“Climate crisis, global pandemics, natural disasters, environmental deterioration, depletion of natural resources, understanding bio-capacity, and whatnot has made it compellingly evident that living sustainably is no longer a choice but a critical need of our times and has forced us to address the dire need to reduce, reuse and recycle and re-evaluate our practices to rethink, redesign and rebuild.”

No, we are not together in this. How does it feel, to hand over a solar panel to someone having no roof, or to educate someone to get avocados from the farmer’s market in a fancy hotel, when they cannot even afford ½ a kg of tomatoes from the local market, or to give someone a cherry and some frosting to decorate a cake when they don’t even have all ingredients to make batter for one. I will tell you how it feels. It feels insensitive, inconsiderate, unethical, insensible, foolish, and obviously unrealistic, especially more when Pakistan has dropped 7 places and ranks 161 out of 192 countries, in the Human Development Index (HDI) for the 2021-2022 period (UNDP, 2022). 

According to Maslow, the needs lower in the hierarchy must be satisfied before individuals can focus and think about the next tier. Understanding the environment and the pressing need to amend our choices, a person must complete the four tiers to self-actualize the issue. The vacancy of these 4 tiers, would make any discussion on the environment, a waste of everybody’s effort, the internalization of this feeling in masses that their issues are just ‘their’ issues and the top tiers have moved far past them, for them to catch up, creating this huge gap of understanding.  The above discussion might push you to think that I am against sustainability. I am not. I am not against sustainable communities. What I am against is stupidity, monoptic visions, refusal of efforts to think otherwise, following the leads like a herd, and not being willing to come out of the box. And you know why? Because the simplest definition of sustainability is to sustain or preserve something. A lot of sustainable practices originate from a desire to save money; for example, using less energy, not buying unnecessary products, and not wasting food. So, who knows sustainability better than us? We are a nation where a sweater from the eldest child is used by all the young ones in line and still, we don’t throw it away. It is used as a dusting rag. What can be more sustainable than this, that every desi household has a huge plastic bag, to store used plastic bags in it for the purpose of re-using them later? Our remote areas know a more sustainable way of life than any of us. And you know what teaches them to do so?  It is the lack of resources.  So, the approach needs to change. This present approach is a result of westernization, I believe. We have all moved from basics to packaged, from Miswak1 to toothpaste in a plastic tube and a box. We have all moved from Gawala2’s fresh milk delivery culture to tetra packs, and by whom? This vicious cycle of development that started in the west with this colonial mindset to teach everybody how to actually live has engulfed and high-jacked our sustainable living to now make us all talk about sustainability again. Our debates need to differ. Our development strategy needs to be revised. We are different. Our needs are different because our positionality is different. So, we need to talk more about basics first, telling people to explore our indigenous practices in small actions to build a sustainable lifestyle in line with our quota of individual resources in the language they understand instead of using, REDUCE, REUSE & RECYCLE, and repeating the same cycle, but now in the name of sustainable living by promoting expensive sustainable market stuff by telling people to buy a bamboo straw for Rs. 500 when a pouch of 100 plastic ones comes in Rs.99.  We can’t end the debate here, since we have discussed contextualizing sustainability, let’s contextualize it for our prime reader, our architectural community, as a demo. We all know that sustainability can be applied to different aspects, so it becomes confusing to understand in what category you can play your part (if you are one of the privileged sorts) when people use the broad term more often. Since I am addressing an architectural setting, I would like to contextualize it for us by extrapolating Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs, to society, taking a soft inspiration from Shelton. So, if we extend the study to society, people expect businesses, companies, and brands on how they are dealing to procure and protect the basics for people before commercializing their vision and work. And this leads me to think about an issue that we all talk about. It&s one of the issues we aim to tackle through Archistan3. And the issue is that we always say that our profession is not visible enough, people still don’t know what architecture, or an architect is, and those who know, most of the time, call us “architecture”. We get to hear this a lot in our drawing room discussions whenever we are introduced as an architect, that what we can do by adding a few lines on a paper is what a common man can do, so why do you need a degree for that? And they are not wrong in that. We have been selling far more Pinterest aesthetics with imported Italian tiles, in a region where the requirement was basic first. What have we actually done to make ourselves visible? Eye candies can give us visibilisation for the time being, it’s being socially active and responsible that gives us the credibility and respect we need. I am not saying that we should all have the same calling. We can’t. Working towards our calling is a privilege, but occasionally, can we not do something to push our country out of this? Out of this extreme mess, we are in right now; understanding what role we can play to help lift it a little. I would like to take this opportunity to ask you to consider positioning the following questions for yourself and ponder that exactly,  How many of you are working towards a social cause or issue? Professionally not in your personal life.  How many of you have ever pushed a client or a design toward something sustainable that costs less?  During the heat wave, how many of you have thought that you will communicate 10 cheap ways in which people can protect their houses from excess heat gain if they have no AC or access to electricity during extreme load shedding?  How many of you have come together to finance a study on rebuilding flood infrastructure, for 33 million displaced, with plenty of sponsors that connect their name with you, instead of organizing dinner in Marriott or Serena?  How many of you ever thought that there is a population that lives out of DHA, Bahria, Naval Anchorage, and Gulberg Greens, where the plot size might be 1.5 Marla’s, and thought to resolve an aesthetic functional design, even as an exercise? How many of you, instead of being associated with a membership forum, have discussed how to activate, and exercise your professional agency to tackle basic issues? Our current scenario is more than a shred of evidence to explain, not even a few of us. So how do you expect that you talking about sustainable development would ever make a difference? This forum would never make a difference. These presentations would never be practically applied. Your voice doesn’t echo with the masses, it doesn’t matter. You haven’t done anything to make it matter. So, you can have a huge portfolio of interiors, and your building might stand on a famous avenue and get the limelight it needs on 14th August, but understanding the context you are from, the recognition you need, would never come from this. So, contextualize yourself first, and then contextualize the issue. The difference we all discuss to make will eventually follow. 

Bibliography
Aruma, E. O., & Hanachor, M. E. (2017). Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and assessment of needs in community development. International Journal of Development and Economic Sustainability, 5(7), 15-27.

Rifai, A. E. (2021, October 11). Sustainable Development in Developing Countries. Retrieved December 10, 2022, from cose-eu.org

Udo, V. E., & Jansson, P. M. (2009). Bridging the gaps for global sustainable development: A quantitative analysis. Journal of Environmental Management, 90(12), 3700-3707.

Walsh, P. R. (2011). Creating a “values” chain for sustainable development in developing nations: where Maslow meets Porter. Environment, Development and Sustainability, 13(4), 789-805.