Getting to One-Planet Living
The new edition of State of the World 2013 finds new ways on how we can stop having Earth Overshoot Day year after year.
Washington, D.C.—As the world continues down the path of unmitigated and unsustainable development, it is becoming increasingly clear that we have successfully pushed ourselves out of the stable geological era of the Holocene and into the more volatile and unpredictable Anthropocene. Nevertheless, many remain blissfully unaware of this truth due to the fact that ecosystem thresholds are not always marked with warning signs of impending danger. Unfortunately, this means that we may actually pass through a tipping point unaware because it is quite possible that nothing significant will happen at first.
In State of the World 2013: Is Sustainability Still Possible?, the Worldwatch Institute (www.worldwatch.org) discusses the need to collectively stay within our planetary boundaries if we wish to achieve environmental sustainability and return to a stabler, Holocene-like era.
According to Ecological Footprint studies, humans have already overshot the planet’s ecological capability by about 50 percent. State of the World 2013 contributing author and Senior Researcher at Oxfam, Kate Raworth, notes that the high consumption levels of the wealthiest 10 percent of people in the world and the resource-intensive production practices of companies are the biggest sources of stress on the planet today.
“If ‘one-planet’ living is the goal, then lifestyle choices will obviously have to entail more than recycling programs and stay-at-home vacations,” said Jennie Moore, Director of Sustainable Development and Environmental Stewardship at the British Columbia Institute of Technology, and also a contributing author. “For success, the world’s nations will have to commit to whole new development strategies with elements ranging from public re-education to ecological fiscal reform, all within a negotiated global sustainability treaty.”
Although it is critical that we reduce our total resource use to a level below the natural threshold, it is equally important that every person has access to the resources they need to lead a life of dignity and opportunity. In State of the World 2013, contributing authors suggest taking into account both our planetary and social boundaries when measuring sustainability:
Examining Planetary Boundaries. Nine planetary boundaries have been identified that together describe an envelope for a safe operating space for humanity, and we may be able to achieve environmental sustainability if we collectively live within these boundaries. These include: climate change, biodiversity loss, the nitrogen and phosphorus cycles, stratospheric ozone, ocean acidification, global freshwater use, land use changes, atmospheric aerosol loading, and chemical pollution.
Incorporating Social Boundaries. Living within our planet’s natural boundaries is essential, but taking into consideration social boundaries, such as access to fresh water, education, health care, and other basic needs is as important. Between the social foundation of human rights and the environmental ceiling of planetary boundaries lies a space that is both environmentally safe and socially just, and we must work to move in to that space.
Four Score and Seven Years From Now
Ever since directing State of the World 2010: Transforming Cultures: From Consumerism to Sustainability I’ve gotten the question of yes, but what would a sustainable culture really look like? As I started writing about degrowth for State of the World 2012, this question only grew in frequency. So, recently I attempted to paint a utopian vision of a Sustainable America in 2100.
And by utopian, I mean that in both the positive and negative sense of the word–ideal but impossibly so. With ancient political realities in play (power preserves itself) the idea that we will smoothly transition to a post-consumer, post-growth, post-fossil fuel world is pretty hard to believe. But this is my imagining of a sustainable 22nd century America where reason prevailed. After all, without fantasies about the future, what keeps us motivated to keep on working towards utopia? Below you’ll find a few excerpts from my recent E Magazine article, “Choose Your Future: A Vision of Sustainable America in 2100.” You can read the full piece online.
Climate change has had a devastating impact, and it’s not over yet. The total warming of 3.3 to 4.5 degrees Celsius predicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has led to considerable ecological changes. Chicago now has the climate of New Orleans, and New Orleans, well, much of that was claimed by the Gulf of Mexico. The rest of that city, one half of Miami, a third of Manhattan and many other cities were either lost to rising sea levels or proactively converted into wetlands in order to provide a buffer to what habitable land remained. Losing that land was a great tragedy, but a shrinking population, combined with an increasingly agrarian economy made it less painful—in economic terms at least. Nothing will ever replace the loss of the birthplace of jazz.
I started the piece by making it clear that even in the extremely utopian future, we’re going to have ugly ecological changes. We’ve built those into the system already. So, I’m sorry Miami and New Orleans but I don’t think you’ll make it through the century, no matter how quickly we course correct (Manhattan, on the other hand, is so loaded that they’ll probably insulate themselves for a while with sea walls).
Read more at Worldwatch.
