Winning the Sustainability Game

The latest from Sustainability Illustrated --- running through the 4 sustainability principles, or 'system conditions' for success in terms of sustainability.

You can't take a strategic approach to sustainability without knowing where you're going.  These principles provide that ultimate goal -- not in detail, because the world is too complex to predetermine exactly what sustainability will look like -- but in principle.  We know the basic mechanisms by which we are undermining the social and ecological systems upon which we depend, so by eliminating those, we can move strategically toward sustainability:



Subscribe to Sustainability Illustrated for more great videos and share widely! 

Stay going. 
-

Power + Love

A couple of weeks ago we went to see Adam Kahane talk about his new book – Power and Love.  The talk and the book both helped shed light on aspects of leadership and social change that to some extent have not been explicit in our work.  I wouldn’t say we weren’t conscious of them already, but his depth of research and experience helped solidify our understanding and articulate the important interplay between power and love.

Kahane uses definitions of power and love from theologian and philosopher Paul Tillich:

Tillich defines power as “the drive of everything living to realize itself, with increasing intensity and extensity.”  So power in this sense is the drive to achieve one’s purpose, to get one’s job done, to grow.  He defines love as “the drive towards the unity of the separated.”  So love in this sense is the drive to reconnect and make whole that which has become or appears fragmented. (Power and Love, p. 2)

Central to the book is the idea that these conceptualizations of power and love both have two sides – a generative side and a degenerative side.  He looks to Martin Luther King, Jr. (whose doctoral studies focused on Tillich’s work): “Power without love is reckless and abusive,” King said, “and love without power is sentimental and anemic.” (Power and Love, p. 8). 

The point is we cannot choose power or love, we must choose both – generative love must come with power and generative power must come with love. 

The implications for sustainability work - for creating positive social change - are many and far-reaching.  Too often elements of the movement are dominated by degenerative power (e.g. obstructive regulation or heavy-handed guilt tactics), and probably more often, by degenerative love (e.g. “save the whales,” “think of the children,” “why can’t we all just get along?!?”).

We’ve always tried to avoid both in our work, and for me, that is at the heart of why Strategic Sustainable Development (SSD) is such a compelling approach.  It recognizes the complex current reality - with entrenched power structures led by dominate corporations and rich nations - and works to evolve it in ways that create a sustainable future as smoothly as possible.  It recognizes the power of our institutions, as well as the love necessary to foster cooperation, alignment and movement towards a sustainable future.  It employs a rigorous, scientific framework for what sustainability means, in conjunction with the tenants of organizational learning necessary to engage the leadership of all types of people needed to create a sustainable society.

The suite of examples from Kahane’s work with Shell, Generon, Reos, and SoL on projects all over the world - Peace and Reconciliation in South Africa, climate change in Canada, political stability in the Philippines, child nutrition in India, national visioning in Israel, and the Sustainable Food Lab across many countries - illustrate how complex challenges cannot be “solved” with any sort of prescription.  The ultimate of these challenges - the sustainability challenge - which embodies each of these and many more, is of course no exception. 

That is why SSD uses a principle-based definition of sustainability.  There is no roadmap or path to sustainability - the system is too complex with too many variables for us to know exactly what a sustainable future will look like. But we do understand enough about our system - humanity living the biosphere - to know what a sustainability society must be in principle; sort of a “true north” towards which we know we need to head before it is too late to avoid wholesale collapse of ecosystems and social systems.  In this sense, we don’t have a map, but we have a compass that can and must guide us in all of our personal and professional decisions.  In doing so, we create a sustainable future step by step.

Kahane credits fellow Reos Partner Jeff Barnum in pointing out that “creating something new in the world… requires us, not to plan it all out from the beginning, but rather to step forward, to act, to reflect on the results of our action, and then to take our next step”  (Power and Love, p. 136).  He also quotes peace activist Ana Teresa Bernal, with whom he worked in Columbia, and who said: “It’s like that poem of Antonio Machado: ‘Walker, there is no path.  The path is made by walking’” (Power and Love, p. 140).

I agree this is the only way to effectively lead in complex systems, and would add that having a compass for the “true north” of sustainability - not prescriptive specifics, but generic principles - is necessary for providing sufficient context and orientation for walking that path in as strategic and effective a way as possible. 

Stay going.

Life After Growth

How do we get smarter, not bigger?  How do we promote the growth of value, not the growth of stuff?  How do we increase well-being without increasing consumption?

