Gary E. Machlis is University Professor of Environmental Sustainability at Clemson University. He is an elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and member of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine's Roundtable on Science and Technology for Sustainability and its Board on Environmental Change and Society. He has written widely on issues of conservation, science policy, and sustainability.

Table of Contents:Table of Contents:
Introduction: Freedom to Starve
Part I
Chapter 1. On Sustainability
Chapter 2. Profiles of Desolation
Chapter 3. The Processes of Exclusion
Part II
Chapter 4. Toward a Just and Necessary Path
Chapter 5. The Foundation Must Be Rebuilt
Chapter 6. Repairing Sustainability
Chapter 7. Sustainability in the Time of COVID
Conclusion: Esperanza y Lucha (Hope and Struggle)
Acknowledgments
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index

Praise and Reviews:

“I read Sustainability for the Forgotten with a feeling of awe. Gary Machlis has unearthed an interwoven history of environmental sustainability and anti-poverty activism that few Americans know anything about. He helps clarify the point that a movement for sustainability has to be driven by the needs of those with the least resources, not the most. A valuable, crucial book.”—Jess Row, author of White Flights and The New Earth

“Sustainability for the Forgotten is an insightful synthesis of rigorous scholarship and compassion. Machlis presents an unflinching survey of the often ‘unseen’ dimensions of humanity—the impoverished, the oppressed, the exploited, the displaced —and challenges us to embrace a more just and inclusive sustainability vision. This is a truly life-changing and world-changing handbook for the future. It should be read by everyone concerned with sustainability.”—Rich Borden, Rachel Carson Chair in Human Ecology, College of the Atlantic

"As a citizen of one of the oldest colonies in the world, I have often felt a sense of invisibility that comes from exclusive decision-making processes. Reading Sustainability for the Forgotten made me realize (with staggering examples) that there are many shades of invisibility, and for so many people, we have erased them through our collective and individual actions (and inactions). Machlis offers a clear strategy for true social justice and sustainability: Observe, judge, and act."—Elvia J. Meléndez-Ackerman, Professor of Environmental Sciences, University of Puerto Rico-Rio Piedras

"Inspired by a bookstore find written by a Catholic priest serving the poor of Northeast Brazil, Machlis reminds us that sustainability is obligated to not forget the forgotten. In this [an} engaging and thought-provoking book, Machlis illuminates the many ways the poor have been marginalized rather than prioritized in sustainability thinking and practice. Drawing on lessons from liberation theology, he urges the reader to ‘see, judge, then act’ with a particular emphasis on seeing those that society deems invisible. In the spirit of sustainability as a solutions-oriented field, Machlis offers strategies–from local and very practical approaches to systems level changes–to recenter the poor as the priority for sustainability."—Christopher Boone, Dean, College of Global Futures, School of Sustainability, Arizona State University

"Gary Machlis's Sustainability for the Forgotten is a heartfelt and erudite critique of conventional approaches to sustainability, with valuable practical suggestions for how the concept, and the practices associated with it, might be refined and improved."—Amitav Ghosh, author of The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable and The Nutmeg's Curse: Parables for a Planet in Crisis

"Machlis has powerfully focused on the marginalized, the unnoticed, the invisible. Sustainability for the Forgotten stands as a major achievement."—Robert Chambers, Professor, Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex, and author of Rural Development: Putting the Last First