Assyntk's List: #flsustain

• “most commonly cited definitions refer to the ‘need to improve quality of life for all without depleting the earth’s natural resources’ – pointing to inter-generational equity, legacies for the future and responsibilities to the natural world.”

     

  Dr Alex Ryan, University of Gloucestershire and Professor Geoffrey Samuel, Cardiff  University (Content used in a presentation created for ‘Sustainability and the Humanities: Shaping Culture and Community for a Changing World’ event: sponsored by the university of Cardiff - Available under Creative Commons, Attribution, Non-Commercial Share-a-like licence at the humbox site) (Feb 2012)

• there are three pillars of sustainability - economic viability, environmental protection and social equity
• in a more developed form of the figure, ‘technical feasibility’, ‘political legitimacy’ and ‘institutional capacity’ could also be included
• It is important to recognise that the concepts of ‘environment’ and ‘development’ are used and understood in many ways
• term ‘development’ is also used in several ways
• ‘World’ development in the two different ways that Allen and Thomas (1992) identified as (a) a historical process of change and (b) deliberate efforts by all kinds of organisations and social movements as attempts aimed at progress and improvement.
• Particular site-based infrastructural projects, such as urbanisation, roads and supermarkets, in the sense of new developments or redevelopments.
• One of the biggest indicators of unsustainability is in the misdistribution of wealth. Over a third of the world still live in poverty with limited access to energy, water or food.
• n 2006, a team of scholars with the United Nations University’s World Institute for Development Economics Research
• Personal wealth is distributed so unevenly across the world that the richest 2% of adults own more than 50% of the world’s assets while the poorest half hold only 1% of wealth. The USA consumes 25% of the world’s energy with a share of the world population of 4.5%. The figures for material, water and food consumption between the richest nations and the poorest display a similar level of disparity.
• motivations
• depending on your world view: logic, emotion or instinct
• based around concepts of humanity inherently striving for survival.
• three viewpoints for sustainability
• The Ecologist
• The Environmentalist
• The Economist

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• The Natural Step is a not-for profit organisation that advises institutions and businesses seeking to achieve sustainability. It was founded in 1989 by Swedish scientist Dr Karl-Henrik Robèrt.
• The Natural Step Framework talks about the 4 ‘care instructions for our planet’: reduce our dependence on fossil fuels and heavy metals; reduce our dependence on synthetic chemicals that persist in nature, reduce our destruction of nature and ensure that we are not preventing people from around the world from meeting their needs
• The Natural Step explained in 2 minutes  View the video here (hosted on YouTube) (The video can be found in The ‘Basics of Sustainability’ section

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• In 2013 in the UK, sustainable development and climate change were cut out of the National Curriculum for school children under the age of 14: see this Guardian article for more details.

• To help us with sustainability in the different areas of our lives, a number of models have been developed
• The ‘4C’ model was devised by the University of Plymouth, UK (Jones et al, 2010, p7).
• a holistic model enveloping the curriculum, campus and community within an overarching institutional culture.
• our model has added a 5th C: contribution
• our commitment to ‘improve life for individuals and societies worldwide’, ‘to make a significant global impact’ and to be recognised for ‘signature contributions’ that include sustainability.
• Sara Parkin is a co-founder of Forum for the Future, a UK-based not-for-profit organisation dedicated to working with organisations to develop strategies for sustainability .

• • Resilience – the capacity to bounce back after shocks (eg evolution)

     
   
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    Relationships – which, if good, can help you to be resilient

     
   
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    Reflection – our ability to recognise our learning (and therefore to use it)

     
   
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    Reverence – having respect for the natural world and recognising that we are in a relationship with it. As Parkin says, ‘we are less likely to hurt what we love and revere’.
• put our abilities and attitudes at the heart of the journey towards sustainability
• All of these models are about interconnections
• They try to change our rhetoric (particularly in the western world) from growing our wealth to improving our quality of life:
• Sara Parkin outlines the five capitals model in chapter eight of The Positive Deviant.

