Sustainability and Autodependency

Norman W. GarrickLecture 6

What is Sustainability?

Sustainability is the stewardship of natural and human-made resources

so that the quality of living and the health of our cities, countryside and open space do not deteriorate from one generation to the next

Cervero, The Transit Metropolis: Transit and the Changing World

Talking the Talk

Politicians in Jamaica and many other third world countries are very aware of the need to ‘talk’ sustainability but the policies often don’t add up to changes that support environmental sustainability. Environmental and health sustainability is often compromised in the interest of economic growth.

The situation in the USA is slightly different – often technological fixes are offered up as the solution that will cause us to achieve environmental health without changing any of the economic or social issues that impact sustainability

So how do we convert the seemingly vague concept of sustainability into a concrete framework for guiding policy and design?

The Three-Legged Stool

The common model of sustainability is made up of a triad of economic, social, and environmental sustainability

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The Problem with the Three-legged Stool Model

The three-legged stool model does not help us address seemingly hard questions like

• How do we improve people’s quality of life without necessarily increasing consumption to levels that might cause environmental degradation?

• Can we have a sustainable economy without the need for constantly increasing levels of consumption?

• Can we satisfy people’s desire for access without environmentally damaging levels of mobility?

The Starting Place for Understanding Sustainability

Source: http://www.spacetoday.org/images/SolSys/Earth/EarthBlueMarbleWestTerra.jpg

Why Protecting the Biosphere is the Bottom-line for Sustainability

We only have the one biosphere – this biosphere consists of natural ecosystems at different scales. It is a closed system with only one energy input and no output

for waste

Human activities have a big impact on the biosphere

We need to re-structure these activities so that we can satisfy our needs and desires without continuing to cause harm to the biosphere

The Three-Legged Stool

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The Problem with the Three-Legged Stool

The triad model of sustainability is considered by some to be flawed because it does not explicitly recognize that environmental sustainability requires changes to social and economic institutions – instead, it talks about balance

It is universally acknowledged that the three dimensions of sustainability - environmental, social and economic – are a useful and valid way of conceptualizing this issue

What is in dispute is the order in which they are considered. The three-legged stool does not imply any order or priority

The Appropriate Order for the Three Domains

The important shift is to recognize that the economy is the creation of society, and not the other way around.

The economy is thus framed by the social context in which it occurs.

Further, both society and the economy operate within the context of a natural environment of limited capacity.

This lead to the nested box model of sustainability in which the order of priority is environment, social, and economy sustainability

Environment

Economy

(LOW AND GLEESON 2003, HART 2006)

It is important not to take this model to mean that the economy, or economic considerations, are not important

Rather it should be interpreted as saying that growth should serve the interest of the society and be environmentally sustainable.

The most extreme examples of economic growth without social or environmental sustainability can be found in many “oil rich” countries around the world.

The Nested box model also contains echoes of Littman's point about striving for ‘development’ not just ‘growth’

Interpreting the Nested Box Model of Sustainability

From an article by McGranahan and Satterthwaite in

Pugh, Sustainable Cities in Developing Countries, Earthscan, pg. 73-87

Ref: Low and Gleeson, Making Urban Transportation Sustainable, Palgrave MacMillan, pg. 25 - 41.