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Sustainable Development SOSC 562301E

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Title: Sustainable Development SOSC 562301E


1
Sustainable DevelopmentSOSC 562/301E
  • Instructor Jerry Patchell
  • TA Wong Chi Hang

2
What environmental problems?
  • Symptoms?
  • Causes?

3
How do you solve these problems?
  • Politics?
  • Economics and business?
  • Technology?
  • Consumption patterns?

4
A Global Dilemma Two Vicious Circles
Poverty
Affluence
Environmental degradation
Environmental degradation
Resource imports, pollution exports
5
How does poverty cause environmental damage?
  • Agriculture need to survive causes overuse of
    land (grazing, intensive agriculture, fertilizer,
    fuel wood, logging) leading to deforestation,
    topsoil erosion, water contamination
  • Worsened by
  • population pressures
  • lack of control over local resources and poor
    governance
  • Inability to invest in environment
  • Industry inefficient, dirty industry locates
    where wages and influence over environment are
    low, causing pollution of air, land, and water
  • Cost-based competition
  • Labour intensive
  • Low capacity to invest in environment

6
How does affluence cause environmental damage?
  • High productivity levels cause greater throughput
    of materials and energy per person
  • Higher income levels enable greater consumption
    of energy and materials
  • Greater throughput of energy and materials means
    more land used for agriculture (more pesticides,
    fertilizers, erosion), more wood and mineral
    resources used, more energy extracted and used,
    etc.
  • Urbanization has disconnected producers and
    consumers relieving them of the influence of
    environmental degradation on their lives.

7
How are the two vicious circles connected?
8
Connections
  • Trade in resources, pollution and waste
  • Exploitation of global commons for resources and
    waste disposal
  • Impact of local actions on global health

9
Two Paths to Sustainable Development
Livelihood
Lifestyle
Affluence
Poverty
Environmental degradation
Resource imports, pollution exports
Environmental degradation
Cooperation on Global Governance
Welfare Improvement Basic needs (food, shelter,
edu.) Productive employment Control over
resources Population control Energy
Environmental Remediation Production Consumption
Fulfilling employment/leisure Responsibility and
participation Energy
10
From Ad Hoc Responses to the Environmental Crisis
  • Social Demands
  • Catalytic events disasters, Pollution, Habitat
    Destruction etc.
  • Scientists, Environmentalists, Social Movements
    raise Awareness demand for action, green
    consumption
  • Political Action
  • Government Regulations, Penalties, and
    Administration
  • International Conferences and Agreements
  • Business Response
  • Evasion
  • Compliance
  • Beyond Compliance

11
to an (Ambiguous) Consensus on Sustainable
Development
  • "Sustainable development is development that
    meets the needs of the present without
    compromising the ability of future generations to
    meet their own needs. (WCED)

12
The short definition was qualified by its
originators in the following manner It
(sustainable development) contains within it two
key concepts
  • the concepts of needs, in particular the
    essential needs off the world's poor, to which
    overriding priority should be given and
  • the idea of limitations imposed by the state of
    technology and social organization on the
    environment's ability to meet present and future
    needs. (WECD, 1987, 43)

13
History
  • Stockholm 1972 UN Conference on the Human
    Environment
  • Report of the World Commission on the Environment
    and Development Our Common Future.
  • Rio 1992 UN Conference on Environment and
    Development Agenda 21
  • Johannesburg 2002 2nd World Summit on
    Sustainable Development

14
Far-Reaching Ethical, Political and Economic
Implications
  • Raised the environmental issue to a high level
  • Recognizing the issue of intra-generation and
    inter-generation equity
  • While, still allowing for growth and development
  • And bound all countries to a global effort.

15
Local, National and Global Strategies
  • revive growth, but change the quality of growth
  • meet essential needs for jobs, food, energy,
    water, and sanitation
  • ensure a sustainable level of population
  • conserve and enhance the resource base
  • reorient technology and manage risk
  • merge environment and economics in decision
    making
  • enhance the flow of capital to developing
    countries
  • link trade, environment, and development by
    improving the terms of trade
  • increase the diffusion of environmentally sound
    technologies and their funding to developing
    countries.

16
Institutional Gaps
  • Institutions culture, knowledge and theory,
    policy and laws, administration
  • Lack of recognition of environment lack of
    integration among institutions lack of
    coordination
  • Global, national, regional, local scales

17
Sustainable Development as Integration
Science Technology
Environment
Environment
Society
Politics
Economy
18
Who does sustainable development?
  • The UN and its agencies
  • Dozens of environmental conventions and
    programs(UNDP)
  • National, state, local governments, communities
  • 110 national, over 6000 local Agenda 21s
  • Non-governmental organizations
  • Thousands involved
  • Companies
  • Corporate social responsibility/sustainability
    programs ethical investing
  • Consumers
  • Green consumer movements, fair trade

19
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20
Sustainable Sai Kung a practical introduction
to sustainable development
  • The core of sustainable development is that
    people from diverse backgrounds, often with
    conflicting interests need to work together to
    produce integrated answers to environmental
    pressures.

