Transcript Slide 1

Building resilience
A whole systems approach to
sustainable development
Matt Cullinan
TAU Breakfast Session
9th September 2010
The problem
• Average economic growth tends to benefit the rich 120x more than it
benefits the poor.
• The amount of growth needed to benefit the poor (in terms of present
rates of trickle down) is environmentally unsustainable – we do not have
the resources to support it.
• Growth has led to a major resource crisis – most significantly, the likely
end of oil – in our lifetimes.
• Clear indications of climate change, water depletion and food insecurities.
• If we all consumed resources at the level of Europe and American
countries we would need (at least) 2.1 x planet earths to sustain us.
• We following this model to benefit the marginalised in South Africa and
Africa – but we are going to hit the same limits (even if we have not
contributed to the problem).
• We are collectively seeing the loss of resilience, adaptability and
functioning of our systems – the old ways of doing things are no longer
going to take us forward.
The everyday problem
We are facing the limits to conventional growth and
hitting the funnel
Where are we and when
will we hit the limit?
Not “if” but “when”
• It is not about if an environmental crisis can be
avoided - it is a question of how big and bad it’s
going to be
• What systems are in place to manage and
mitigate its impact?
• How are we responding?
• Our responses are more often ad hoc and
piecemeal – but we cannot solve our
environmental crisis with the thinking that got us
there in the first place
It is about systems
• We need to tackle the problems confronting us in a
systemic manner
• Tackling the challenges can also be an opportunity to
tackle inequality, social injustice, and so forth
• We need coherent, holistic visions
– There is a role for utopias – an imagined future of an ideal
post-carbon age
– Thomas Berry the Geologian has suggested an Ecozoic Era
• One of the guiding principles must be resilience
• Resilience is about creating complex adaptive systems
at all levels which operate in an integrated manner
The sustainability complex
National Policies
and Programmes
(e.g. Energy policy,
fiscal policy, PoA,
PME, NPC , NSDP,
Eco Dev policy –
but also NEMA
and legislation)
Global Norms,
Conventions, Protocols
and Agreements (e.g.
Kyoto protocol, Global
Campaign on Good Urban
Governance)
Global
National/State
Region/Province
Plans, Initiatives and Strategies
(Electricity incentives, Sustainable
Building Codes, Urban form,
transport technology, etc.)
City
Community/
Neighbourhood
Household
Water saving devices,
recycling programmes,
energy saving techniques
and technologies,
transport choices,
lifestyle choices
Provincial/Regional
Strategies (Trade
incentives and
promotion, PSDF)
Initiatives and projects
(recycling, education,
tree planting)
Individual
Lifestyle choices (products consumed, methods
of using products and resources, choice of
living environment, travel modes, etc.)
The sustainability complex
Global
National/State
Region/Province
City
Increasing degree of
personal control and
impact in terms of
lifestyle, consumption
and production changes
and choices
Community/
Neighbourhood
Household
Individual
As one moves up the
triangle, the effectiveness
of action at each level is
affected by the degree of
supporting environment
and action in the level
above
“We might declare our neighbourhood nuclearfree, but unless we are simultaneously
working, at the international level, for the
abandonment of nuclear weapons, we can do
nothing to prevent ourselves and everyone
else from being threatened by people who are
not as nice as we are. We would deprive
ourselves, in other words, of the power of
restraint”
Monbiot (2004), p 13
What is the significance of the city?
The City is the fulcrum between policy and
enabling action. It is the level at which systems of
delivery can be influenced and manipulated to
ensure self-interest is aligned with societal good
Global
National/State
Region/Province
City
CITY LEVEL INTERVENTION IS KEY
Increasing degree of
personal control and
impact in terms of
lifestyle, consumption
and production changes
and choices
Community/
Neighbourhood
Household
Individual
As one moves up the
triangle, the effectiveness
of action at each level is
affected by the degree of
supporting environment
and action in the level
above
Rough division between policy level and
physical action/implementation level
Factors influencing ability to become
sustainable
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Environmental damage
Climate change
Hostile neighbours
Friendly trade partners
Society’s response to its environmental
problems
“ to see ahead a situation in which the shortage
of certain key raw materials and commodities,
which are necessary to maintain existing
patterns of production and existing high levels
of consumption, will create such tension
within societies which have got used to these
patterns that they could in majority be
prepared to resort to every kind of pressure –
not only political and sub-military, but openly
military – to assure what they see as the
supplies necessary to the maintenance of their
order of life. This is already a dangerous
current of opinion in the United States”
Raymond Williams, 1982
“There is the tragedy. Each man is locked in a
system that compels him to increase his herd
without limit – in a world that is limited. Ruin
is the destination toward which all men rush,
each pursuing his own best interest in a
society that believes in the freedom of the
commons. Freedom in a commons brings ruin
to all.”
