Sustainability Concepts and Consumption Patterns

1. Introduction --------------- - The global Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 is probably the high watermark of global optimism about our capacity to successfully meet the challenges of global sustainability challenges. 1. Acknowledge interconnections at all levels within the bios...

1. Introduction --------------- - The global Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 is probably the high watermark of global optimism about our capacity to successfully meet the challenges of global sustainability challenges. 1. Acknowledge interconnections at all levels within the biosphere. 2. Acknowledge that there are limits to growth. 3. Remember that prevention is better than cure. 4. Work to improve intergenerational equity. 5. Face up to the challenges of intergenerational equity. 6. Respect requisite diversity in both nature and culture. 7. Work to relocalisation with global connectedness. 8. Move from consumerism to quality-of-life goals. 9. Learn how to travel hopefully in a world of uncertainty. - These principles aim to foster ambition and a desire for improvement. - [Biosphere] = zone surrounding the planet in which living organisms thrive. It extends form just below the surface of the planet to the part of the atmosphere which contains sufficient oxygen to sustain life. - [Triple bottom line] = the need to seek a balance between economic development, environmental protection and social well-being. - [Discourse] = term used to refer to ongoing debates on a particular topic. - [Limits to growth] = at global level, the biosphere imposes certain limits to economic growth; limits that are being exceeded in relation to the emission of greenhouse gases. - [Resilience] = the capacity to bounce back, it implies strength as well as adaptability. -- -- -- -- Global emergence of the sustainability concept ---------------------------------------------- 3 4 Consumption and Consumerism --------------------------- ### Introduction - Growing global population + spread of mass consumption (driven by increasing use of energy) \> more unsustainable consumption - With a population of 9 billion people in 2050, we will need three planets to sustain our current consumption levels (Global Footprint Network) - More consumption has led to several negative effects: - \> 65 per cent of Americans are overweight or obese - ### The Emergence of 'hyper consumption' - Lipovetsky (French philosopher): Development of 'consumer capitalism' - goods (1970) - Hyper consumption leads to individualism \> people tend to consume more and more ### Individualism and cocooning - Cocooning: People spend most of their non-work time in their own homes with their own family, friends etc. Also, people are living in the outer margins of growing cities. - - of the outer world*/ecological flows* -\> ignoring questions as 'where does water come from?'/'where do waste products go to?' -\> screening out environmental and social intrusion. 'home as safe haven' -\> unconscious of their environmental 5 - Environmental, social and personal costs of hyper consumption: ### Planned obsolescence and the generation of desire - It has become rather than repair clothing and footwear - Consumers are led to believe that they need the latest consumer goods ### Addictive consumption - The cycles of consumption and purchases lead to addictive consumption - Example: If we buy the Samsung galaxy S7, we meet our needs, but when a new cycle of consumption, Samsung galaxy S8 is created, we think that that - Maslow's pyramid of needs: *=* the process of 6 1. *physiological needs* (basic needs) 2. feeling reasonable *safe and secure* (basic needs) 3. the need of a sense of *belonging* within networks of personal *relationships* 4. *self-esteem;* measured by prestige or feelings of accomplishment (psychological needs) 5. *self-actualisation=* the extent to which any of us might feel that we are able to achieve our full potential, partly by having the opportunity to participate in creative activities. (self-fulfilment Criticisms for the pyramid: - cannot do justice to 7 ### Ethical consumption and voluntary simplicity 1. *Ethical consumption:* choosing wisely about your consumption - 2. *voluntary simplicity:* Learn to live with less 1. '*downshifters'*: i.e. buying an inexpensive car. Mostly high-income people, who may be not able to sustain a low-consumption lifestyle. 2. *'strong simplifiers':* radical decisions such as giving up well-paid job, moving to more modest housing. 3. *'simple living movement'*: a global movement, with a frugal lifestyle. Easier to sustain a lifestyle, when you are part of a global movement. 3. - swapping goods and sharing goods; carpooling - ensuring that unwanted goods can be delivered to people in need 4. 8 - **E**nsuring that incentive structures and institutional rules favour more sustainable behaviours; - **E**nabling access to pro-environmental (and pro-social) lifestyle choices; - **E**ngaging people in initiatives to help themselves; and - **E**xemplifying the desired changes within government's own policies and practices. 