Tools for Understanding and Integrating Sustainability: Definition, Concepts, Framework, Accountability, and Planning

Definition

"Sustainable development is development that meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs."

As a new organization, Sustainable Sonoma County, worked for about eighteen months to define sustainability, and created the following three sentence definition:

Sustainability secures people's quality of life within the means of nature in a way that is far and equitable to all humanity, other species and to future generations. Sustainability recognizes the inter-relatedness of the economy, society, and environment. It requires that we not consume resources faster than they can be renewed nor produce wastes faster than they can be absorbed.

The two-word definition of sustainability is One Planet, according to Dr. Mathis Wackernagel.

Context

Concerns about global warming will likely intensify the call for global, systemic change. Similarly, the mounting adverse social consequences of a growing gap between rich and poor, increasing competition for natural resources, and eroding environmental quality will also bring more world demand for real, wide-reaching solutions.

Recognition that our current course is unsustainable has led to action by and coalitions of governments, businesses, and citizens, who are addressing the challenge from local to the global levels. While these preliminary efforts are to be applauded for their innovation and ingenuity, accelerating growth and over-consumption continue unabated. The difficult challenges we face cannot be overcome by such important but by themselves inadequate measures such as recycling, more efficient commute patterns, and provision of affordable housing.

Real solutions entail a shift in worldview, from seeing the earth as a larder to be exploited to regarding it as an organism to be protected. They require recasting our role as a species, and taking a whole systems approach to the complex interrelationship of the environment, economics, and social equity, often referred to as the 3Es of sustainability. Real solutions depend on our willingness to fundamentally change our technologies, our economics, our institutions, and our values. We have yet to mount a concerted, effective response equal to this challenge, although the need to do so is urgent.

Sustainability and Science

Two concepts from science are key for sustainability. The first is limits--infinite physical growth cannot occur in a finite system. The second is overshoot--we can exceed the sustainable carrying capacity of our natural resources and we can do so without knowing it. Overshoot can be difficult to grasp because signals that we have gone over the limit are often obscure, delayed, or both, especially in large, complex systems.

An analogy helps translate the concept of overshoot. Suppose you were given an endowment invested for you at a 10% return. If you lived off the interest you could be sustained indefinitely. If you continually dip into the capital, you are in overshoot and will eventually run out of money. Unless you keep track of your finances and distinguish between capital and interest, you might not see your impending bankruptcy. Presently, humans do not track their ecological assets and live as though exempt from the laws of science in a world of infinite resources.

Sustainability and Economics

Sustainability aspires to reconcile economic and environmental forces while simultaneously improving the quality of life for the world community. The emerging economic paradigm, sustainable development and steady state economics, begins with the recognition of biophysical limits, and takes into account the complex interplay among variables such as technology, preferences, distribution, and lifestyles.

An important new role for economics will be estimating the social and environmental costs of economic activities, and attributing or "internalizing" these costs to the enterprises responsible for them. For example, the long-term environmental cost of disposing of computers should be reflected in their price; currently computer prices do not include such costs. By internalizing environmental and social costs, we can anticipate enormous economic innovation as well as improvements to our environmental and social quality of life.

Sustainability and Psycho-social Factors

Sustainability and Politics

Visionary leaders intent on bringing scientific rationality to planning will be dismissed if they advance too far ahead of their support base. Even worse, by pushing too far ahead too hard, leaders can cause a backlash that sets back an entire effort. Incrementalism often succeeds where revolution fails. What is needed now is neither incrementalism nor revolution (in the traditional sense), but transformation of our current unsustainable systems. Courage, skill, savvy, and luck enable the effective leader to navigate the mysterious and risky political waters on the journey to a sustainable future.

Conceptual Tools to Sharpen the Sustainability Focus

Economist Herman Daly, considered by many as the grandfather of sustainability, asserts that to conserve natural capital reserves, we must apply three rules to all decision making:

1. Renewable resources such as fish, soil, and groundwater must be used no faster than the rate at which they regenerate.

2. Nonrenewable resources such as minerals and fossil fuels must be used no faster than renewable substitutes for them can be put into place.