21
Sector/Community Study
  • Choose a sector or community
  • Baseline conditions and impacts
  • Stakeholder awareness and capacities
  • Issue analysis
  • Alternatives generation
  • Indicators and monitoring system
  • Stakeholder feedback to your plan
  • Community integration

22
Sector/Community Study
  • Done
  • Fisherfolk
  • Wind energy
  • Hiking
  • Water recycling
  • Ecotourism
  • Seafood restaurants
  • Expat community
  • Recreational fishing
  • Transportation
  • SK town planning
  • To Be Done
  • Houses
  • Housing estates
  • Education
  • Recycling
  • Industry
  • Old folks, young folks
  • Yachting, scuba diving, etc
  • Environmental awareness
  • Politics
  • Various businesses e.g. construction
  • And much, much more.

23
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24
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25
Sai Kung
  • Environment
  • Attributes and quality
  • Society
  • Pop. groups services
  • Technology
  • Infrastructures and products
  • Economy
  • Sectors composition values jobs
  • Politics
  • Representation/Administration participation

26
Evaluation System
  • Group reports 2 x 15 marks 30
  • Participation 20
  • Final report 50

27
Requirements
  • read basics of sustainable development
  • field research
  • Literature/case study research
  • willingness to talk to people
  • creativity

28
Course Websites
  • http//teaching.ust.hk/sosc562/
  • Sustainablesaikung.org

29
Defining an oxymoron
  • Sustainable?
  • Development?

30
Other Definitions
  • (www. sustainableliving.org)

31
  • Ecological Definition
  • IUCN, WWF and UNEP. 1980.
  • Sustainable development - maintenance of
    essential ecological processes and life support
    systems, the preservation of genetic diversity,
    and the sustainable utilization of species and
    ecosystems.

32
Ecological Definition
  • Keiichiro Fuwa. 1995.
  • Biophysical sustainability means maintaining or
    improving the integrity of the life support
    system of Earth.
  • Mohan Munasinghe and Walter Shearer. 1995.
  • Biogeophysical sustainability is the maintenance
    and/or improvement of the integrity of the
    life-support system on Earth. Sustaining the
    biosphere with adequate provisions for maximizing
    future options includes providing for human
    economic and social improvement for current and
    future human generations within a framework of
    cultural diversity while (a) making adequate
    provisions for the maintenance of biological
    diversity and (b) maintaining the biogeochemical
    integrity of the biosphere by conservation and
    proper use of its air, water and land resources.
    Achieving these goals requires planning and
    action at local, regional and global scales and
    specifying short- and long-term objectives that
    allow for the transition to sustainability.

33
Economic Definition
  • R. Repetto. 1986.
  • The core of the idea of sustainability, then, is
    the concept that current decisions should not
    impair the prospects for maintaining or improving
    future living standards... This implies that our
    economic systems should be managed so that we can
    live off the dividend of our resources,
    maintaining and improving the asset base. This
    principle also has much in common with the ideal
    concept of income that accountants seek to
    determine the greatest amount that can be
    consumed in the current period without reducing
    prospects for consumption in the future.
  • This does not mean that sustainable development
    demands the preservation of the current stock of
    natural resources or any particular mix of human,
    physical and natural assets. As development
    proceeds, the composition of the underlying asset
    base changes.
  • There is broad agreement that pursuing policies
    that imperil the welfare of future generations,
    who are unrepresented in any political or
    economic forum, is unfair.

34
Core Economic Definitions
  • Robert Haveman. 1989.
  • Sustainable development is the maintenance or
    growth of the aggregate level of economic
    well-being, defined as the level of per capita
    economic well-being.
  • John Pezzey. 1989.
  • Our standard definition of sustainable
    development will be non-declining per capita
    utility - because of its self-evident appeal as a
    criterion for inter-generational equity.

35
Social Definitions
  • David Munro,1995.
  • Sustainable development is a complex of
    activities that can be expected to improve the
    human condition in such a manner that the
    improvement can be maintained.
  • Nazli Choucri, 1997.
  • The process of managing social demands without
    eroding life support properties or mechanisms of
    social cohesion and resilience.

