Sustainability

Approaches to Environmental Justice and Social Power

Julie Sze

• Publisher: NYU Press
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781479858644
• Topic: Law
• Subtopic: Environmental Law
• Index: Law

A critical resource for approaching sustainability across the disciplines Sustainability and social justice remain elusive even though each is unattainable without the other. Across the industrialized West and the Global South, unsustainable practices and social inequities exacerbate one another. How do social justice and sustainability connect? What does sustainability mean and, most importantly, how can we achieve it with justice? This volume tackles these questions, placing social justice and interdisciplinary approaches at the center of efforts for a more sustainable world. Contributors present empirical case studies that illustrate how sustainability can take place without contributing to social inequality. From indigenous land rights, climate conflict, militarization and urban drought resilience, the book offers examples of ways in which sustainability and social justice strengthen one another. Through an understanding of history, diverse cultural traditions, and complexity in relation to race, class, and gender, this volume demonstrates ways in which sustainability can help to shape better and more robust solutions to the world’s most pressing problems. Blending methods from the humanities, environmental sciences and the humanistic social sciences, this book offers an essential guide for the next generation of global citizens.

PART I

Interdisciplinarity, Place, and Praxis

1

Situating Sustainability from an Ecological Science Perspective

Ecosystem Services, Resilience, and Environmental Justice

M. L. CADENASSO AND S. T. A. PICKETT

Bernie Fowler, a ninety-one-year-old former Maryland state senator, remembers the clear waters of the Chesapeake Bay when he was a child. Concerned with the deteriorating water quality of the Bay that merited its listing in the Clean Water Act of 1972 as “impaired waters,” he has worked to raise awareness about its condition and to promote efforts to improve its ecology. Senator Fowler remembers wading up to his shoulders into the Patuxent River, one of the estuarine tributaries of the Bay, and seeing fish, crabs, and abundant bottom-dwelling plants. So in 1988, he began an annual ritual; for the last twenty-nine years, he has waded into the Patuxent on the second Sunday in June. He—joined more recently by a crowd of family, friends, and politicos—wades into the water until he can no longer see his white sneakers. The depth is indexed by how far up the water has wetted his denim overalls.

Although Senator Fowler was not conducting the sneaker test in the 1950s, calibrating his personal index with less subjective measurements from the era suggests that a sneaker test would have scored a very deep 57 inches back then. By 1988 water clarity had diminished dramatically, and Bernie Fowler’s overalls measured a mere 10 inches of visibility. Since that time, water clarity has improved, but there is much variability year to year owing to inputs of nutrients, pollutants, and sediments into the Bay (fig. 1.1).

Bernie Fowler wades in the water because he is concerned with the sustainability of the Chesapeake Bay and its crabs, oysters, fish, and waterfowl. He is motivated by the images he remembers from his childhood and by the abundance that has become a cultural symbol for the Bay. This symbolism encompasses the culinary history of the city of Baltimore, the work ethic of coastal towns of the Eastern Shore of Maryland, the meticulous labor of the African American workers in the shellfish packing plants, and the back-breaking work of watermen, both black and white, as they raked for oysters in the shallows.

Figure 1.1. Depth at which Bernie Fowler could see his feet during his “sneaker test” for water clarity in the Patuxent River, a tributary of the Chesapeake Bay. The black line indicates the benchmark used as a goal for restoration efforts. Source: Maryland Department of Planning, www.mdp.state.md.us.

This rich array of social, cultural, economic, environmental, and place-based images points to different facets of sustainability. The Chesapeake has provided livelihoods, food, leisure, environmental benefits, cultural symbolism, and a sense of place for generations. How do the images of Bernie Fowler’s obscured white sneakers and the efforts to regulate the 11,601-square-kilometer Chesapeake Bay watershed and its urban, suburban, rural, and wild lands coalesce into a rigorous understanding and application of the concept and practice of sustainability?