3. Pollution and wastes must be emitted no faster than natural systems can absorb them, recycle them, or render them harmless.

Daly's Rules are echoed and expanded in The Natural Step (TNS), a framework developed by Swedish oncologist, Dr. Karl Henrick Robert. This framework for assessing the sustainability of all human endeavors has emerged as a compass pointing in a sustainable direction. Widely used in Sweden, especially by business and government, TNS has begun to shape the vision of leaders in this country as well. The basic TNS framework is comprised of four system conditions:

1. Substances from the earth's crust-fossil fuels and mined minerals-must not systematically increase in nature.

2. Substances produced by society must not systematically increase in nature.

3. The physical basis for the productivity and diversity of nature must not be systematically deteriorated.

4. Human society must be fair and efficient in meeting basic human needs.

In short, TNS addresses what we take, what we make, what we maintain, and how and what we share.

Another emerging tool for assessing the magnitude of the impacts of consumption and waste accumulation on the environment is the Ecological Footprint developed by Mathis Wackernagel and William Rees. The Ecological Footprint of any defined population-from a single individual to a whole city or country-is the area of biologically productive land and water area, expressed in acres or hectares, needed to produce the resources consumed and to assimilate the wastes generated by that population. The Footprint also measures a community's ecological productivity so that comparisons between what is available and what is consumed can be made. It allows comparisons between populations and between areas so that differences in consumption patterns and in resource availability can be determined.

The average American uses 30 acres to support his or her current lifestyle. This corresponds to the size of 30 football fields put together. Nature provides an average of about 5 acres of bioproductive space for each of the approximately 6.1 billion people alive today. With a global population of 10 billion projected for the year 2050, the available space will be reduced to 3 acres. This leaves a shrinking amount for our children as well as for the 25 million (or more) other species. We are in overshoot: Humanity's footprint appears to be over 30 percent larger than what the world has to offer. We are dipping into our capital rather than living on nature's interest.

The unique and complementary tools of The Natural Step and the Ecological Footprint provide a "compass and a yardstick" toward more sustainable decision making.

Sustainability Framework

Daly superimposed a hierarchy on a triangle (Please see diagram next page.) to describe the relationship between the foundation or "ultimate means" - nature's services, and the apex or "ultimate ends" - the well-being and highest aspirations of human beings. In between these two are technology, economy, politics, and ethics that translate means to ends. This framework clarifies the relationships among ultimate means (natural capital), intermediate means (built capital and human capital such as labor and factories), intermediate ends (human capital and social capital such as health and communication) to achieve our ultimate ends (well-being such as happiness and self-realization).

Daly's Triangle helps integrate other sustainability tools. It is interesting to note that of the tools reviewed in the previous section, the majority-Daly's Three Rules, the Ecological Footprint, and the first three system conditions of The Natural Step-are concerned with protecting and measuring the ultimate means part of Daly's Triangle. Likely, this part of the Triangle dominates current sustainability thinking because ultimate means are the precondition for human life, they are the part of the triangle most threatened, and yet they represent the part of the Triangle least understood or respected.

Daly's Triangle reconfigures the 3Es of sustainability-environment, economy, and equity-often depicted as three equal, interlocking circles. The environment becomes ultimate means, the economy become intermediate means, and equity becomes intermediate and ultimate ends.

Daly's Triangle helps reveal priorities, and helps explain how, when one part is over-emphasized, unintended and negative consequences result. For example, over emphasis on the economy results is a burgeoning economy that tramples the environment and our social fabric. Environmentalism without regard to social factors can lead to home prices that force out all but the rich, turning an area into an elite enclave.

The comprehensive sustainability framework offered by Daly's Triangle clarifies the relationship of the economy to ultimate means and ultimate ends. The economy is not an end onto itself, but serves as a vehicle for achieving ultimate ends. The economy succeeds to the extent that it conserves and restores ultimate means (the environment), and enables us to achieve ultimate ends (well-being).

Indicators, Targets, and Corrective Action

Comprehensive sustainability indicators expose weak links between ultimate ends and ultimate means. They reveal problem areas and help define ways to fix those problems.

