Showing papers on "Sustainability published in 2003"

A framework for vulnerability analysis in sustainability science

Abstract: Global environmental change and sustainability science increasingly recognize the need to address the consequences of changes taking place in the structure and function of the biosphere. These changes raise questions such as: Who and what are vulnerable to the multiple environmental changes underway, and where? Research demonstrates that vulnerability is registered not by exposure to hazards (perturbations and stresses) alone but also resides in the sensitivity and resilience of the system experiencing such hazards. This recognition requires revisions and enlargements in the basic design of vulnerability assessments, including the capacity to treat coupled human–environment systems and those linkages within and without the systems that affect their vulnerability. A vulnerability framework for the assessment of coupled human–environment systems is presented.

Knowledge systems for sustainable development

Abstract: The challenge of meeting human development needs while protecting the earth's life support systems confronts scientists, technologists, policy makers, and communities from local to global levels. Many believe that science and technology (S&T) must play a more central role in sustainable development, yet little systematic scholarship exists on how to create institutions that effectively harness S&T for sustainability. This study suggests that efforts to mobilize S&T for sustainability are more likely to be effective when they manage boundaries between knowledge and action in ways that simultaneously enhance the salience, credibility, and legitimacy of the information they produce. Effective systems apply a variety of institutional mechanisms that facilitate communication, translation and mediation across boundaries.

Creating sustainable value

Abstract: Executive Overview Just as the creation of shareholder value requires performance on multiple dimensions, the global challenges associated with sustainable development are also multifaceted, involving economic, social, and environmental concerns. Indeed, these challenges have implications for virtually every aspect of a firm's strategy and business model. Yet, most managers frame sustainable development not as a multidimensional opportunity, but rather as a one-dimensional nuisance, involving regulations, added cost, and liability. This approach leaves firms ill-equipped to deal with the issue in a strategic manner. Accordingly, we develop a sustainable-value framework that links the challenges of global sustainability to the creation of shareholder value by the firm. Specifically, we show how the global challenges associated with sustainable development, viewed through the appropriate set of business lenses, can help to identify strategies and practices that contribute to a more sustainable world while s...

Social Capital and the Collective Management of Resources

Abstract: The proposition that natural resources need protection from the destructive actions of people is widely accepted. Yet communities have shown in the past and increasingly today that they can collaborate for long-term resource management. The term social capital captures the idea that social bonds and norms are critical for sustainability. Where social capital is high in formalized groups, people have the confidence to invest in collective activities, knowing that others will do so too. Some 0.4 to 0.5 million groups have been established since the early 1990s for watershed, forest, irrigation, pest, wildlife, fishery, and microfinance management. These offer a route to sustainable management and governance of common resources.

The critical role of higher education in creating a sustainable future

Abstract: Anthony D. Cortese is a sustainability consultant and president and cofounder of Second Nature, a national nonprofit organization in Boston, Massachusetts, that works to make sustainability a foundation of all learning and practice in higher education. He was formerly the dean of environmental programs at Tufts University and the commissioner of the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection. Need for a New Human Perspective

Sustainable Tourism Development: A Critique

Abstract: Sustainable tourism has become an increasingly popular field of research since the late 1980s. However, the sustainable tourism debate is patchy, disjointed and often flawed with false assumptions and arguments. This paper is a brief critique of some of the weaknesses in the sustainable tourism literature. In particular, it explores six issues that are often overlooked but must be addressed in research: the role of tourism demand, the nature of tourism resources, the imperative of intra-generational equity, the role of tourism in promoting sociocultural progress, the measurement of sustainability, and forms of sustainable development. Finally, it is argued that in order to transform research on sustainable tourism to a more scientific level, a systems perspective and an interdisciplinary approach are indispensable.

