An Introduction to Sustainability

Environmental, Social and Personal Perspectives

Martin Mulligan

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781315519432
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Economía
• Subtopic: Economía del desarrollo

An Introduction to Sustainability provides students with a comprehensive overview of the key concepts and ideas which are encompassed within the growing field of sustainability.

The fully updated second edition, including new figures and images, teases out the diverse but intersecting domains of sustainability and emphasises strategies for action. Aimed at those studying the subject for the first time, it is unique in giving students from different disciplinary backgrounds a coherent framework and set of core principles for applying broad sustainability principles within their own personal and professional lives. These include: working to improve equality within and across generations; moving from consumerism to quality of life goals; and respecting diversity in both nature and culture.

Areas of emerging importance such as the economics of prosperity and wellbeing stand alongside core topics including:

· Energy and society

· Consumption and consumerism

· Risk and resilience

· Waste, water and land.

Key challenges and applications are explored through international case studies, and each chapter includes a thematic essay drawing on diverse literature to provide an integrated introduction to fundamental issues.

Housed on the Routledge Sustainability Hub, the book's companion website contains a range of features to engage students with the interdisciplinary nature of sustainability. Together these resources provide a wealth of material for learning, teaching and researching the topic of sustainability.

This textbook is an essential companion to any sustainability course.

Chapter 1
Introduction

Author’s Introduction

When I stepped down as director of RMIT University’s Centre for Global Research at the end of 2011, I was invited to take responsibility for teaching an introduction to sustainability course for students enrolled in a wide range of degrees within RMIT’s School of Global, Urban and Social Studies. It had been more than ten years since I had taught at undergraduate level and I was rather daunted by the prospect of introducing such a complex and contested topic to such a diverse array of students, most of them in their very first year of university study. To make matters worse, I knew that a significant number of the students resented having to take a course on ‘environmental issues’ when they planned careers in human or social services. How could I convince them that sustainability is about social wellbeing as much as environmental care and that every person on Earth needs to grapple with the dilemmas of sustainability? How could I convince them that the idea of ‘sustainability’ has not already lost its vitality and relevance? What particular concepts and themes would I select in order to engage the students with the history and enduring relevance of the idea?

RMIT University Centre for Global Research was established in 1992, initially under the name Globalism Institute, to conduct research on sources of insecurity, community sustainability and globalisation and culture.

Fortunately, the course I inherited already had very strong foundations; with a lot of work going into the way it was set up and taught for nearly ten years before it was handed to me. I also inherited a talented team of tutors, most of whom had already worked in the course before my arrival and had figured out ways to make it appeal to diverse cohorts of students. I was confident that I had accumulated enough experience and expertise to add value to what had been done before me. My own career – inside and outside of universities – had taken many twists and turns since I completed an Honours degree in animal ecology at the University of Sydney in the early 1970s. This course gave me a rare opportunity to draw on much of that diverse experience.

After completing my first degree I had decided that life as a scientist was not for me and I left university to become a community development worker in several different Australian cities. I returned to university in the early 1990s to complete a Ph.D. in ‘development studies’ – with a thesis focusing on environment and development in Latin America. From there I was able to win a position in the very innovative Social Ecology teaching and research programme at the University of Western Sydney. Ten years later I returned to RMIT University, where I had undertaken my Ph.D., to help build what was then called the Globalism Institute (now Centre for Global Research). For another ten years my research focused on challenges facing local communities in Australia and Sri Lanka in the context of global change. My career path might be called opportunistic rather than premeditated and yet it seemed that I had been preparing myself to teach in the area of environmental and social sustainability for a very long time.