Gareth Hardin, Tragedy of the Commons, 1968
E.G.More is less
• Car is the promise of freedom – the open
road, a to b with ease, life is a breeze
• If I run a gas guzzling 4X$ I get the full
value and utility in terms of ego-boost and
use of car, but only suffer a marginal
penalty in terms of increased pollution
and congestion. If I change to public
transport – I make such a small difference
its not noticeable AND I have the schlep.
• Unlimited freedom and system designed
to support and enable growth has resulted
in the reverse.
– No incentive or benefits for those who live
sustainably, and
– (ironically) congestion, frustration and a
limitation of freedom for car users
• We need policies, controls and incentives
to manage this phenomenon
Picture: IUCN stand at WSSD
Food Security – greatest challenge for
the post-carbon age
• At the beginning of 2009, the World Bank reported that between 2005 and
2008 the incidence of poverty increased in East Asia, the Middle East,
South Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa largely because of higher food prices
• The number the Bank classifies as extremely poor—people living on less
than $1.25 a day—increased by at least 130 million. The Bank observed
that "higher food prices during 2008 may have increased the number of
children suffering permanent cognitive and physical injury caused by
malnutrition by 44 million.“
• The number of hungry is climbing. The long-term decline in the number of
hungry and malnourished that characterized the last half of the twentieth
century was reversed in the mid-1990s—rising from 825 million to roughly
850 million in 2000 and to over 1 billion in 2009. A number of factors
contributed to this, but none more important than the massive diversion
of grain to fuel ethanol distilleries in the United States. The U.S. grain used
to produce fuel for cars in 2009 would feed 340 million people for one
year
Food security – big challenges
• OIL: The US food system consumes (through oil) ten
times more energy than it produces. As fossil fuel
production declines (and costs increase) there will be
less available for food production
• WATER: Ground water extraction exceeds
replenishment in most parts of the world by a factor of
almost 100
• PRACTISE: Use of genetically modified crops,
abandonment of rotation crop systems, destruction of
soil quality through inorganic fertilizers means that
crops increasingly prone to more pests infestations and
impact of climatic variation (less resilience)
Food security – eating oil
• It takes about 1500 litres of oil to feed each
American annually
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31% = fertilizer
19% = farm equipment
16% = crops to market
13% = irrigation
8% = livestock (next seasons food production)
5% - crop drying
5% = pesticide manufacture
8% = miscellaneous
Food Security – the case of Cuba
• When the Soviet Union collapsed, it left Cuba
without an oil supplier – US sanctions kept it that
way
• Cuba already had a high % of scientists – already
had regional research institutes, training centres
and extension services in place when crises hit
• Today they have reached oil based levels of
productivity – by building resilience
• “The Cuban miracle is the product of a people
with vision and solidarity” Pfeiffer, p57
Cuban success
• Low-impact, self reliant farming (smaller farms with direct control
by farmers)
• Inter-cropping and manuring
• Biopesticides (microbes and natural enemies)
• Biofertilizers (earthworms, compost, natural rock phosphate, animal
and green manure and grazing animals)
• Animals replaced tractors
• Land reform led to smaller cooperatives with direct incentives and
support services
• Urban agriculture
• System of markets
• THEY BUILT A RESILIENT (ADAPTABLE AND DIVERSE) SYSTEM
Challenge = Opportunity
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Most importantly we need to start debating what these things mean and how they
could look and work in a systematic manner
We need to consider a vision for a future post-carbon age around which we can
galvanise personal, household, neighbourhood, city, government and even
international activity. These are the conversations we should be having.
The solutions are there – but we need to create the systems within which they
hang together (although the last piece in the puzzle may be
ethical/cultural/religious).
Getting to an Ecozoic Era can be about creating a better world – different, but
perhaps better in a personal, political, social and economic sense (a postconsumerist world)
It need not be about sacrifice – it could be about achieving other things as well
What about TAU? Could we make TAU the first Carbon Neutral government
agency? It’s not difficult, but we’d all have to play our role
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Plant a few trees every year
Car pool, public transport
Have a teleconference whenever we can avoid flying
Encourage the conversations