Characterizing and measuring sustainable development

Abstract: ▪ Abstract Sustainable development has broad appeal and little specificity, but some combination of development and environment as well as equity is found in many attempts to describe it. However, proponents of sustainable development differ in their emphases on what is to be sustained, what is to be developed, how to link environment and development, and for how long a time. Despite the persistent definitional ambiguities associated with sustainable development, much work (over 500 efforts) has been devoted to developing quantitative indicators of sustainable development. The emphasis on sustainability indicators has multiple motivations that include decision making and management, advocacy, participation and consensus building, and research and analysis. We select a dozen prominent examples and use this review to highlight their similarities and differences in definition of sustainable development, motivation, process, and technical methods. We conclude that there are no indicator sets that are universa...

Footprints on the earth: the environmental consequences of modernity.

Abstract: Growing evidence demonstrating clear threats to the sustainability of the ecosystems supporting human societies has given rise to a variety of sociological theories of human-environment interactions. These environmental impact theories fall into three general perspectives: human ecology modernization and political economy. These theories however have not been empirically tested in a common analytic framework. Here a framework that relies on ecological principles is adopted and modified. Using a revised stochastic formulation of that framework and the most comprehensive measure of environmental impact to date-the ecological footprint-the factors driving the environmental impacts of societies are assessed. The overall findings support the claims of human ecologists partially support the claims of political economists and contradict the claims of modernization theorists. Basic material conditions such as population economic production urbanization and geographical factors all affect the environment and explain the vast majority of cross-national variation in environmental impact. Factors derived from neo-liberal modernization theory such as political freedom civil liberties and state environmentalism have no effect on impacts. Taken together these findings suggest societies cannot be sanguine about achieving sustainability via a continuation of current trends in economic growth and institutional change. (authors)

Multiple Levels of Corporate Sustainability

Abstract: According to Dr. Clare Graves, mankind has developed eight core value systems,1 as responses to prevailing circumstances. Given different contexts and value systems, a one-solution-fits-all concept of corporate sustainability is not reasonable. Therefore, this paper presents various definitions and forms of sustainability, each linked to specific (societal) circumstances and related value systems. A sustainability matrix– an essential element of the overall European Corporate Sustainability Framework – is described showing six types of organizations at different developmental stages, with different forms of corporate sustainability, each supported by specific institutional arrangements.

Millennium Ecosystem Assessment: Ecosystems and human well-being: a framework for assessment

Abstract: The 245-page report lays out the approaches, assumptions, processes, and parameters scientists are using in the study. It offers decision-makers a mechanism to identify options that can better achieve core human development and sustainability goals and better understand the trade-offs in decisions about development and the environment.

Designing Resilient, Sustainable Systems

Abstract: Pursuit of sustainable development requires a systems approach to the design of industrial product and service systems. Although many business enterprises have adopted sustainability goals, the actual development of sustainable systems remains challenging because of the broad range of economic, environmental and social factors that need to be considered across the system life cycle. Traditional systems engineering practices try to anticipate and resist disruptions but may be vulnerable to unforeseen factors. An alternative is to design systems with inherent "resilience" bytaking advantage of fundamental properties such as diversity, efficiency, adaptability, and cohesion. Previous work on sustainable design has focused largely upon ecological efficiency improvements. For example, companies have found that reducing material and energy intensity and converting wastes into valuable secondary products creates value for shareholders as well as for society at large. To encourage broader systems thinking, a design protocol is presented that involves the following steps: identifying system function and boundaries, establishing requirements, selecting appropriate technologies, developing a system design, evaluating anticipated performance, and devising a practical means for system deployment. The approach encourages explicit consideration of resilience in both engineered systems and the larger systems in which they are embedded.

Environmental technologies at the nanoscale.

Abstract: Nanotechnology could substantially enhance environmental quality and sustainability through pollution prevention, treatment, and remediation.