This 20 minute video gives a good run through some of the attempts going on out there - degrowth, happiness indices, GDP alternatives, transition towns, post-carbon lifestyles, local production, etc.

Life After Growth - Economics for Everyone from enmedia productions on Vimeo.

Stay going. 

Two-minute Video Explaining Sustainability

A concise explanation of what sustainability is and why it matters is always tough - here's a pretty good explanation from Real Eyes Sustainability out of Ireland.



It doesn't get into the whole concept of Strategic Sustainable Development - the 5-level framework for planning, the process of backcasting from the 4 sustainability principles, etc. - but it's a great intro, certainly the kind of thing we need more of.

(thanks to Gil Friend and The Natural Step for bringing it to our attention, and to Igloo Animations for creating it!)

Stay going.

Leveling Appalachia: The Legacy of Mountaintop Removal Mining

The negative impacts of coal are so numerous it can be difficult to hold them all in your head at once - CO2 emissions driving climate change (SP1), toxic coal ash spills (SP2); strip mining & mountain top removal (SP3); the devastating social and economic impacts on miners and local communities (to say nothing of the indirect impacts from climate change, etc.) (SP4) - the list goes on...

For a good, 20-minute look at the story on the ground, check out this video from Yale Environment 360 in collaboration with MediaStorm:

Leveling Appalachia: The Legacy of Mountaintop Removal Mining

Our best solutions are to dramatically reduce our demand for energy through smart design (of buildings, cities, transportation systems, vehicles, appliances, etc.) to a point where the available alternatives (solar, wind, geothermal, etc.) can meet our needs.

Stay going.

.

Sustainable and Desirable

It may seem kind of obvious, and I'm certainly not the first to express the sentiment, but needs to be said:

a sustainable future is not necessarily desirable, a desirable future is necessarily sustainable.

As interest in 'sustainability' continues to grow exponentially, so inevitably does confusion and misunderstandings of terminology. Sustainability is the bare-minimum we're shooting for, it's not the end-all, be-all by any means. It's the eye of the needle where we stop contributing to unsustainability, get restorative, and start opening up the "funnel walls".

"Sustainable development" is the process of moving towards sustainability, and 'beyond' (and "development" shouldn't be confused with "growth", the former is the growth of value, the latter is just the growth of stuff). Of course, none of this will be a smooth, linear process. We'll move step by step, more and more people and organizations will continually increase their awareness and create more and more solutions, and new, fresh ways of being that don't systematically undermine the social and ecological systems upon which we depend.

In order to do this of course, we need to break away from some deeply engrained habits of thought and action, and backcasting from a compelling vision is really necessary to do that - to move from incremental steps of 'less bad' to transformative, exciting steps of 'creating a sustainable and desirable society'. And that vision needs to be more compelling than just "sustainable," no one is really looking for a "sustainable life" or a "sustainable community" - we are looking for meaningful, interesting, exciting, fulfilling lives, communities, relationships, careers, etc.

The Sustainability Principles are just the basic constraints, derived from basic laws of thermodynamics and social systems... they set a frame for "free creativity within constraints," empowering the creative process of sustainable development, or 'creating sustainability' - they are not prescriptive in terms of how we get there or what it will look like.

So yes, it's sustainable and desirable, and also just, healthy, fecund, and caring ... sometimes I'll just say "sustainable" to catch all that.

Stay going.

.

Happy Earth Overshoot Day!

Yep, it's Earth Overshoot Day again. Ok, not that happy an occasion, but an important one to help us step back and really let it sink it... just what we are doing here. Just what "unsustainability" means.

Here's the basics from the Global Footprint Network that tracks this stuff:

Unlike governments, nature doesn’t do bailouts. Yet as of today, humanity will have placed more demand on ecological services – from filtering CO2 to producing food, fiber and timber– than nature can provide in this year, according to Global Footprint Network calculations. From now until the end of the year, we will meet our demand for ecological services by depleting resource stocks and accumulating carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.

...Because of the global economic slowdown, we will reach Earth Overshoot Day one day later than last year, according to Global Footprint Network projections. By comparison, in the past, Earth Overshoot Day has steadily moved four to six days closer to January 1st each year.

See yesterday's post about the Planetary Boundaries for a little more explanation on what it means to cross these thresholds, the implications of irreversibility, etc.

Stay going.
.

Implications of the Anthropocene

We've been slamming the table on this key point for some time in speeches, conversations, etc. - which is that as the magnitude, scope, and scale of human activity are now so large that we are a driving force in earth systems.