9 Global Challenges as Wicked Problems ------------------------------------ - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 10 - - - - - - - [Wicked problems] = complex problems that have no single complete or trial-and-error solutions; problems which may emerge as symptoms of other complex problems. - - - - - - - - - - - - 11 Energy and Society ------------------ ### Introduction ### Energy and 'Progress' ### Energy and Economic Growth ### Cultural ideas of 'Progress' ### Focusing on food 12 ### Environmental and social costs of complex food production systems ### Back to Hubbert's predictions ### Energy Return on investment ### Extending the chase for hydrocarbons 13 ### Pathways out of oil dependency 14 Sustainability models, concepts and principles ---------------------------------------------- ### Introduction - - - - - ### The \'Nested Diagram\' Model ### Adding a Fourth Domain ### The Social Ecology Model - Stuart Hill - Environmental - Social: economic, cultural, political - Personal ### From \'Efficiency\' to \'Redesign\' ### Systems Thinking (+- 1920) - Step back to get the bigger picture - - Hard system is predictable. - Soft system: Unpredictable because humans / animals make decisions that influence others. \'Soft Systems Methodology\' --- first map a rich picture. 15 ### Double feedback loops ### Ecological Thinking ### Scales 16 Risk and Resilience ------------------- ### Introduction - substances that have a capacity to return to their original form after being bent, stretched or compressed. - what makes some species or ecosystems more adaptable to change than others and why do some individuals seem more capable of bouncing back after shocks or setbacks. ### Risk Measurement and Management - Human induced hazards can no longer be contained to local regions. - Increased movement of people is increasing the threat of epidemics or pandemics of disease. - Social conflicts have spilled over national borders and have become globalised. - Climate change is increasing the frequency and intensity of extreme weather. - Insurance companies cannot cope with increasing levels of hazard exposure important techniques anticipating and assessing risks in advance  17 ### Cultural differences on risk and resilience ### Hazard exposure and risk tolerance ### Back to beck and the risk society 1. To 'externalise' risk through the implementation of management plans 2. To 'individualise' risk by using legal processes to settle questions of responsibility 3. For authorities to 'minimise' risk by suggesting that risk can be adequately managed ### Risk and innovation 18 ### Personal Resilience ### Insights from ecology - *Resilience* (Walker and Salt): the ability of a system to absorb disturbance and still retain its basic function and structure. - Resilient systems will always incorporate a fairly high degree of diversity, even if such diversity sometimes seems redundant to the immediate needs of the system. Diversity provides alternatives if particular features of a system fail to function effectively. - A resilient system will sustain its functional diversity, even if this might appear to be wasteful in the short term. The danger created by not sustaining 'functional diversity' can be illustrated by noting that 'monocrop' agriculture leaves crops vulnerable to insect attacks and it depletes the fertility of the soil over time. - Resilient systems 19 - It is important to know the variables' -- - A resilient system needs to have tight feedbacks so that all changes in circumstances and function are monitored. We need to know when a system is beginning to show signs of stress that might indicate an approaching threshold. ### Designing resilient human systems 1. Avoid inflexible hierarchical structures 2. Introduce modularity 3. Create physical spaces and allow time for people to think creatively 4. Monitoring and effective communication 5. Give time to reflect 6. Balance between conservation and innovation ### Lessons from hurricane Katrina - Hierarchical disaster planning and management failed. - Little attempt was made to stop to rethink what was going wrong. - Monitoring systems were not in place to ascertain whether the felt needs of disaster-affected people were being addressed. - Communication systems were hierarchical and there were few opportunities for affected communities to learn from each other's experiences. - The social and cultural assets of a culturally diverse urban community were not sufficiently valued; emphasis on a new start for the city was lacking. - Top-down approaches to the rebuilding effort divided the multiracial community, which exacerbated racial and cultural divisions. 20 Environmental dimensions of sustainability ------------------------------------------ ### Some continuing and rising global concerns. - **[Ecological flows]**: movement of water, nutrients and other materials through local and global ecosystems. - Human activities drive species to extinction, current extinction rates are 1,000 times higher than any such natural rate, almost 200 species extinct every year. - Global loss of forest was highest in 1990s, now it's still 5.2 million hectares per year. - Desertification lead to loss of arable land. 52% of agriculture land is affected by soil erosion. - Water tables: boundary between dry ground and ground that is saturated with water that has penetrated into the ground. These water tables are failing. - Coral bleaching is becoming more frequent. ### From the global to the local. ### Ecological flows. ### Following the flows of water. ### Understanding biodiversity. 21 ### Revaluing 'the commons'. ### Resilient nature. 