The Concept as we now know it

In introducing first-year undergraduate students to the concept of sustainability I argue that we can draw hope from the fact that we humans only really began to think about it as a global challenge in the 1970s. The 1987 report prepared by a special United Nations commission headed by three-times Norwegian prime minister Gro Harlem Brundtland – published under the title Our Common Future – drew attention to a growing body of research showing that on a global scale human economic activity had been degrading planetary ecosystems while the majority of people in the world faced worsening conditions for life, often caused by environmental degradation. Reflecting the growth of global awareness that had gathered momentum since the early 1970s, the report argued that we now face ‘interlocking crises’ because ‘the global economy and global ecology’ have been ‘locked … together in new ways’ (p. 5). The Brundtland Report did not coin the term ‘sustainability’ and nor did it initiate the argument that growing global human impacts on non-human environments cannot be sustained. However, it did give birth to the notion of ‘environmentally sustainable development’ and it triggered a series of global gatherings and negotiations aimed at giving substance to this headline concept. In an interview marking the 20th anniversary of the report which carries her name, Brundland noted that her commission could have taken the easy option of making recommendations which would have been relatively easy for national governments to adopt.¹ Instead they decided to highlight challenges which are transnational or global in scale and they decided to write a report arguing that sustainability is not a matter to be left to experts or governments because it affects the future of every person living on Planet Earth, and those who are yet to be born. The report argued that sustainable use of the planet’s non-human ‘resources’ cannot be separated from the ongoing need to radically reduce global poverty; i.e. sustainability is about both environment and society. While it argued that much more needs to be done to improve equity of opportunity in the present (intragenerational) we now need to focus on the even bigger challenge of ensuring equity of opportunity for future generations (intergenerational).

Brundtland Report was a report prepared for the United Nations by a World Commissionon Environment and Development headed by Gro Harlem Burndtland. It was published in 1987 under the title Our Common Future.

In the context of human history, 25–30 years is a relatively short time to have been grappling with the challenges of global sustainability. We know much more about the challenges we face than ever before and yet this book will make it clear that the challenges are continuing to escalate rather than abate. This is a rather challenging message to present to first-year university students as they embark on the professional development course they have selected. For that reason, I was determined to infuse my teaching with the conviction that there are still reasons for feeling hopeful about the future of humanity. This book does not shy away from the extent and complexity of the global challenges we face; indeed it seeks to counteract all tendencies towards denial or retreat. It argues that we need to work with the rather perplexing concept of ‘wicked problems’ in order to ensure that action taken in the name of sustainability does not, inadvertently, make things worse.

Arguments for Hope

At the beginning of the course that I teach at RMIT University, I tell the students that we are embarking on a journey together, noting that it may at times feel like a roller-coaster ride through the ups and downs of hope and despair. Here I refer them to an article I wrote (Mulligan 2008) after a rather challenging journey from Melbourne to Edinburgh which is summarised in the box below. After a series of mishaps along the way I finally enjoyed a relaxing walk around the festive and beautiful city of my apparent destination only to find myself seduced by a thought from the famed Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson which continues to prompt me to remember that journeys are never fully completed and that they always hold the hope of new and exciting discoveries.

To travel hopefully …

In August 2006 I arrived at Melbourne Airport to catch a flight that would take me to London and on to Edinburgh where I was due to present a paper at an international conference on ‘art and society’. About a week before my departure Heathrow Airport in London had been thrown into prolonged chaos in the wake of credible threats made to use bombs to bring down undisclosed flights to the USA and I found that extraordinary security measures had been imposed on all passengers travelling to or through Heathrow Airport. A ban had been imposed on all cabin bags and the only thing that each passenger could carry on board was a clear plastic bag with passport and documents; even pens were banned to prevent their potential use as weapons. The early symptoms of a head cold that I felt when the plane took off had blossomed into a raging illness by the time the plane landed, some 24 hours later, at Heathrow.

Because I had travelled with a set of car keys in my pocket, I was plucked out of the line of passengers wanting transit on to Edinburgh and told that I would need to check out through airport security and re-enter the domestic terminal so that my keys could be given a security clearance. It mattered little because all flights to Edinburgh had been cancelled for the day and no intending passengers – transit or otherwise – could get inside the overcrowded domestic terminal. A security guard told me that I needed to head for an information marquee erected outside the terminal to get information about possible flights to Edinburgh. The marquee was too small to cope with the crowds of people wanting to know if or when they might be able to get on a plane and I was obliged to wait in a very long queue. To make matters worse it started to rain. I stood in the rain, clutching my plastic bag and nursing a heavy head, alongside a woman holding an infant; all of us hoping that we would eventually make it inside the tent. I felt I got a small insight into what it might feel like to be a refugee or asylum seeker, although we were blessed by the presence of some cheerful volunteers from the city and by the some amusing running commentary offered by a Scottish joker in the queue. A sense of great frustration slowly transformed into a palpable feeling of camaraderie as people took time to share stories and boost each other’s spirits. A volunteer took the mother and her family to the head of the queue inside the tent, amid cheers from those alarmed at her plight.