A group of 30 scientists just published a new article in Nature that digs into the planetary boundaries that our activities have crossed or threaten to cross... climate change is just one of 9 identified boundaries (they put the threshold for that one at 350 ppm).

Take 10 minutes to listen to the explanation:



The whole concept is a great step for mainstream science in that it begins to address inter-connectivity at the global scale and define clear boundaries and thresholds that we cannot cross. These kinds of constraints can be effective drivers for creativity and innovation (and not simply limits that imply sacrifice or lower life-quality). It essence it the same concept as sustainability principles, just taken a step further towards details and hard numbers in some of the major groups of material and energy flows. This is similar to the process any organization moving towards sustainability using the framework for SSD would do in terms of grouping activities under each principle and then measuring impacts and implementing solutions to eventually eliminate those impacts (which is in my view the only way to really ensure that we stay below thresholds and within "safe" limits).

Stay going.
.

Karl-Henrik Robert - from cancer research to strategic sustainable development

A quick clip from Karl-Henrik, going through his story of moving from cancer research upstream into strategic sustainable development leadership... about how and why people work together and help each other when they know life is on the line:



Stay going.

Sustainable PVC?

Vinyl and PVC are common building materials that have a whole host of problems associated with them. There are many alternative materials that can be used, yet the materials are ubiquitous because they are low-cost and durable, and perform certain functions well.

Under pressure from health and environmental groups aiming to ban PVC altogether in the late ‘90s, the industry in Europe set out to create “sustainable PVC”....read more at our Aedi Construction blog.

credit to http://www.inhabitat.com/2007/03/26/pvc-no-good/ for the photo.

Food, Inc

Get ready for what looks like a great movie on the food industry - hopefully it will help bring home why it's so important to buy local and organic, and support the development of a safe, resilient food system - so often these reasons are invisible to us, so a movie like this should be a big help and great reminder:



Stay going.

Free, online "Intro to Sustainable Engineering" course from BTH

Gotta love those Swedes, offering more awesome education for free -- see below for an announcement of a new distance learning course from BTH, sans tuition. Also lacking of course the other benefits of actually studying in Sweden, but could be a great fit for any engineers out there:

We are excited to announce the limited opening of a Bachelor-level distance course called Introduction to Sustainable Engineering. This free online course will run from April 17th - June 25th, 2009.

Applications open soon (March 6th), for only two weeks. They tend to fill up extremely quickly, so please let them know asap.

The course explores these key aspects:

Module 1: Core Concepts of Strategic Sustainable Development (SSD)

• Today’s environmental problems from a systems perspective

• The cyclical processes in nature vs. the linear use of materials in today’s society

• How to use a systems view and strategic planning for sustainable development

• Principles of sustainability stemming from basic science: thermodynamics, energy, biological systems and social systems

Module 2: Examination of Engineering Applications for Sustainability

• Application of SSD framework to:

> Energy Systems & Transport

> Sustainable Product Development

> Environmental Management Systems & Regulatory Frameworks

> Life Cycle Analysis

Please visit the following website for more information ):

http://www.bth.se/site/sustainability.nsf/pages/sustainability-distance-learning

Stay going...

i.heart will.i.am

Seems like I can't turn around without posting another awesome video from will.i.am - this one taking Gore's speech and challenge about creating 100% clean renewable energy within 10 years (9.5 now...I'm sure you all saw the news yesterday that Obama's going to stop the federal gov't from impeding states on setting their own higher auto-standards - a great early move).

This is a big step to see a major music star take up the call to create a sustainable society - doing a pretty damn good job of putting a lot of the pieces together (from climate and energy, to plastics and textiles, to water, to sustainable product design, etc.) and tying each back to his own daily routine - showing at the same time how (a) we're all complicit in this unsustainable reality, and how we can change our behaviors personally, demand better politically, and create better professionally, and (b) we're all getting played by corporations with goals and parameters that are in many ways misaligned with maximizing well-being for as many people as possible.

It also highlights the importance of the arts in this process of co-creating a sustainable society. For communicating in compelling ways, for inspiring, for reshaping our collective values, for connecting with our authentic selves and what's really important. Sustainable development is truly a transdisciplinary endeavor, and can't be relegated only to the scientists, engineers, designers, politicians, or economists.