• The five capitals are:

     
   
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    Financial: money and financial services, that exist to support the economy, not as ends in themselves.

     
   
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    Manufactured: what we make to support our lifestyles (e.g. roads, bridges) and what we need to make these with (materials).

     
   
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    Social: the relationships that make societies function – families, communities, organisations.

     
   
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    Human: individuals, our knowledge, skills, our contributions.

     
   
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    Natural: the renewable and non-renewable resources of the planet, but also the tools that we have invented to support natural capital

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• UNESCO

• the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED).The commission produced the Brundtland Report in 1987 (named after the Prime Minister of Norway, Gro Harlem Brundtland). The report contains the ‘classic’ definition of 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”.
• n June 2012, politicians and policy-makers met at Rio de Janeiro in Brazil for the UN Conference on Sustainable Development (known as Rio+20 as it took place 20 years
• UNESCO is the lead agent for the UN’s Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (DESD, 2005-2014).

• These do not have to be seen in a hierarchy or set sequence although there is a logical progression in the idea that we move from knowledge to action, from a focus on ourselves to a focus upon ourselves and others within communities. The objectives are used to connect us to the themes of the DESD:

     

  Biodiversity, cultural diversity, peace and human security, sustainable urbanisation, indigenous knowledge, climate change, gender equality, disaster risk reduction, sustainable lifestyles, health promotion.
• United States, the Environmental Protection Agency or EPA
• Its focus is very much on the protection of natural resources and federal ‘stewardship goals’.

• “What is sustainability?

     

  Sustainability is based on a simple principle: everything that we need for our survival and well-being depends, either directly or indirectly, on our natural environment. Sustainability creates and maintains the conditions under which humans and nature can exist in productive harmony, that permit fulfilling the social, economic and other requirements of present and future generations.

     

  Sustainability is important to making sure that we have and will continue to have, the water, materials, and resources to protect human health and our environment.

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• Civil Society is a term used to refer to the spaces and forms beyond government and big business where people choose to join together to take action or to campaign for change
• In the UK, the Department of the Environment, Farming and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) published ‘Mainstreaming sustainable development: The government’s vision and what this means in practice’ PDF download in February 2011.
• ‘sustainable development recognises the interconnections between society, the environment, and economy – and aims to use a holistic approach to find solutions that deliver benefits for all of these whilst minimising negative impacts’
• Scottish Government has a similar commitment to the Welsh Assembly and has published its action plan for meeting the goals of the UN Decade for Education for Sustainable Development.

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• Johan Rockstrom discuss how the science of sustainability centres on the study of biophysical limits and the extent to which human activities are transgressing those constraints.

• 1992 a major event was to shape the future of sustainability and its place on the global development agenda. The Earth Summit – the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development – held in Rio de Janeiro was the largest gathering of heads of government that the world had ever seen.
• From the Earth Summit conventions emerged on climate change and biodiversity
• ‘Agenda 21’, an extensive international agenda for action for sustainable development for the 21st century. Agenda 21 was endorsed by all government delegations present and received a wide range of input and support from NGOs.
• includes social, economic, conservation and resource management dimensions
• calls for radical changes in the way many live their lives
• n 2002 a further summit – the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) – took place in Johannesburg, South Africa.
• WSSD focused more on political and social dimensions of sustainable development and issues of participation, governance and the creation of networks of stakeholders and partnerships.
• changes between 1992 and 2002 was increased evidence of globalisation,

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• There are several factors that seem to us to make the current position different in principle from the past.
• This principle difference is that the scale of human activity on earth is now approaching the same scale as the natural cycles that occur around the globe.
• with the increased scale of human activities comes an increase in associated effects and disparities between rich and poor. For instance a vicious circle relationship has been identified by many between poverty and environmental degradation. Others have stressed the ‘effluence of affluence’ claiming that the underlying cause of environmental degradation is wealth as opposed to poverty (Holmberg, 1991).