The Concept of Sustainability

Many scholars and policy makers have experienced the frustration of attempting to define sustainability at the beginning of a meeting or workshop. Participants bring different assumptions and motivations to their view of sustainability, and it seems as though these different views are often in conflict with one another. Water clarity, development, equity, and conservation concerns bump and clash. Why is a shared vision of sustainability so elusive, especially given that it is so widely invoked? Like all concepts, sustainability is an abstraction; it is an aggregated concept that must be unpacked and the components specified in order for it to be applied to a particular situation. In the process of specification, assumptions of spatial and temporal scales and about sustainability goals and motivations are revealed. Participants frequently bring these assumptions to the table without calling them out specifically, which leads to seemingly incompatible visions of sustainability. The good news is that the sustainability “tent” is large and inclusive, but, at the same time, the abstract concept of sustainability must be situated in time, place, and motivation in order to establish measureable goals for sustainability to be used in discussion or practice. It is for this reason that situating sustainability is crucial. It is only when the motivations and corresponding goals are articulated, and the spatial and temporal scales determined, that sustainability is situated and, with a shared vision of sustainability, action can be taken.

Sustainability as a concept may engender frustration because it is both complex and broad. It is complex because it has multiple layers of meaning and use that can result in confusion that diminishes the concept’s utility. Sustainability, like all ecologically relevant concepts, is multidimensional, and these dimensions can be identified as metaphor, meaning, and model (Pickett and Cadenasso 2002). These three dimensions can be exploited to effectively situate sustainability. Metaphors can spur creativity and foster communication within a discipline or across disciplinary traditions. Metaphors are images that can be useful when concepts are first being developed. Metaphors, such as the image of Bernie Fowler’s disappearing sneakers, can also be the stimuli for public understanding and civic action, as well as a call for increased scientific rigor. They are also valuable as a communication tool when understanding within a discipline has advanced to the stage of sharing that understanding with non-specialists.

To advance understanding of the concept beyond evocative images, however, a technical definition must be developed. This definition should be inclusive, apply to a wide array of situations, and indicate what needs to be specified before it can be applied or tested. Once the meaning of the concept has been articulated, then specific models can be generated to guide the testing, application, and refinement of the meaning and, therefore, the concept. A model must specify the components of the concept that are relevant for a particular time and place. There can be many models generated to accomplish this specification, and the models can translate the concept to numerous real or hypothetical situations. Through testing and application, the models can be refined because new relationships among components may be found or the relative strength of different relationships may be discovered (fig. 1.2).

Sustainability consists of three pillars popularly referred to as the 3 E’s: economy, environment, and equity. Leach, Scoones, and Stirling (2010) have suggested that these three pillars be more broadly conceived of as human well-being, ecological integrity, and equity. We adopt Leach et al.’s three normative spheres but translate them into the corresponding theoretical realms of ecosystem services, resilience, and environmental justice, respectively. Ecosystem services are benefits that ecosystems provide to humans that enhance human well-being (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment 2005); resilience is the ability of a system to adapt and adjust to changing internal or external processes while at the same time remaining ecologically functional (Childers et al. 2014); and, finally, equity in terms of environmental justice suggests that environmental benefits and burdens should not be disproportionately experienced by those who lack power or access to the decision-making process, including those living outside the area of particular focus or future generations (Boone 2008; Sze and London 2008). All three of these theoretical realms contribute to understanding sustainability.

Once the three pillars of sustainability are translated into the three spheres of models, there is still an additional step toward practicality. To operationalize sustainability, two things must occur in this step. First, it must be situated in time, place, and motivation. Second, indices or benchmarks must be established so that progress toward a specified goal can be measured. Seeking measurables isn’t meant to imply that an end point is achievable; rather, it’s to emphasize that evaluation of whether progress toward sustainability is being made must be measureable. Some of these measurables can be truly quantitative, such as a specific decrease in a pollutant of concern, for example. But others are measureable in the sense of relative changes—whether something has gotten better or has gotten worse after a particular time or point of action. The depth at which Bernie Fowler’s sneakers disappear is an admittedly informal attempt at measurement.