36
Self-reliance Definition
  • Mustafa Tolba, 1987.
  • Sustainable development has become an article of
    faith, a shibboleth often used but little
    explained. Does it amount to a strategy? Does it
    apply only to renewable resources? What does the
    term actually mean? In broad terms the concept of
    sustainable development encompasses
  • 1. Help for the very poor because they are left
    with no option other than to destroy their
    environment
  • 2. The idea of self-reliant development, within
    natural resource constraints
  • 3. The idea of cost-effective development using
    differing economic criteria to the traditional
    approach that is to say development should not
    degrade environmental quality, nor should it
    reduce productivity in the long run
  • 4. The great issues of health control,
    appropriate technologies, food self-reliance,
    clean water and shelter for all
  • 5. The notion that people-centered initiatives
    are needed human beings, in other words, are the
    resources in the concept.

37
Spatial Definition
  • R. Norgaard, 1988.
  • Thus we need to nail down the concept of
    sustainable development. I propose five
    increasingly comprehensive definitions. First we
    can start at the local level and simply ask
    whether a region's agricultural and industrial
    practices can continue indefinitely. Will they
    destroy the local resource base and environment
    or, just as bad, the local people and their
    cultural system? Or will the resource base,
    environment, technologies and culture evolve over
    time in a mutually reinforcing manner? This first
    definition ignores whether there might be
    subsidies to the region - whether material and
    energy inputs or social inputs such as the
    provision of new knowledge, technologies and
    institutional services are being supplied from
    outside the region. Second, we can ask whether
    the region is dependent upon non-renewable
    inputs, both energy and materials, from beyond
    its boundaries. Or is the region dependent on
    renewable resources beyond its boundaries which
    are not being managed in a sustainable manner?
    Third, we can become yet more sophisticated and
    ponder whether the region is in some sense
    culturally sustainable, whether it is
    contributing as much to the knowledge and
    institutional bases of other regions as it is
    culturally dependent upon others. Fourth, we can
    also question the extent to which the region is
    contributing to global climate change, forcing
    other regions to change their behavior, as well
    as whether it has options available to adapt to
    the climate change and surprises imposed upon it
    by others. From a global perspective, this fourth
    definition of sustainable development addresses
    the difficulties of going from hydrocarbon energy
    stocks to renewable energy sources while adapting
    to the complications of global climate change
    induced by the transitional net oxidation of
    hydrocarbons. Fifth, and last, we can inquire of
    the cultural stability of all regions in
    combination, are they evolving along mutually
    compatible paths, or will they destroy each other
    through war. These definitions become
    increasingly encompassing. All, however, address
    sustainability of changing interactions between
    people and their environment over time.

38
Overcoming the contradiction?
  • R.E. Munn, 1989.
  • The phrase sustainable development has been
    criticized, for example, by O'Riordan (1985) as a
    contradiction in terms. If development is equated
    with economic growth, this criticism is indeed
    justified Malthusian limits prevent sustained
    growth in a finite world... Ultimately, however,
    uncontrolled economic growth will cause the
    quality of the environment to deteriorate,
    economic development to decline and the standard
    of living to drop.
  • Of course, the word development does not
    necessarily imply growth. It may convey the idea
    that the world, society or the biosphere is
    becoming "better" in some sense, perhaps
    producing more, or meeting more of the basic
    needs of the poor. The word therefore involves a
    value judgement. In principle, development could
    become sustainable through structural changes
    (economic, political, cultural or ecological) or
    a succession of technological break-throughs.

39
Integrating economic definition with environment
  • Johan Holmberg, 1992.
  • Sustainable development means either that per
    capita utility or well-being is increasing over
    time with free exchange or substitution between
    natural and man-made capital or that per capita
    utility or well-being is increasing over time
    subject to non-declining natural wealth.
  • There are several reasons why the second and more
    narrow focus is justified, including
  • Nonsubstitutability between environmental assets
    (the ozone layer cannot be recreated)
  • Uncertainty (our limited understanding of the
    life-supporting functions of many environmental
    assets dictates that they be preserved for the
    future)
  • Irreversibility (once lost, no species can be
    recreated)
  • Equity (the poor are usually more affected by bad
    environments than the rich).

40
Integration and Fundamental Change?
  • Maurice Strong, 1992.
  • Sustainable development involves a process of
    deep and profound change in the political,
    social, economic, institutional, and
    technological order, including redefinition of
    relations between developing and more developed
    countries.
  • World Bank, 1992..
  • Sustainable development means basing
    developmental and environmental policies on a
    comparison of costs and benefits and on careful
    economic analysis that will strengthen
    environmental protection and lead to rising and
    sustainable levels of welfare.