After a night in an expensive Heathrow hotel, I managed to get myself on a flight to Edinburgh although my booked-in luggage would not arrive for more than a week. With only the clothes I was wearing and my small plastic bag I finally arrived at my university accommodation, grateful to see the sun shining for a change. The next day I set out for an exploratory walk around a city in a mood to enjoy its annual festival season and high on the hill, before reaching the famed castle, I noticed a sign pointing to a rather quaint old stone building that served as the Edinburgh Writers Centre. In a room dedicated to the work of the celebrated novelist and travel writer Robert Louis Stevenson a quote from his work was prominently displayed, as if designed to catch my attention. It read: ‘To travel hopefully is better than to arrive.’

The Stevenson citation spoke directly to my own travel experience because I learnt to enjoy the journey once I stopped worrying about when, or even if, I would reach my destination. I learnt something about my own resilience and about the capacity of my fellow travellers to act with unusual care towards each other. At a global level, humanity is heading into a period of great uncertainty. No one can really be sure what lies ahead of us. However, we will learn a lot about what we are capable of achieving together if we can learn to travel hopefully.

Edinburgh’s festival season occurs in August each year when a range of concurrent festivals are held; perhaps the most famous being the Edinburgh Comedy Festival.

Successes and Failures Since 1987

The Brundtland Report began with a section on ‘Successes and Failures’ in meeting ‘the global challenge’. At the time, the failures clearly outnumbered the successes and that continues to be the case. While some manifestations of environmental degradation that were highlighted in the report – such as ‘acid rain’ in Europe – have been effectively mitigated, others – such as deforestation and the accumulation of greenhouse gases caused by the burning of fossil fuels – continue to head in the wrong direction. It was never going to be easy to address challenges which transcend the jurisdictions of national governments, and it is important to note successes as well as failures. A gathering of world leaders in Montreal in 1989 agreed on a protocol aimed at phasing out the use of gases known to be causing the dangerous thinning of the atmosphere’s ozone layer and action on this global problem has had significant success. The Brundtland Report laid the foundations for the very large and energetic Earth Summit held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 and its pacesetting Agenda 21 proposals were adopted by many nations. The Rio Earth Summit, in turn, built momentum for the global convention for ‘biological diversity’ and other agreements on combatting the spread of deserts and protecting endangered wetlands. Efforts have been made to establish rules to prevent the degradation of marine environments in ‘international waters’ although these are very hard to enforce. The Rio Earth Summit set wheels in motion for the global summit held in Kyoto in 1997 which aimed to develop an international protocol for reducing emissions of greenhouse gases. Unfortunately, it is much harder to phase out the use of fossil fuels than to replace the use of the gases which thin the ozone layer, and action on reducing greenhouse gases has been much less successful than phasing out the use of the ozone-depleting gases. Ongoing efforts to reach a global agreement on the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions continued to be frustrated by governments prioritising short-term national economic interests until frustrations boiled over at a very disappointing summit held in Copenhagen in 2009. However, the disappointment of Copenhagen stimulated an intensified effort to transcend national differences and the next summit, held in Paris in December 2015, produced much better results. The Brundtland Report’s radical call to put global interests ahead of narrowly conceived national interests is finding some success.

John Elkington (b. 1949) is an English planner and psychologist, turned sustainability consultant, who invented the ‘triple bottom line’ concept in 1994.

Figure 1.1 The ‘triple bottom line’ represented as three overlapping sectors

Other successes have been racked up at a ...