The Compelling Promise of Urbanism Without Effort
As urban stakeholders — residents, pundits, developers, associated professionals, and politicians — we like to discuss and debate aspects of urbanism and how cities should change to meet new challenges. But when we talk about urbanism, I think we often forget the underlying dynamics that are as old as cities themselves. As a result, we favor fads over the indigenous underpinnings of urban settlement and personal observation of urban change. We focus too literally on plans, model codes, transportation modes, building appearance, economic and population specifics, and summary indicators of how land is currently used. While we might champion the programmed successes of certain iconic examples, we risk ignoring the backstory of urban forms and functions, and failing to truly understand the traditional relationships between people and place.
I believe it is critical to first isolate spontaneous and latent examples of successful urban land use, before applying any prescription of typologies, desired ends, or governmental initiative. Such inspirational “urbanism without effort” is the basis for a clean, multidisciplinary slate for reinvigorating the way we think about urban development today.
This premise needs a definition and reference point, for all that follows here and in future inquiry. “Urbanism without effort” is what happens naturally when people congregate in cities — based on the innate interactions of urban dwellers that occur with one other and the surrounding urban and physical environment. Such innate interactions are often the product of cultural tradition and organic urban development, independent of government intervention, policy, or plan.
Read more at The Huffingtonpost.
A Conversation on Art & Environment with Rafe Sagarin
Observation and Ecology author Rafe Sagarin discusses art and the environment with poet Eric Magrane from the University of Arizona.
Eric Magrane: Rafe, you write and speak about observation, most pointedly in your bookObservation and Ecology, with Aníbal Pauchard. I’d like to discuss the way that observation interacts as a hinge between science—and particularly environmental science—as a way of seeing and understanding the world, and art as a way of seeing.
Rafe Sagarin
Rafe Sagarin: Absolutely. Observation is at the core of so many things we do, especially art and science. It’s almost so much at the core of science that it’s forgotten how important it is. The primacy that observation has to everything that we know—we’ve almost gotten too clever by half and think we could skip that deep observational step. Of course, all artists implicitly understand that they need to be really good observers of the world first, before they can start translating those observations to something they can appreciate. Sometimes in science we drill down way too far too fast before we understand observationally the whole context of what we’re looking at.
Eric Magrane: It seems like there are intersections between where one starts, as well—whether one begins with a hypothesis or a question that will guide the way that you look at things. Or sometimes in artistic ways of engaging with the world, it doesn’t always begin from a specific question or a discrete category that one is already organizing the world in, right? It seems like the way that you speak about observation addresses this stepping back and being attentive to what is actually happening in the world rather than going in already saying—within this space, within this marine ecosystem, for example—I know exactly how I organize this world already. It upsets the way that we make knowledge and has openings for new ways of understanding the ordering of the world and trying different arrangements.
Rafe Sagarin: Exactly. There’s been a lot of shifting of this in science. The early naturalist-explorers were wide-open observers. Darwin didn’t go to the Galapagos with a hypothesis in mind about evolution. He observed and observed for years, even when he got back, and eventually came out with this hypothesis and looked back at the data to see how it fit. What happened especially in the second half of the 20th century is that science got really more and more pressure, to this day, to define itself by being able to ask a hypothesis and then test that hypothesis. In the way we’ve made that process more efficient, it’s almost like you need to know—in order to get funded for your science—exactly what your hypothesis is going to be beforehand. Otherwise, you’re accused of going on a fishing expedition when in reality you’re never going to come up with a good hypothesis until you’ve done a lot of observing as broadly as possible before you even think about what’s the most appropriate question here.
Eric Magrane: How do you know which scales to observe? There are connections here to citizen science or engaging the public in bringing in multiple frames of observation and observers looking at different objects.
Rafe Sagarin: There’s really no one right way to determine what scale you start at. I think it’s really determined by what it is you’re interested in. But you do need to have the cognizance that there are multiple scales out there, so that you’re not blinding yourself. So for example if you’re just looking at satellite data of something, you may be missing some important processes that are going on right down at the ground. And if you’re just looking at one local site, you might be missing how that connects to the whole picture. The beauty of being an observer in today’s world is that you can move across scales. Technologically speaking we’re able to observe like never before—observe the entire earth—but also we can do so in terms of our networked world we live in. Even if you’re not the person who can do the observations at the very local scale, you can connect with people—through citizen science programs for example or through networks of scientists—who are observing at different places. We have kind of an unprecedented opportunity and ability to observe at all kinds of scales. But that doesn’t suggest there is one scale you should necessarily start on.
Click here for more and a video.
Congratulations to Green Book Festival Award Winners!
Island Press is pleased to congratulate the authors recognized by this year’s Green Book Festival awards. We’re particularly proud of Wade Davis, whose River Notes was given an honorable mention in the general non-fiction category; the Union of Concerned Scientists for winning the scientific category with Cooler Smarter; and Eric Dinerstein, whose The Kingdom of Rarities was runner-up in the animals category.