Stay going

Education for a Green Economy

Here's an exciting piece co-authored by many of our colleagues working in the education for sustainability movement. The shift in language is I think a good one, "green economy" probably makes a lot more intuitive sense to a lot of people than does "sustainability" ... a green economy of course is not just about the environment - the trees and owls - but about people meeting their needs. Some might say "green/blue" to make that more explicit - but the social and environmental aspects of all of this are so interrelated that they are indeed one in the same.

Education is too often overlooked in these matters, yet it is vitally important - it shapes our thought and patterns of thought that create our unsustainable systems (and then say "we didn't do it, there's nothing we can do about it"). This is key both for the immediate-term green jobs training, particularly in our community colleges, but also in all disciplines and throughout our education systems to breakout of these thought-traps and create sustainable systems - economic, infrastructure, social, energy, engineering, building, health, transportation, monetary - all kinds of systems.

_________________________________

OPINION: Letter to the New Education Secretary

by Worldwatch Institute on December 19, 2008

Worldwatch is pleased to publish this open letter from prominent education and environment leaders urging the newly nominated U.S. education secretary, Arne Duncan, to consider the importance of education in carrying out President-elect Barack Obama's environmental agenda.

Dear Mr. Duncan:

Congratulations on your nomination. As you jump into the daunting challenge of bolstering our sagging education system, you have a powerful opportunity presented by the need to create a carbon-free economy.

President-elect Obama has astutely perceived the linkages between climate change, economic stimulus, energy security, and job training by declaring that the transition to a green economy is his "top priority." The missing link in this system is the critical role that education can play in quickly making the green economy a reality. By working with him to include a major role for education in his green economy plans, you'll help advance his agenda - and yours.

Transforming our nation's economic, energy, and environmental systems to move toward a green economy will require a level of expertise, innovation, and cooperative effort unseen since the 1940s to meet the challenges involved... Read the rest at the Worldwatch site.

_________________________________

Stay going...

New MSLS Brochure

Check out the new MSLS brochure - some great updated info about the program in a snazzy technical online book-thing. Also, if you go to the program you learn how to jump super-high in a business suit, as evidenced on the cover shot.

Check out the new Brochure from the MSLS Programme at BTH!

Earth Overshoot Day

Sadly, today is Earth Overshoot Day. This is based on the measure of the Global Footprint Network, that today humanity has consumed all of the new resources that nature will produce this year. From here until the end of the year, we'll no longer be "living off the interest" and instead will be "eating into our capital." A basic understanding of finances let's us know that this is not good for us - and especially not good for our children and grandchildren, who will be left with that much less, a world that produces less, and as a result a system that is far less resilient.

Often people make the mistake of thinking that sustainability is all about limits, having less stuff, being restricted in terms of what we can do. In fact, it is the opposite. By recklessly pursuing physical growth in a "take-make-waste" economy - thinking we're getting more - we're actually getting less - now and in the future.

As the Footprint Network points out, the financial collapse happening around us right now is a stark reminder of what can happen when debt and spending are allowed to grow out of control, with no responsibility and no acknowledgment of the natural limits that every system is subject to - whether it's the laws of thermodynamics on the planetary scale, or the rules of accounting for a business. You can only cheat the system for so long, and we've been cheating the system for too long. We continue to see examples of organizations, communities, cities, and now entire economies hitting the funnel walls - Enron, New Orleans, Houston/Galveston, Lehman/Bear/Freddie/Fannie/AIG.

Of course the good news is, that to avoid this collapse, all we need to do is be respectful of those limits. And these limits will not limit us. Constraints breed creativity - the rules of music enable artists to create beautiful songs as opposed to jumbles of noise, the rules of soccer make a fun game as opposed to an aimless group of people chasing a ball, tough engineering challenges with unusual constraints spur innovation, the list goes on. And accepting the challenge of operating all of our institutions, organizations, businesses and within the constraints of the sustainability principles will help us come together and engage in the most gratifying work imaginable - creating better lives for ourselves, our families, our communities, those around the world while contributing to the health and well-being of all other life. So we can move-on from this myth that acknowledging the reality of the limits that the laws of nature represent will cause problems for us - it only opens up opportunities and is our way forward for improving our quality of life.

To learn more about ecological footprinting, the Footprint Network, and Overshoot Day, check out: http://www.footprintnetwork.org/

Stay going...

The 7th GHG....

