Working Toward Sustainability

Ethical Decision-Making in a Technological World

Charles J. Kibert, Martha C. Monroe, Anna L. Peterson, Richard R. Plate, Leslie Paul Thiele

• Publisher: Wiley
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9781118105894
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architecture
• Subtopic: Architecture General

A comprehensive introduction to the ethics of sustainability for empowering professionals and practitioners in many different fields

By building the framework for balancing technological developments with their social and environmental effects, sustainable practices have grounded the vision of the green movement for the past few decades. Now deeply rooted in the public conscience, sustainability has put its stamp on various institutions and sectors, from national to local governments, from agriculture to tourism, and from manufacturing to resource management. But until now, the technological sector has operated without a cohesive set of sustainability principles to guide its actions. Working Toward Sustainability fills this gap by empowering professionals in various fields with an understanding of the ethical foundations they need to promoting and achieving sustainable development.

In addition, Working Toward Sustainability:

• Offers a comprehensive introduction to the ethics of sustainability for those in the technical fields whether construction, engineering, resource management, the sciences, architecture, or design
• Supports nine central principles using case studies, exercises, and instructor material
• Includes illustrations throughout to help bring the concepts to life

By demonstrating that sustainable solutions tart with ethical choices, this groundbreaking book helps professionals in virtually every sector and field of endeavor work toward sustainability.

Chapter 1

A Context for Sustainability

Sustainability is a concept that, over the past two decades, has continued to gain traction in a wide range of institutions and sectors, from national to local governments, from agriculture to tourism, and from manufacturing to construction. Domestically and internationally, sustainability is employed as a key criterion in governmental and business decisions, in consumer choices, and in individual lifestyles. As a concept and practice, sustainability is invoked to address issues as diverse as energy production, building design, waste disposal, urban planning, social welfare, and local and national economies. Universities and schools are applying sustainability to guide changes to their campuses, curriculum, governance, investments, procurement policies, and relationships to their local communities. In short, sustainability is a framework upon which increasing numbers of individuals and organizations ground their decisions and policies. In this chapter, we take a closer look at the concept of sustainability and the context in which it has developed.

THE RATIONALE FOR SUSTAINABILITY

There are at least 70 documented definitions of sustainable development or its sister term sustainability. Our goal here is neither to list all the contenders nor to add to their numbers. Rather, we provide a sense of the basic principles of sustainability, first through a series of hypothetical scenarios and second through a brief explanation of how the concept was developed.

Sustainability Interlude

At its most basic, the concept of sustainability is relatively straightforward. In our first scenario, our hero—call him Lucky—has been given a trust fund of one million dollars that receives 10 percent interest a year. This gives Lucky an annual income of $100,000 in interest. In order to use this trust fund sustainably, Lucky must take out no more than $100,000 from the fund each year. If he does that, then the fund will never diminish, and the original million dollars will continuously produce income for Lucky and his descendents. Thus, we have identified the essence of sustainability: using a resource no faster than the resource can replenish itself.

For our second scenario, suppose that the fund is no longer something as static and homogenous as a pile of cash. Instead, it is a mixture of resources each with different and varying growth rates, and those growth rates prove very difficult to predict. Some years the interest could be well over $100,000. Other years it could be much less. In this case, Lucky must watch the fund closely to be able to respond to any unforeseen changes. The added complexity of the fund makes the prospect of withdrawing beyond sustainable levels more likely when the needs for these resources are great.

Box 1.1 Sustainability Is Being Adopted by a Growing Number and Variety of Organizations

One can see increased focus on sustainability in political and corporate contexts. Several countries have articulated policies centered on sustainability, using it as a framework on which to base integrated strategies covering the environment, the economy, and quality of life. For example, the United Kingdom embraces sustainability as part of its national policy as articulated in “Securing the Future—The UK Sustainable Development Strategy.” Similarly the European Union Sustainable Development Strategy describes the EU’s approach to sustainable development and the seven key challenges facing its implementation.

A significant number of Fortune 500 corporations, including Nike, Coca-Cola, Dell Computer, and Starbucks Coffee are embracing sustainability as a strategy in the form of corporate social responsibility (CSR). Sustainability is a framework for ecological, economic, and social policies and programs that continues to grow in importance and is finding application in an ever wider range of circumstances. For example, the highly successful green building movement started by the U.S. Green Building Council in the United States is based on the concept of sustainability, providing a useful template for implementation in other sectors.

For our third scenario, suppose a much larger fund was left to Lucky and seven billion of his closest relatives and friends—call them collectively the Global Population. In this situation, responding to changes in the growth rates of the fund’s resources becomes much more difficult, as communication between all the recipients and coordination of activity is well nigh impossible. In turn, not everyone will agree about which of those resources or benefits are important or about who has a claim to them. Under such circumstances sustaining the original capital in the fund and receiving a fair share of the interest for each of the seven billion participants is a mighty challenge.