#forewordFriday without Effort Edition
This week’s selection for #forewordFriday comes from Charles R. Wolfe’s new E-ssential, Urbanism Without Effort. In this beautifully illustrated E-ssential, Charles Wolfe explores the idea that to create vibrant, sustainable urban areas, we must first understand “what happens naturally when people congregate in cities— innate, unprompted interactions of urban dwellers with each other and their surrounding urban and physical environment.” Wolfe draws upon his professional experiences as a land use and environmental lawyer, providing compelling vignettes from everyday life to illustrate examples of these spontaneous and thriving urban communities.
Enjoy!
New Author Charles R. Wolfe on the Challenges and Potential of Urbanism
Charles R. Wolfe’s new E-ssential tackles the idea that to create vibrant, sustainable urban areas for the long term, we must first understand “what happens naturally when people congregate in cities—-innate, unprompted interactions of urban dwellers with each other and their surrounding urban and physical environment.” In this piece in the Atlantic Cities, he expands on that premise:
Urban stakeholders like to discuss and debate how cities should change to meet new challenges. But when we talk about urbanism, I think we often forget the underlying dynamics that are as old as cities themselves. As a result, we favor fads over the indigenous underpinnings of urban settlement and personal observation of urban change. We focus too literally on plans, model codes, transportation modes, building appearance, economic and population specifics, and summary indicators of how land is currently used. While we might champion the programmed successes of certain iconic examples, we risk ignoring the back story of urban forms and functions, and failing to truly understand the traditional relationships between people and place.
I believe it is critical to first isolate spontaneous and latent examples of successful urban land use, before applying any prescription of typologies, desired ends, or governmental initiative. “Urbanism without effort” is the the basis for a clean, multidisciplinary slate for reinvigorating the way we think about urban development today.
This premise needs a definition and reference point, for all that follows here and in future inquiry. “Urbanism without effort” is what happens naturally when people congregate in cities—based on the innate interactions of urban dwellers that occur with one other and the surrounding urban and physical environment. Such innate interactions are often the product of cultural tradition and organic urban development, independent of government intervention, policy, or plan.
More at the Atlantic Cities
Southeast Asia: The Global Land Rush’s Overlooked Ground Zero
Last year, over a period of nine months, Cambodian state security forces staged a brutal crackdown against protesting journalists, human rights activists, and monks. Many were harassed, some were jailed, and several were killed. These people were not protesting about politics. Rather, they were rallying against land takeovers by private investors. In Cambodia, a whopping 55 percent of all arable land has been acquired by agribusiness interests, both domestic and foreign.
Over the last few years, international media outlets and civil society have highlighted how private investors and capital-rich national governments are acquiring vast swaths of farmland overseas. Such narratives tend to focus on the frenzied fight for farmland in Africa—from the 1.3 million hectares that a South Korean corporation acquired in a short-lived deal with Madagascar in 2009, to the more recent farming investments of India’s Karuturi Group in the impoverished, conflict-riven state of Gambella in Ethiopia.
This attention is certainly warranted. The majority of land secured in these deals has been in Africa, and six of the ten largest announced deals (including a Brazilian scheme to farm 6 million hectares in Mozambique) are in this region.
Read more at The Fletcher Forum of World Affairs
#forewordFriday: Is Sustainability Still Possible Edition
This week’s #forewordFriday selection comes fresh off a successful launch of the Worldwatch Institute’s newest edition of State of the World. This 2013 edition asks the question: Is Sustainability Still Possible?
Editors Erik Assadourian and Tom Prugh have brought together Worldwatch experts and other contributors including:
- environmental thought leader David Orr on governance in the “long emergency,”
- Sandra Postel on sustaining freshwater,
- ecological economics pioneer Herman Daly on building a sustainable and desirable economy,
- The Story of Stuff author Annie Leonard on individual and societal change, and
- Science fiction writer Kim Stanley Robinson on imagining if it’s already too late.
Together, they define clear sustainability metrics while examining policies in areas like geoengineering, cultural engineering, corporate transformation, and energy solutions. They also explore ways that governments and communities can cope with the likely consequences of failing to become sustainable.
Enjoy!
State of the World 2013: Is Sustainability Still Possible? Preview
Kickstarter for The Cartoon Introduction to Climate Change
A new Island Press author, Yoram Bauman, the world’s first and only stand-up economist, is trying to raise $20,000 to help offset the cost to print his forthcoming book: The Cartoon Introduction to Climate Change.
We’re pretty confident that this book will help explain climate change in a fun, digestible way to a brand new audience. If the positive receptions of Yoram’s cartoon introductions to economics are any indication, this new book is sure to be a similar success.