I just saw the news (below) on the Grist weekly update (a great news service if you're looking to stay up on the big events, and stay entertained in the meantime). It is of course not good news, another example of unintended consequences and how taking a "quick fix" approach of replacing one substance produced by society with another can create more problems than it fixes. Both perfluorocarbons and NF3 violate the 2nd sustainability principle. There's no doubt that these finding will lead to the regulation of NF3, and thus represent a risk to LCD manufactures, a hit to their product line, and a bummer to anyone buying an LCD (to really put a damper on things, Co-op America just put out a list of energy saving tips that includes buying an LCD instead of a plasma... of course there are other solutions to these tough TV dilemmas, like skipping it altogether):

If you didn't feel guilty about your TV habits already, here's a new reason: a chemical used in making flat-screen televisions has been found to be a potent greenhouse gas, 17,000 times stronger than carbon dioxide. In a study published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters, atmospheric chemist Michael Prather called nitrogen trifluoride, or NF3, "the missing greenhouse gas," and warned that the climate could suffer as the chemical is produced in ever greater amounts to meet soaring demand for LCD displays. If all of the NF3 produced in 2008 were released into the atmosphere, it would have as much warming effect as 67 million metric tons of carbon dioxide, the study found -- about the same as the annual CO2 emissions of Austria. NF3 isn't covered by the Kyoto Protocol because it was only being produced in tiny amounts in 1997 when the treaty was negotiated. Ironically, NF3 was developed as an alternative to perfluorocarbons, greenhouse gases that are governed by Kyoto.

[ email | discuss | + digg | + del.icio.us ]

sources: The Guardian, CNet News, The Press Association

Stay going...

BPA, SP2, BoP, Funnel Walls, T&B,

BPA:

Last week the LA Times ran the following story about a report by the National Toxicology Program (part of the National Institutes of Health), which says there is concern about the affects of Bisphenol A (BPA) – a common synthetic chemical used in polycarbonate plastic – on human health (and therefore other forms of life).

A controversial, estrogen-like chemical in plastic could be harming the development of children's brains and reproductive organs, a federal health agency concluded in a report released Tuesday.

The full story is here:

http://www.latimes.com/features/health/medicine/la-na-plastic16apr16,1,498138.story

SP2:

From a sustainability perspective this comes as no surprise. Sustainability Principle 2 states that in a sustainable society nature is not subject to systematically increasing concentrations of substances produced by society (such as synthetic chemicals). With all the plastics, including the additives, plasticizers, by-products, etc., that are persistent and foreign to natural systems, there is no doubt that our production, use, and disposal of them results in their systematic increase in nature. Living systems and organisms (including us) haven’t co-evolved with these compounds, and they are toxic. Shouldn’t really come as a surprise.

BoP:

This brings us to a core concept in creating a sustainable society – where falls the burden of proof. Right now it falls on the citizens, and our representative groups to respond to potential threats, and to prove that they are indeed threats, and battle through layers of bureaucracy, inertia, and special interests to secure the elimination (or partial elimination) of those threats. The burden of proof should, of course, fall on any of us that produce and sell a product, to ensure that to the best of our knowledge and that of the scientific community it is safe, and if greater knowledge reveals that it is not safe, we should no longer be able to produce and sell it.

Funnel Walls:

From an organizational perspective, companies that rely on BPA might be surprised, and will now have to react. Nalgene is trying to tactfully back away, saying they’ll stop using BPA in their water bottles because they think their customers will want that, even though they maintain it’s safe – so as to dampen the impact with the funnel walls, which could come in the form of litigation or loss of customers. Wal-mart has said it will adjust and stop selling baby bottles with BPA. It’s good their being responsive to the information, but the reactive approach is more expensive.

The Trunk & Branches:

By sticking to the “trunk and branches” of sustainability – the 4 sustainability principles – organizations can strategically move out of this reactive mode (or at least have the best chance possible of doing so). Instead of only trying to keep up with every study and judge which is serious, and what we can get away with, we can all (in our various roles in our various organizations) identify and champion creative ways to systematically eliminate our violations of sustainability principles.

Stay going…

Sustainability Principles

In a sustainable society, nature is not subject to:

1. systematic increases in concentration of substances from the earth's crust (e.g. heavy metals, fossil fuels);

2. systematic increases in concentrations of substances produced by society (i.e. compounds not found in nature, like DDT and CFCs)

3. systematic degradation by physical means (e.g. deforestation, overfishing, draining aquifers);

and in that society:

4. people are not subject to conditions that systematically undermine their capacity to meet their needs.

Stay going.