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• As with landscape management, policy documents relating to environmental conservation and biodiversity “rarely look back more than 50 years and may ignore the historical context entirely. This has been a lost opportunity for understanding ecological systems. Many natural processes occur over timescales that confound our attempts to understand them, so the vast temporal perspective provided by palaeoecological studies can provide important guidance for nature conservation (Willis & Birks 2006).” (Hodder et al. 2009, 4).
• Oliver Rackham, whose work on the history of Britain’s flora and fauna has highlighted how biodiversity has changed through time, reflecting millennia of human-environment interactions and showing that humans are, and have always been, a force of nature – we are certainly not separate from it.

  • look up Oliver Rakham
• a sharp increase in the number of plants and animals transported around the world by humans

  • seriously u talk of invasive i e non-native species as a key biodiv issue?In the uk? where it can be argued  that ALL species  are introduced
• • since  we are talking  ancient biodiversity in the uk...it was all very empty at a time of glaiation...also why not mention mammoths hippos etc as extinctions and no just bear and lynx!
• also seen many extinctions over the last few thousand years including

  • OMAG the only extinctions mentioned r large mammals!
• extirpated

  • ?//
• At the present time, extinctions are occurring most rapidly in the tropics, yet, even in Britain it is estimated that around six per cent of our species have become extinct during the 20th century.

  • oh now you mention 20% extinction are u sure it was just lynx and bears? Not even a single bird?
• The perception that humans have been responsible, directly or indirectly, for the extinction or extirpation of certain species is leading to growing calls for ‘rewilding’ programmes that seek to recreate a primordial nature untouched by human actions.

  • enter rewilding
• conservation programmes that seek to recreate ecosystems more akin to those that may have existed prior to the advent of farming and intensive human intervention. One of the foremost proponents of this idea is Frans Vera, whose studies of ancient ecosystems, and in particular the role of the extinct aurochs in managing landscape and environment have been very influential.

  • look up fras vera
• Vera has been heavily involved in Oostvaardersplassen, a 6,000ha nature reserve in the Netherlands which has been stocked with red deer and other animal species considered to be the best replacements for the extinct aurochs - Heck Cattle (B. taurus) – and prehistoric horses, eg Konik Ponies (E. caballus).
• The problem with the ‘naturalistic grazing’ practised at Oostvaardersplassen is that there are no predators which must surely be viewed as an equally important part of a functioning ecosystem.
• caution over reintroductions of carnivores, and other locally extirpated species, to Britain is that, although we assume humans are responsible for their demise, at present we are not certain that this was the case.
• The requirements for reintroduction established by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) state that the factors responsible for a species’ extinction must be identified before a reintroduction can be considered.
• the freedom and capacity to adapt

  • i would not see enclosures as freedom and capacity to adapt by majority of people working the land at the time...
• it would seem that for the first time in our history, people’s capacity to change is now denied just at the moment when change is most needed

  • are u insane? wehave more freedo and capacity tan ever!111

• As Keith Kirby (2009, 63) states:

     

  “We do need to be realistic and clear as to what we are seeking from wild landscapes – is it specific species, habitats, or natural processes; is it a feeling of wilderness, or spiritual renewal; is it a new form of recreational experience? They may not all be compatible; they may not all have the same level of support both within the conservation community and the wider public”

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• Local Plans, the national foundation for all planning decisions in the UK, remain founded on Hoskinian principles of the landscape they serve to curate.
• Why are these earlier landscapes less characteristic of the place than the one that happens to currently exist?

  • shifting baseline  me dears  's all
• More controversially, might the future landscape and settlement pattern of Upton resemble none of these, something entirely new, but in and of itself functioning just like all of them, solutions found by the local community to make a living off the land?

  • oh it'd better b!
• An informed landscape historical position would conclude that change is the essence of sustainability and resilience.