Bottom up, community-oriented collaborative consensus building processes help identify core values, establish indicators as sustainability bellwethers, and spread understanding of sustainability. The process of developing indicators can bring many different sectors of the community together, foster new alliances and relationships, provide citizens with a better compass for understanding community problems and assets, and be used to drive community change.

Over the years, much has been written about sustainability indicators-both the process of developing and using them, as well as the product-the actual sustainability indicators themselves. Scientist and author Donella Meadows wrote Indicators and Information Systems for Sustainable Development, the definitive piece to date on sustainability indicators. It is noteworthy that when naming her top ten sustainability indicators, the first she selects is the Ecological Footprint and its rate of change.

Indicators can be powerful tools for helping a community become more sustainable. Not only can they encourage recognition of essential but previously unnoticed sources of wealth, e.g., natural capital, but by setting and tracking progress toward targets, and taking corrective action as appropriate, a community can govern itself and consciously influence its own future.

Translating Concepts to Planning

According to the APA, communities must develop a future-oriented vision, one which looks beyond current needs and recognizes environmental limits to human development. It calls for leadership in drafting and implementing policies that support sustainability goals.

The APA recommends the following four objectives, based on The Natural Step's system conditions, when developing strategies and policies to move a community towards sustainability.

1. Reduce dependence upon fossil fuels and limit use of extracted underground metals and minerals.

2. Reduce dependence on chemicals and other manufactured substances that can accumulate in Nature.

3. Reduce dependence on activities that harm life-sustaining ecosystems.

4. Meet the hierarchy of present and future human needs fairly and efficiently.

The guide begins its Specific Policy Positions section with the following description of the role of planners and of planning.

"Planners have a leadership role in forming and implementing the strategies by which communities seek to use resources efficiently, to protect and enhance quality of life, and to create new businesses to strengthen their economies, and supporting infrastructures. The best practices of comprehensive community planning - the way we plan the physical layout, or land use, of our communities, is key to sustainable land use."

The Guide includes thirteen specific policies adopted by the APA, that encourage:

1. Alternatives to use of gas-powered vehicles

2. Use of alternative renewable energy sources and meaningful energy conservation measures in all types of development.

3. Development, agriculture, and other land uses that minimize or eliminate the use of extracted underground substances such as mercury, cadmium, phosphorus.

4. Development and businesses to reduce the use of chemicals and synthetic compounds in their construction and building materials, operations, products, and services.

5. Methods of landscape design, landscape and park maintenance, and agriculture that reduce or eliminate the use of pesticides, herbicides, and synthetic fertilizers as well as encouraging the use of compost and conserving water.

6. Compact and mixed-use development that minimizes the need to drive, re-uses existing, infill, and brownfields sites that have been thoroughly reclaimed and remediated before using open land, and that avoids the extension of sprawl.

7. Preservation policies and legislation that conserve undeveloped land, open space, agricultural land, protect water and soil quality, consciously restore ecosystems, and that minimize or eliminate the disruption of existing natural ecosystems and floodplains.

8. Forms of development, business, and agriculture that reduce the use of water, re-using wastewater on-site, and that employ innovative wastewater treatment that minimizes or eliminates the use of chemicals.

9. Sustainable development policies that seek to equitably protect public health, safety and welfare, and which incorporate the needs of those currently disenfranchised in the process.

10. Businesses, communities, institutions and development that pursue reduction and re-use of by-products and waste, especially approaches that also employ waste as a resource, such as eco-industrial development.

11. Participatory and partnership approaches to planning, including planning for sustainability, integrally involving local community residents in setting the vision for and developing plans and actions for their communities and regions.

12. Initiatives and partnerships with other organizations that: a) support research and development of technology promoting the four general policy objectives for sustainability; and b) provide best available economic, social, and environmental data and indicators on impacts, alternatives, costs, and benefits for integrated decision-making at all levels of government.

13. Incentives and other economic tools to improve the sustainability of our natural environment, enhance natural resources, and improve community subdivision and building design standards.

In closing, we believe that success in creating a sustainable world begins with the quality of our thinking. We must dedicate ourselves to learning, and to evolving and using the best conceptual sustainability tools possible. We hope that this paper contributes to this challenge.