41
Alternative/Qualitative Growth Definition
  • J. Coomer, 1979.
  • The sustainable society is one that lives within
    the self-perpetuating limits of its environment.
    That society... is not a "no growth" society...
    It is rather, a society that recognizes the
    limits of growth... and looks for alternative
    ways of growing.

42
Issues, Dependencies, Limitations and Conflicts
43
Carrying Capacity
  • The maximum number of individuals of a species
    that can be sustained by an environment without
    decreasing the capacity of the environment to
    sustain that same amount in the future.

44
The Problem with a Balance
  • What happens when the economy grows?
  • To the previous balance with the environment?
  • To the previous configuration of society and
    culture?

45
Contrasting Perspectives
  • Status Quo Neo-liberal economists World Bank,
    OECD, Lomberg, WBCSD, green consumers, ecological
    modernizers, green economists
  • Reformers Environmental NGOs, IUCN, Limits to
    Growth, ICLEI, Bruntland, Schumacher,
    Environmental Justice
  • Transformers Anti-Capitalist, Social Ecology,
    Ecofeminist, Ecosocialist, Indigenous/South, Deep
    Ecology, Eco-facists

46
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47
Controversy and Acceptance
  • Weak vs. Strong sustainability
  • Human-centered (anthropocentric) vs.
    Nature-centered (eco-centric) perspective
  • North vs South
  • Laissez-faire vs. Distributive Justice
  • Private vs. public vs. common property views
  • Social vs. Scientific Definition

48
Social versus Scientific definition of
Sustainability
  • Societies (nations) define what sustainable means
    rather than basing sustainability on
    scientifically based theories of ecosystem
    carrying capacity

49
A Scientific Definition
  • "A sustainable society meets three conditions
    its rates of use of renewable resources should
    not exceed their rates of regeneration its rates
    of use of non-renewable resources should not
    exceed the rate at which sustainable renewable
    substitutes are developed and its rates of
    pollution emission should not exceed the
    assimilative capacity of the environment (Herman
    Daly).

50
A Social Definition?
  • Sustainable development in Hong Kong balances
    social, economic and environmental needs, both
    for present and future generations,
    simultaneously achieving a vibrant economy,
    social progress and better environmental quality,
    locally, nationally and internationally, through
    the efforts of the community and the Government.

51
Sustainable Development as a Balance
Environment
Economy
Society
52
Sustainable Development as Integration
Science Technology
Environment
Environment
Society
Politics
Economy
53
Sustainable Development as Integration
  • All activities depend on the environment
  • Society is the core of the system because it
    shapes relations with the environment and because
    of need for equity (resources, health,
    responsibility intra inter generational)
  • Society needs economy for support and to exist
    within carrying capacity
  • Society exists within long-term technological
    conditions
  • Society requires government to set common
    standards of behavior.

54
Integrating Principles
  • public trust doctrine
  • precautionary principle
  • inter-generational equity
  • intra-generational equity
  • subsidiarity principle
  • polluter pays principle (PPP)
  • user pays principle (UPP)

55
  • The public trust doctrine means that governments
    must act to prevent environmental damage whenever
    a threat exists, whether it is covered by a
    specific law or not.

56
  • The precautionary principle holds that where
    there are threats of serious or irreversible
    damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall
    not be used as a reason for postponing
    cost-effective measures to prevent environmental
    degradation.

57
  • The principle of inter-generational equity is at
    the heart of the definition of sustainable
    development. It requires that the needs of the
    present are met without compromising the ability
    of future generations to meet their own needs.

58
  • The principle of intra-generational equity
    requires that people within the present
    generation have the right to benefit equally from
    the exploitation of resources and that they have
    an equal right to a clean and healthy environment.

59
  • The subsidiarity principle requires that
    decisions should be made by the communities
    affected or on their behalf, by the authorities
    closest to them.

60
  • The polluter pays principle (PPP) suggests that
    the polluter should internalize all the
    environmental costs of their activities so that
    these are fully reflected in the costs of the
    goods and services they provide.

61
  • The user pays principle (UPP) applies the PPP
    more broadly so that the cost of a resource to a
    user includes all the environmental costs
    associated with its extraction, transformation
    and use (including the costs of alternative or
    future uses foregone).

62
Key Points SusDev Driving Forces
  • Problem of poverty and environment
  • Problem of affluence and environment
  • Connections between the two
  • Key SusDev Ideas
  • Intra generation Equity
  • Inter generation Equity
  • Need to develop social institutions to bring
    about change

63
Key Points Tensions and Integration
  • Ambiguity of susdev
  • Tensions between environmental, economic and
    social views
  • Tensions in different ideological approaches
    (e.g. weak vs. strong, anthropocentric vs.
    ecocentric)
  • Need to integrate and overcome tensions
  • Integrating principles
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