22 Social dimensions of sustainability ----------------------------------- ### Introduction \- ---- \- \- \- \- - The need to widen prevailing economic thought and action to ensure that it can deliver better outcomes in relation to both environmental and social well-being. - The need to make value judgements more transparent in policy-making, with a particular emphasis on increasing social inclusion and political participation. - The importance of cultural vitality as a measure of social well-being. - The need to constantly create and reinforce inclusive communities. ### The rise of environmental economics - It increases inequality and this makes people unhappy - There is no direct connection between economic growth and happiness - There are environmental costs - - 23 - LCA has become a powerful tool for thinking about a wide array of both environmental and social consequences flowing from resource extraction, production processed and the disposal of waste material. - In order to turn qualitative assessments of value into something more quantitative CV has worked with the principle of 'willingness to pay', or 'willingness to accept'. - Weakness: it is hard to bring wide-ranging conversations about values into any kind of consensus on a measurement. - Its strength: it forces economic policymakers into processes of consultation with known and potential stakeholders who have divergent views about environmental values. ### The economics of happiness ### Evidence-based and value-based policy - Has helped to make making - But it tends to favour supposedly unbiased facts and figures over perceptions, feelings or sentiment. - There is no such thing as an objective fact, data used to support one policy option over others always reflects the assumptions and presuppositions of people who have collected the data. - Argumentation is the key process through which citizens and policy-makers arrive at moral judgements and policy choices. ### Social inclusion and the politics of participation - make policy development more socially responsive. So, it is better to take time to ensure wide participation in the development of policy rather than implement policies that may favour some people over others, or divide people and communities. 24 - Key principle: decision making needs to be as transparent as possible in order to reveal any influence that may be exerted on the policy-makers by interest groups or lobbyists. - Critics: it is too slow and cumbersome to achieve clear and efficient policy outcomes. - Opponents tend to argue that representative democracy is far more efficient because elected representatives can speak on behalf of their constituents without resorting to cumbersome processes of consultation. ### The politics of shared space - However, it can also force people to this can create more tolerant and - Diversity of past experiences may give the community an increased capacity to adapt to changing circumstances. ### Cultural diversity and cultural vitality - If we think of it as being the beliefs and practices that are in use within particular human communities, we can see it as a source of resistance to change. - At the same time, the culture of a community can be seen as the conscious (art, magazines, films) of prevailing or alternative beliefs and assumptions. ### Creating more inclusive communities 25 Personal dimensions ------------------- 1. Move from consumerism to quality of life goals 2. - The possibilities for taking individual action in a 'runaway world'. - The creation and sharing of life stories. - Opportunities presented by the 'digital age', including possibilities for joining communities of practice. - Some reasons for feeling hopeful about the future. to find a because if you live according to opinions you will 26 ### Taking and sustaining action 2. reactions to feeling insignificant and powerless with respect to global challenges can be: - Powerlessness encourages individuals to throw themselves into activism that cannot be sustained for long periods of time, and has little effect. - ### New opportunities in the 'digital age' ### Communities of practice 27 ### Arguments of hope ### Entering a new phase in the history of humanity 28 Taking Action ------------- ### Parts with focus on discussion question are marked with a red note. [Key actors and actor networks:] - The selection of key actors cannot be based solely on old friendships or associations. - Any proposal that fails to convince key actors is doomed to failure so changes have to be sufficiently researched. 29 - Vig and Kraft (1994) say that policy states an intent to achieve certain goals and objectives through a conscious choice of means, usually within some specified time period. - Davis (1992) described environmental policy processes as 'issue attention cycles'. - Thomas and Murfitt introduce this as a 'policy cycle': 30 - Stakeholder consultation - **Scenarios mapping:** was initiated by separately by the US military and by Shell Oil in the early 1970s to - **Business plan:** refers to the formal presentation of a set of goals that involves cost- benefit analysis and the reasons why the plans are achievable. - **Balance sheet:** refers to a concise presentation, usually in table form, of anticipated - **Nicolas Stern:** In a 2006 report het wrote for the UK government about the economic consequences of climate change. He argued that the 31 - **Joseph Stiglitz**: an influential critic of free market approaches to the development of a global economy who called for much stronger policy interventions on the part of national governments. - **Wolfgang Sachs**: stated that the trend of globalisation should be reversed so every society can develop an indigenous model of prosperity based on stable or shrinking volumes of production. 