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Sustainability Overview: Global and Island Challenges and Opportunities
Youth Leadership SummitMartha’s Vineyard June 22nd to June 28th, 2013
Alexander Rijiro Frost
Purpose
To build participant’s capacity to
• Understand the value and benefits to moving toward sustainability• Identify and be comfortable with the basic science of sustainability • Cite examples of islands leading the world to advance sustainable
development.
Agenda
1. Introduction
2. Global Overview
3. Sustainability Science
4. Island Leaders in Sustainability• Hawaii, USA
• Island of Wight, England
• El Hierro Island, Spain
• New Zealand and Iceland
5. Conclusion
Introduction – Who am I?
• Former Sustainability & Resource Coordinator for Hawaii County (7 years)
• Peace Corps Philippines• Starting Master’s in Urban
Planning at UH Manoa in Fall 2013
• Finishing up my 20 months pilgrimage - visiting sacred places around the world.
People and Places
Global Overview
Public Awakening…
Seeing the Opportunities – Business…
Walmart’s Goals• To be supplied 100 %
by renewable energy• To create zero waste• To sell products that
sustain our resources and environment
Global Ecological Footprint
Increasing Social/Human Pressure on Earth Systems
(IGBP, 2004)
Overwhelming Ecosystem Services…
Metaphor of the funnel
Decliningresources and ecosystem services
Increasingdemand for resources and ecosystem services
Emerging Sustainability Issues
• Increased operational costs– (energy, waste disposal, infrastructure & building maintenance,
health care, policing, water treatment, insurance, etc…)• Increased demand for social services…• Regulations & compliance costs and challenges… • Reduced air quality…• Reduced water quality…• Health issues…• Deteriorating sense of trust…• Loss of cultural uniqueness…• Growing land use conflicts…• Increasing pressures and extinctions of plant and animal life… • Increased security demands…
Emerging Opportunities
The metaphor of the funnel also suggests that: those who find new ways to provide services and products that meet human needs while reducing their negative impacts and enhancing their positive impacts will be best positioned to succeed.
And if not now, when?
Sustainability Science
What is Sustainability?
Sustainability: Sustainability can be scientifically defined as a dynamic state in which global ecological and social systems are not systematically undermined.
Ensuring that activities do not systematically undermine ecological and social systems is to ensure that the capacity of future generations to meet their needs is not compromised.
Ecological and social systems can be undermined in four basic ways.
United Nations 1987 Brundtland Report - Our Common Future:“Sustainable Development is development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs.”
Cycles of nature
Slow geological cycles (volcano eruptions and weathering)
Slow geological cycles (sedimentation and mineralization)
Closed system with respect to matter1) Nothing disappears2) Everything disperses
Open system with respect to energy
« Photosynthesis pays the bill »
Sustainability is about the ability of
our own human society to continue indefinitely within
these natural cycles
How we influence cycles
Relatively large flows of materials from the Earth’s crust
Introduce persistent compounds foreign to nature
Physically inhibit nature’s ability to run cycles
Barriers to people
meeting their basic needs worldwide
4 Sustainability Principles – An operational definition
...concentrations of substances extracted from the Earth’s crust,
...concentrations of substances produced by society,
...degradation by physical means,
...people are not subject to conditions that systematically undermine their capacity to meet their needs.
In a sustainable society, nature is not subject to systematically increasing...
and, in that society...
Our Sustainability Situation
The problem is not that we mine, harvest and consume resources and use ecosystem services.
It is that our industrial system, as it currently operates, requires the mining, harvesting and consumption of an ever-increasing amount of resources and making ever greater use of ecosystem services.
At some point, we exceed the Earth’s capacity to supply those resources and services, and to absorb the associated wastes.
4 Sustainability Principles – An operational definition
...concentrations of substances extracted from the Earth’s crust,
...concentrations of substances produced by society,
...degradation by physical means,
...people are not subject to conditions that systematically undermine their capacity to meet their needs.
In a sustainable society, nature is not subject to systematically increasing...
and, in that society...
9 human needs
Subsistence Protection Participation
Idleness Affection Understanding
Creativity Identity Freedom
• There is a general belief that humans have all kinds of needs that are constantly changing over time.
• A deeper look, however, reveals that there are really only a few basic needs that all humans, all around the planet, share.
• And what changes is how we satisfy those needs. • In fact, it is how we satisfy those needs that
distinguishes our various cultures
Human Needs
Example of Island Sustainability Challenge:Hawai‘i Island
“Ola Na Moku”“Living Island”
Ho’owaiwai is a Hawaiian word meaning “to enrich”.
In old Hawai‘i it was everyone’s responsibility to take care of the water. Those with a sufficient supply of wai (water) were considered “wealthy.”
Learning from the Past
Island Sustainability Challenge
68% Electricit
y
99.9%
Fuel (transportatio
n)
76% Materia
ls
85%Food
Fossil Fuel Dependence
*Source: IH Green Economy Report
Import Economy = Not Self-Sufficient
Challenges for Sustainability in Hawai‘i & Islands in General
• Little local energy production• Waste management• Little food security• Little economic diversification• Creating transit infrastructure that gets people out of
their cars and enhances mobility• Mainstreaming sustainability and overcoming resistance• Siloed approach by government to funding and address
of sustainability related challenges noted above• Depletion of biodiversity
Opportunities for Sustainability in Hawai‘i
• Creating local energy self sufficiency• Creating local food security and diversity of food
sources / crops• Learning from the kupuna• Leveraging the creativity, passion and intelligence of
Hawai‘ian people to further the sustainability agenda• Growing awareness of sustainability and related
challenges and opportunities• Take advantage of the economic downturn• Creating a larger green job market• Great grassroots support and motivation• Becoming a world leader in island sustainability
Renewable Island
Examples of Island Leaders in Sustainability
Isle of Wight, England
El Hierro, Canary Island, Spain
New Zealand
Iceland
Three Ideas to Explore
Conclusion
1
Live Energy Light
2
Support Local & Eat Fresh
3What is my gift &
purpose?
Learn & Engage!
Who am I?
What does it mean to be a human?
How do we evolve?
Thank you
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