The concept of sustainability itself is fairly straightforward. Achieving sustainability in the real world presents a daunting and complex challenge.

A Response to a Crisis

The concept of sustainability has its roots in what might be called “the crisis of development,” that is, the failure since World War II of international development schemes intended to improve the lot of impoverished peoples around the world. The proportion of those living in abject poverty has remained relatively steady over the past 60 years, around 1 in 5 people. The poor continue to live on the edge of survival, with shortened lifespan, abominable living conditions, malnutrition, disease, and little prospect for a better future. Often they live in countries crushed by the burden of debt, with poor infrastructure, almost no educational system, the lack of a functioning justice system, and in the shadow of omnipresent violence. Simultaneously the world is facing environmental crises and resource shortages that compound the problem for the world’s poorest and place stress on even the wealthier nations as energy prices rise, climate patterns shift, and the Earth’s store of biodiversity dwindles.

In 1983 the United Nations convened the World Commission on Environment and Development to address these problems. This Commission (later called the Brundtland Commission after its chair, Norwegian Prime Minister Gro Harlem Brundtland) set about the task of developing ways to address the deterioration of natural resources and the decrease of the quality of life on a global scale. In its 1987 report, the Brundtland Commission described this problem as stemming from a rapid growth in human population and consumption and a concomitant decline in the capacity of the earth’s natural systems to meet human needs (see Figure 1.1).

Figure 1.1 The report of the Brundtland Commission was published in 1987 with the title Our Common Future, and it was responsible for popularizing the sustainability concept.

After describing the problem, the Brundtland Commission identified two main imperatives needed to correct this imbalance. First, the basic needs of all human beings must be met and poverty eliminated. Second, there must be limits placed on development in general because nature is finite. The commission also provided a definition for sustainable development that is still widely cited today: “Sustainable development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”1

The Brundtland definition provides a new vision of development—optimistic in tone but laced with challenges and contradictions. It suggests that we have a moral responsibility to consider the welfare of both present and future inhabitants of our planet—a serious task indeed. It would mean that wealthier, more technologically sophisticated societies would have to contribute through a wide range of assistance programs to help poorer nations develop the capability to provide the basic needs of their population. However, we cannot use up the world’s resources in the effort. Future generations have to be considered, as well.

Most definitions of sustainability propose that the welfare of present and future generations can be achieved only by balancing environmental protection and restoration with a healthy economy and social justice. The following section briefly describes some of the issues that are forcing a rethinking of conventional approaches to policy, production, and consumption with this balance in mind.

Box 1.2 Some Additional Definitions of Sustainability

Although the Brundtland definition of sustainability is the one most often cited, there are a wide variety of other variants, some short and some long, A few of these are listed here to give a flavor of the different points of view of its meaning.

“A transition to sustainability involves moving from linear to cyclical processes and technologies. The only processes we can rely on indefinitely are cyclical; all linear processes must eventually come to an end.”

Dr. Karl Henrik-Robert, MD, founder of The Natural Step, Sweden

“Actions are sustainable if:

There is a balance between resources used and resources regenerated.

Resources are as clean or cleaner at end use as at beginning.

The viability, integrity, and diversity of natural systems are restored and maintained.

They lead to enhanced local and regional self-reliance.

They help create and maintain community and a culture of place.

Each generation preserves the legacies of future generations.”

David McCloskey, Professor of Sociology, Seattle University

“Clean air, clean water, safety in city parks, low-income housing, education, child care, welfare, medical care, unemployment (insurance), transportation, recreation/cultural centers, open space, wetlands . . .”

Hazel Wolf, Seattle Audubon Society

“Leave the world better than you found it, take no more than you need, try not to harm life or the environment, make amends if you do.”

Paul Hawken, The Ecology of Commerce

“Sustainable development is a ‘metafix’ that will unite everybody from the profit-minded industrialist and risk-minimising subsistence farmer to the equity-seeking social worker, the pollution-concerned or wildlife-loving First Worlder, the growth-maximising policy maker, the goal-oriented bureaucrat and, therefore, the vote-counting politician.”

Sharachchandra Lélé

CONTEMPORARY CHALLENGES

Numerous books and articles have been devoted to each of the challenges covered in this section. The content provided here is a brief overview of each of the issues discussed. We encourage the interested reader to review the notes and references for further reading suggestions. However, the information provided here should be sufficient to understand the discussion and examples in the later chapters. Many of these examples appear to be primarily about the environment. However, approaching t...