What’s Driving the New Economy?: The Benefits of Workplace Innovation

Abstract: The current economic recession in the United States has challenged the sustainability of the so-called New Economy productivity miracle. This paper introduces the idea that, in addition to investment in information technology, changing workplace organization has been a significant component of the turnaround in productivity growth in the U.S. during the 1990s. Using a nationally representative sample of U.S. businesses surveyed in 1993 and 1996, we examine the relationship between workplace innovations and establishment productivity to assess the potential endurance of strong labor productivity growth into the future. Our work goes beyond measuring the impact of computers on productivity and examines how other types of workplace innovation such as self-managed teams, incentive pay, and employee voice are related to labor productivity. These practices could explain a large part of the movement in multi-factor productivity in the United States over the period 1993-1996. We also show how these results are affected by the union status of a firm. While European countries have invested in varying degrees in information technology, these results suggest additional dimensions to the recent productivity growth in the US that may well have implications for productivity growth potential in Europe.

Supply Chain Specific? Understanding the Patchy Success of Ethical Sourcing Initiatives

Abstract: As a number of high profile companies have found to their cost, corporate reputations can be significantly affected by firms' management of sustainability issue, including those that are outside their direct control, such as the environmental and social impacts of their supply networks. This paper begins by examining the relationship between corporate social responsibility, reputation, and supply network conditions. It then looks at the effectiveness of one tool for managing supply network sustainability issues, ethical sourcing codes of conduct, by examining how the characteristics of three supply networks branded clothes, DIY wood products and branded confectionary affects the implementation ethical sourcing codes of conduct. It ends by setting out conclusions on why implementation of such codes has been so much more successful in some sectors than others and recommendations on effective approaches to managing sustainability issues in supply networks.

Just Sustainabilities : Development in an Unequal World

Abstract: Introduction: Joined-Up Thinking: Bringing Together Sustainability, Environmental Justice and Equity * Part 1 - Some Theories and Concepts: Environmental Space, Equity and the Ecological Debt * Neo-Liberalism, Globalization and the Struggle for Ecological Democracy: Linking Sustainability and Environmental Justice * Inequality and Community and the Challenge to Modernization: Evidence from the Nuclear Oases * Part 2 - Challenges: Social Justice and Environmental Sustainability: Ne'er the Twain Shall Meet * Part 3 - Cities, Communities and Social and Environmental Justice: When Consumption Does Violence: Can there be Sustainability and Environmental Justice in a Resource-Limited World? * Race, Politics and Pollution: Environmental Justice in the Mississippi River Chemical Corridor * Identity, Place and Communities of Resistance * Environmental Justice in State Policy Decisions * Part 4 - Selected Regional Perspectives on Sustainability and Environmental Justice: Sustainability and Equity: Reflection of a Local Government Practitioner in Southern Africa * Mining Conflicts, Environmental Justice and Valuation * Women and Environmental Justice in South Asia * Maori Kaupapa and the Inseparability of Social and Environmental Justice: An Analysis of Bioprospecting and a People's Resistance to Biocultural Assimilation * Political Economy of Petroleum Resources Development, Environmental Injustice and Selective Victimization: A Case Study of the Niger Delta Region of Nigeria * Environmental Protection, Economic Growth and Environmental Justice: Are They Compatible in Central and Eastern Europe? * the Campaign for Environmental Justice in Scotland as a Response to Poverty in a Northern Nation * Conclusion: Towards Just Sustainabilities: Perspectives and Possibilities * Index

Deep learning and education for sustainability

Abstract: Deep learning is a key strategy by which students extract meaning and understanding from course materials and experiences. Because of the range and interconnectedness of environmental, social and economic issues, and the importance of interdisciplinary thinking and holistic insight, deep learning is particularly relevant in the context of education for sustainability. However, deep learning can be inhibited if the existing interests or backgrounds of students have a strong disciplinary focus. This paper reviews factors that influence deep learning and discusses some ways in which environmental educators can encourage students to use deep learning strategies. Such strategies are seen to be necessary to maximise the benefits from environmental courses and are likely to foster creative interdisciplinary approaches to sustainability beyond the institution.