  • what i was thinking in wk 1
• fossilisation of any landscape will lead to its inevitable demise and that of its people, however intrinsically pretty or old it may appear.
• • also seems to ignore the fact that the underlying unseen landscape past the building has changed tremendously...the way we farm, what we fm, how many farm the village itself not relevat as now commuter and holidycottage...one may argue tat farmin essentially kept and subsidised to keep the idyllic landscape going for the townies living n countryside
• It was these choices, many radical and ushering in wholesale change, that ensured the past sustainability of the English countryside.

  • ok so far managed to b fairly reasonable but now slding into the idolisation of past sustainable practices cf noble savage. oh dear
• The challenges that the English countryside now faces are just too large to be overcome by sensitively adapting an outmoded landscape structure and sentimentalising about ‘our heritage’. It is time for radical thinking and landscape historians have their part to play in shaping new visions.

  • how radical 
• Village England has not always been village England

  • it was not village england event at the time of writing..nb the mining and industrial landscapes of the north now returnedto village  england look and feel so hard to remeber. also urban pops were prevalent at the time sourban landscapes imp.the whole book seems to me to have been a dillusion even atthe time of writing !!
• 2012 UK National Planning Framework document
• Landscape Historian Richard Jones has stated “this document is a prime case of governmental rhetoric which has no practical basis and is unworkable under the current planning structure”
• And what about climate change? Again we can look at past responses to periods of warming (late Iron Age; early medieval) and cooling (Bronze Age, later medieval and early modern). Our responses will not be the same, but they might valuably be informed by what history teaches.

  • learn from response of landscape to previous warm periods re climate change...hm 
• How about renewable energy? Medieval farmers knew how and where this could be garnered – through watermills and windmills.

  • again with wisdom of the past peoples...
• In Upton itself, however, some of the farmers are returning to medieval principles. The village has its first organic farm (complete with wind turbine) and the community are involved in weeding their crops. Our relationship to produce and the growing of that produce is changing. Community farming is, in places, beginning to replace individual enterprise.

  • seriously...medieveal farming as a response to huge challangesof sutainability...hmmm

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• examine how the landscape and environment can be viewed as documents that chart human behaviour and, as such, can be read to determine how best to plan for the future
• Over the last 60 years scholars within the Arts and Humanities have been able to convey to policy-makers and the general public the idea that the landscape and environment are important and worthy of safeguarding and appreciation.

  • really? Arts and humanities?
• legislation specifically designed to ensure the preservation of elements of past landscapes
• central to the perpetuation of local identities, a vital income stream through the promotion of tourism, and, crucially an essential element in the forging of sustainable futures.
• One man’s vision of England’s landscape entered the public consciousness in the mid-twentieth century and has remained there ever since. That man was W.G. Hoskins, the book The Making of the English Landscape, first published in 1955.
• the national landscape narrative of today.

  • be careful there about national narratives...nazis went there with forests oaks lindens and rocky mountaintops...
• quiet and elegant prose resonated
• landscape
• described as the ‘richest historical record we possess’.
• Hoskins’ Landscape Story
• The making of the English landscape begins to all intents and purposes in the historic period: the prehistoric
• it was the Anglo-Saxons who undertook the clearance of the primeval woodlands that covered lowland England.

  • and not romans oh noes!
• looks for continuities rather than discontinuities — the modern village sits, he muses, on the same site at its Celtic predecessor
• it is both long (in the sense that it extends beyond what is immediately around us
• hort (because it can be encapsulated in the last two millennia
• change, this has been slow and evolutionary (at least before the 18th century), a landscape characterised by stability rather than flux
• a single view can capture landscape history in its totality
• a deeply political work.
• detested modernity
• The future was not bright, the past the final refuge. For the mid-twentieth century conservation lobby, The Making offered a powerful manifesto.
• in 1962 (seven years after the publication of The Making) the Local Authorities (Historic Buildings) Act sought to strengthen provisions for listing buildings of the type Hoskins celebrated
• • they give several examples of planning and protection legislation which are supposed to have stemmed from the book. incl the hedgerow protection in 1997 which I would argue about as this has links with biodiversity and ecosystem services as well and most likely arose from that or combination esp given such time lapse since Hoskins publication..

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