Figure 1.2. Tools for situating sustainability—metaphor, meaning, and models. Metaphors are images useful for generating ideas. But assumptions that underlie metaphors must be removed as the technical definition or meaning of the concept is determined. This meaning should be broad and inclusive and draw on established theoretical realms. The role of models is to specify or translate the meaning for a particular situation—hypothetical or real. Models represent the system and include the physical components, indicate how those components are related to each other, and describe how components interact—all within the context of time, place, and motivation. Finally, applying models and determining how well they represent the system informs changes needed to future models and, potentially, the core meaning of the concept.

Figure 1.3. One approach to specifying the tools needed to situate sustainability for the Chesapeake Bay. Bernie Fowler’s “sneaker test” is an imagistic metaphor for the role of water clarity as an indicator of Bay health and the impacts of water clarity on important economic and cultural icons such as the blue crab and oysters. The technical components that need to be understood to move toward a more sustainable Chesapeake Bay include water clarity as a measure of ecological integrity, the re-creation of productive fisheries as an indication of human well-being, equitable distribution of pollution (e.g., fertilizer runoff) and sediment inputs from the land, and jobs. Models need to be developed to articulate the links among the technical components and to aid in hypothesis generation and testing. These models can be informed by the theoretical realms of resilience, ecosystem services, and environmental justice, all of which will need to be specified within the context of time, place, and motivation. Finally, changes in water clarity can be determined using a Secci disk, a common tool in aquatic sciences, and lessons learned can feed back to affect the priorities and activities of the Chesapeake Bay Program. CB = Chesapeake Bay; vege’n = vegetation; N = nitrogen and P = phosphorus (both indicators of fertilizer runoff).

This chapter is organized to follow closely the steps introduced above to expose and work with the assumptions attending sustainability (fig. 1.2). We first discuss the three dimensions of concepts—metaphor, meaning, and model—as they apply to sustainability in particular. We then discuss the three core theoretical realms—ecosystem services, resilience, and environmental justice—as components of sustainability. Finally, we operationalize these realms within the context of enhancing the water quality of the Chesapeake Bay to sustain aquatic life and important fisheries as a case study (fig. 1.3).

Sustainability: Metaphor—Meaning—Model

Metaphor

Metaphors are valuable tools for creating new ideas and syntheses within a discipline because the new idea can be likened to some other, already familiar, phenomenon. Metaphors provide a jumping-off point for beginning to define and shape the understanding of new ideas by clarifying where the new idea parallels or deviates from the concepts already familiar to the discipline. In this sense, the metaphor is generative (Pickett 1999). Generative metaphors are also useful tools for multidisciplinary interactions because metaphors draw on the imagination and encourage informal and non-technical discussions focused on creating what may be possible instead of being constrained or limited to what already is.

Sustainability is a powerful metaphor (Larson 2011). It conjures up of images of healthy environments, socially cohesive communities, and economies that persist into the future. Sustainability encourages wise and equitable uses of resources such that those resources will continue to be available for future generations. Sustainability recognizes the connections among humans and the natural world (Chapin et al. 2011). As a metaphor, sustainability has motivated individuals, institutions, municipalities and even corporations to modify behaviors in such a way that they work toward protecting the environment, promoting social equity, and enhancing economic vitality (Pierce et al. 2014).

Meaning

Sustainability, however, must move beyond metaphor and toward clear definition in order to set goals and ultimately assess whether those goals have been met. The second dimension of sustainability is therefore its meaning, or technical definition. The definition should be (1) abstract or generalizable, (2) free of unnecessary limiting assumptions, and (3) scale neutral. These three features ensure that the basic definition is inclusive of the broadest array of situations. The definition should not be constrained by assumptions of system stability or persistence through time and space, equilibrium at a determined set point, or even the identity of components and the kinds of interactions among components. A scale-neutral definition allows the concept to be applied across all spatial and temporal scales. This is not the same as scale independence be...