Governance for Sustainability: Towards a ‘Thick’ Analysis of Environmental Decisionmaking

Abstract: Environmental decisions made by individuals, civil society, and the state involve questions of economic efficiency, environmental effectiveness, equity, and political legitimacy. These four criteria are constitutive of the economic, social, and environmental dimensions of sustainable development, which has become the dominant rhetorical device of environmental governance. We discuss the tendency for disciplinary research to focus on particular subsets of the four criteria, and argue that such a practice promotes solutions that do not acknowledge the dynamics of scale and the heterogeneity of institutional contexts. We advocate an interdisciplinary framework for the analysis of environmental decisionmaking that seeks to identify legitimate and context-sensitive institutional solutions producing equitable, efficient, and effective outcomes. We demonstrate the usefulness of our approach by using it to examine decisions concerning contested nature conservation and multiple-use commons in the management of Hic...

Sustainability Science and Engineering: The Emergence of a New Metadiscipline

Abstract: A case is made for growth of a new metadiscipline of sustainability science and engineering. This new field integrates industrial, social, and environmental processes in a global context. The skills required for this higher level discipline represent a metadisciplinary endeavor, combining information and insights across multiple disciplines and perspectives with the common goal of achieving a desired balance among economic, environmental, and societal objectives. Skills and capabilities that are required to support the new metadiscipline are summarized. Examples of integrative projects are discussed in the areas of sustainability metrics and integration of industrial, societal, and environmental impacts. It is clear that a focus on green engineering that employs pollution prevention and industrial ecology alone are not sufficient to achieve sustainability, because even systems with efficient material and energy use can overwhelm the carrying capacity of a region or lead to other socially unacceptable outcomes. To meet the educational and human resource needs required for this new discipline, the technological and environmental awareness of society must be elevated and a sufficient and diverse pool of human talent must be attracted to this discipline.

Groundwater and its susceptibility to degradation : a global assessment of the problem and options for management

Abstract: The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) were adopted by member countries of the UN in 2000 as a global consensus on objectives for addressing poverty. Water has a key role in strategies for achieving all of the MDGs, which include a target to reduce by half the proportion of people without access to a safe water supply and a commitment to ensure environmental sustainability. The 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) in Johannesburg made an important advance when it placed poverty eradication at the heart of efforts to achieve sustainable development. The Summit brought the development and environment movements together and committed the international community to a systematic effort both to reduce poverty and pursue sustainable development. A new target on sanitation and a commitment to have water resource plans for all countries in place by 2005 were made at WSSD. The importance of water and its fundamental contribution to sustainable development is now recognised, but the contribution of water to poverty reduction will only be realised if it is set in the broader context of social and economic development and environmental improvement.

Groundwater: the processes and global significance of aquifer degradation

Abstract: The exploitation of groundwater resources for human use dates from the earliest civilizations, but massive resource development has been largely restricted to the past 50 years. Although global in scope, the emphasis of this paper is on groundwater-based economies in a developing nation context, where accelerated resource development has brought major social and economic benefits over the past 20 years. This results from groundwater's significant role in urban water supply and in rural livelihoods, including irrigated agriculture. However, little of the economic benefit of resource development has been reinvested in groundwater management, and concerns about aquifer degradation and resource sustainability began to arise. A general review, for a broad-based audience, is given of the mechanisms and significance of three semi-independent facets of aquifer degradation. These are (i) depletion of aquifer storage and its effects on groundwater availability, terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems; (ii) groundwater salinization arising from various different processes of induced hydraulic disturbance and soil fractionation; and (iii) vulnerability of aquifers to pollution from land-use and effluent discharge practices related to both urban development and agricultural intensification. Globally, data with which to assess the status of aquifer degradation are of questionable reliability, inadequate coverage and poor compilation. Recourse has to be made to 'type examples' and assumptions about the extension of similar hydrogeological settings likely to be experiencing similar conditions of groundwater demand and subsurface contaminant load. It is concluded that (i) aquifer degradation is much more than a localized problem because the sustainability of the resource base for much of the rapid socio-economic development of the second half of the twentieth century is threatened on quite a widespread geographical basis; and (ii) major (and long overdue) investments in groundwater resource and quality protection are urgently needed. These investments include appropriate institutional provisions, demand-side management, supply-side enhancement and pollution control.