32 - Mackenzie and Smith argue that sustainable behaviour can often be motivated on the basis of long-term economic self-interest (economic term: community-based social marketing) - They also draw from the international practice of community development. In the late 1960s and early 1970s community development practice originated in the UK speak to other countries. Enable ====== Exemplify ========= 33 34 12. - To convert an estimate of raw materials used and waste generated by any unit of production and consumption into an estimate of how much land is required to produce the raw materials and dispose the waste. - "Footprint": to - Great tool for ### Inventories and audits: - Inventories: a list of raw materials used and waste generated. Consciousness-raising exercise. Problem: resource use and waste generation cannot be determined precisely. - and 35 - According to environmentalists: emphasis on recycling by looking at the possibilities for turning this into genuine cycles from 'cradle to cradle'  Concept was developed by William McDonough and Michael Braungart (2002): products should meet criteria regarding recycled material used, waste produced and transport from production to consumption. - Thomas and Murfitt have amended the model from an emphasis on interpretation and diagnosis to an emphasis on action, they recommend the following stages: - - (brainstorming phase): data on raw materials/component parts, energy and waste are compiled. - flows of materials and energy are considered in relation to environmental concerns/trends. - The improvement assessment stage (challenging): better ways to use materials/energy are identified (completing the cradle-to-cradle cycle). - LCA and social sustainability: LCA includes production or activity cycles, by focusing on - LCA shows the - Turning assessments into recommendations. - Critical point: assumptions that underpin final conclusions are narrowly received. - The main stages in a CBA: 1. Project definition: set physical boundaries of the project, identify who/what will be effected, consider project options. 2. identify impacts arising from the project, exclude those that cannot be directly attributed to the project, finalise the cost/benefit inventory. 3. 4. Select and apply a discount rate for changes in value over the life of the project: discount rate (4, 6 or 10%), consider the possibility of new investment opportunities. 5. Assess the economic viability of the project: compile a financial balance, run model with different sensitivities (who/what is in- or excluded). - Weakness: to things that are hard to quantify, therefore 36 a. Contingent valuation: estimation of 'willingness to pay' to preserve an environmental asset. b. the cost people are prepared to pay to travel to specified site. c. d. - Criticisms of the use of CBA: 1. Uncertainty in the awarding of monetary values for many costs/benefits and environmental valuing techniques. 2. 4. The 5. The 6. CBAs are open to - Scenario planning (contemplating a range of diverse future scenarios) focusses on the understanding that future scenarios are not predictions of what will happen but are an effort to sketch out a range of possible settings in which designated actors will find themselves. Important: contemplating **a range** of **possible** future scenarios, to develop a capacity to adapt to changing and largely unforeseen circumstances. Term is misleading as it exaggerates the possibilities for determining outcomes. - Scenarios mapping: term works better when working on preferred scenarios. - Relies on scope, time-frame, key uncertainties and data available on relevant trends and predictions. - Goal: the articulation of a capacity and to 37 Focusing on water ----------------- ### Aims of this chapter: - Highlight the importance and value of water as it moves through the global hydrosphere. - Introduce some concepts that can help us to rethink our relationships with water. 38 ### How to reduce water waste? ### How to reduce water pollution globally? ### Catchment management 39 Food & agriculture ------------------ 1. By increasing the yields generated per unit area 2. By increasing the area of land that is used for agriculture 3. systems of agricultural production - - - - Operates by and directing payments to landholders who 40 - The application of tariffs and subsidies to the global trade in agriculture is actually reducing food security in many parts of the world and particularly for poorer nations with higher food vulnerability. As long as food is treated as a global commodity within a market economy, global food security is certain to decline, especially when richer nations can undermine 'free trade' with the selective use of subsidies and tariffs. - Application of tariffs and subsidies to the global trade in agriculture is reducing food security. ### Impacts natural resource depletion - reduction biodiversity - land clearance for agriculture and consequent food shortages, Sustained high food prices were a factor for the - Reduction in farming practices themselves: food production becomes more uniform: thirsty crops (rice, cotton see next) leading to soil salinization (hinders plant growth), erosion, soil acidification following drainage 41 - Agro-chemicals (pesticides) ### Non-toxic agro-chemicals nutrients (N, P and K): ### Sources: 42 - Agriculture contributes to the generation of greenhouse gasses, it is responsible for - N~2~O (fertilizer use) - CH~4~; CO~2~ (soil degradation, drainage) ### Climate change effects on Agriculture - Disrupts normal seasonal cycles - Hard for farmers to plan ahead - New stresses on already stressed agricultural production systems 43 The urban challenge ------------------- ### Introduction ### The urban age 2. ### Urban environmental impacts a. **Population** → possibly will increase to 9.3 billion in 2050, and then decrease relieving pressure on resources. But 9 billion might already be too much. b. **Food** → people in city more food choice than rural area. As a result, meat c. **Greenhouse gasses** → more will be emitted because fossil fuels are used for collection and transport of materials used to construct and sustain city. ### Urban sprawl ### Urban decline 44 ### Peripheral growth and urban slums ### Privatised governance ### Australia and Canada ### Focusing on the hinterlands 45 Rethinking waste ---------------- #### -The contemporary challenge. #### -Understanding of value. #### -Tracing global waste flows. #### -Transitioning from waste to resource in developed nations. #### -Glossary: 46 47