Taking Sustainable Cities Seriously: Economic Development, the Environment, and Quality of Life in American Cities

Abstract: Today at least twenty-five major U.S. cities have pursued some form of sustainability initiative. Although many case studies and "how-to" manuals have been published, there has been little systematic comparison of these cities' programs and initiatives. In this book Kent Portney lays the theoretical groundwork for research on what works and what does not, and why.Distinguishing cities on the basis of population characteristics and region for his analysis, Portney shows how cities use the broad rubric of sustainability to achieve particular political ends. Cities that take sustainability seriously, such as Portland, San Francisco, and Seattle, use broad definitions that go well beyond concern for the physical environment or creating jobs. They pursue sustainability at many levels and integrate concern for economic development, the environment, and quality of life across all activities of city government. Cities that take sustainability less seriously, such as Cleveland, Boston, and Orlando, confine it to such issues as solid waste disposal, brownfields, redevelopment, and neighborhood beautification. Still other cities, such as New Haven, Brownsville, and Milwaukee, do considerably less to work toward sustainability.Portney begins by reviewing the conceptual underpinnings of sustainable development and sustainable communities. The comparisons that follow provide a foundation for assessing the range of what is possible and desirable for sustainability initiatives. In the book's conclusion, Portney assesses the extent to which cities can use the pursuit of sustainability either to foster change in public values or merely to reinforce values that are already reflected in systems of governance.

Key Challenges to Ecological Modernization Theory Institutional Efficacy, Case Study Evidence, Units of Analysis, and the Pace of Eco-Efficiency

Abstract: We raise four challenges to the claim of ecological modernization theory (EMT) that continued modernization is necessary for ecological sustainability. First, EMT needs to go beyond merely demonstr...

A scenario‐based holistic approach to environmental flow assessments for rivers

Abstract: Sustainable use of river ecosystems requires that they be managed holistically. This paper describes an holistic methodology, DRIFT (Downstream Response to Imposed Flow Transformation), for advising on environmental flowsfor rivers targetted for water-management activities. DRIFT's basic philosophy is that all major abiotic and biotic components constitute the ecosystem to be managed; and within that, the full spectrum of flows, and their temporal and spatial variability, constitute the flows to be managed. The methodology employs experienced scientists from the following biophysical disciplines: hydrology, hydraulics, fluvial geomorphology, sedimentology, chemistry, botany and zoology. Where there are subsistence users of the river, the following socio-economic disciplines are also employed: sociology, anthropology, water supply, public health, livestock health and resource economics. DRIFT is a structured process for combining data and knowledge from all the disciplines to produce flow-related scenarios for water managers to consider. It consists of four modules. In the first, or biophysical module, the river ecosystem is described and predictive capacity developed on how it would change with flow changes. In the second, or socio-economic module, links are described between riparian people who are subsistence users of river resources, the resources they use, and their health. The objective is to develop predictive capacity of how river changes would impact their lives. In the third module, scenarios are built of potential future flows and the impacts of these on the river and the riparian people. The fourth, or economic module, lists compensation and mitigation costs. DRIFT should run in parallel with two other exercises which are external to it: a macro-economic assessment of the wider implications of each scenario, and a Public Participation Process whereby people other than subsistence users can indicate the level of acceptability of each scenario. DRIFT has been developed in a semi-arid, developing region, where water-supply problems are pressing, and uncertainties about river-linked ecological and social processes high. The use of DRIFT in this context is discussed.