Sustainability Opportunities PhD course 2016

What is contained in Sustainable Development ?

Gunilla Almered Olsson Human Ecology Global Studies, GU

Sustainability opportunities PhD course 2016

Outline of this lecture

• Short history of the views of SD

• Sustainable developent reframed approach - from environmental problems to sustainability challenges

• The extended ‘definition’/interpretation of sustainable development along spatial and temporal scales and its relation to development measures

• Strong and weak sustainability

• The five dimensions of sustainability Seghezzo

• Specific challenges of SD in the extended interpretation

• ’Updated’ version of Sustainable development?

Sustainability Opportunities PhD course 2016

Income per capita – global perspective

Global material extraction 1900-2005

Globalized flow of resources

• Global map available on:

Ecological footprints…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:World_map_of_countries_by_ecological_footprint_(2007).svg

…”Measuring human consumption of natural resources (per person,

household, city, nation, of the global population) in terms of productive

land used to produce and absorb these resources:

impacts are linked to the consumption site (not to the site where

negative effects/damages occur through resource extraction/

production…” Wackernagel et al. 2004

The historical context… • Aristoteles – Middle Ages: respect for Nature and Mother Earth

• Newton and the duty to explore – Industrialism and the era of exploitation – Ecological crises, late 1600 century

• Elin Wägner: Väckarklocka The Alarm clock, 1941

• Rachel Carson: Silent Spring 1963

• Carolyn Merchant:

– The death of nature 1980

– Ecological revolutions 1989

• Vandana Shiva: Traditional knowledge

– Mies, M. & Shiva, V. 1993. Ecofeminism.

– Shiva, V.1997. Biopiracy: The plunder of nature and knowledge.

• Power dimension in access & use of naturál resources/Political ecology:

• Escobar, A. 2006. Difference and conflict in the struggle over natural resources. Development 49: 6-13.

• Hornborg, A., McNeill, JR & Martinez-Alier, J. 2007. Rethinking environmental history

International agreements and surveys not complete list…

• Stockholm 1972

• WCED 1987 ’Brundtland report’

• UNCED 1992: UNCBD, UNFCC, UNDC

• Millennium Development Goals 2000 - 2015

• Millennium Ecosystem Assessment 2005

• IPCC reports 2007, 2013, 2014…

• UN – Sustainable Development Goals 2015 - 2030

• IPBES assessments – ongoing -> 2017

Emerging insights on…

• Awareness of ecological crises in the north

• Shortage of natural and biological resources

• Awareness of colonial resource exploitation and opresssion of local cultures in the south

• Awareness of gender issues and its relation to resource exploitation

• The power dimension in resource use and access – and – distribution of resources

• The power dimension in global environmental change

What is contained in Global Environmental Change (GEC)?

Main environmental changes

• Climate change (CC)

• Land use and land cover changes (LU + LUC)

• Pollution – changes in bio-geo-chemical cycles

• Biodiversity changes (BD)

• Sealevel rise

Burning global challenges

Resource conflicts: – Land/Space Water Biodiversity Energy Minerals

• Food, Shelter • Survival, Health, Education and Culture, Wellbeing…

Political – Cultural conflicts

Power issues: – access to resources – distribution of environmental pollution – transboundary environmental problems (e.g. CO2, nuclear

rad., waste) – North-South /developing-developed/ resource flows

Global sustainability challenges

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The concept of sustainable development WCED1987 ´Brundtland’

Environment Economy

Sustainable

urban/rural

development

Governance

value added bio-resources

geo-resources

water resources

land resources

Equity/Social/Cultural

local participation;

democracy; culture;

human rights;

environmental

justice; gender

Why Brundtland made a difference

• Weak conceptual framework– different interests and perspectives were reconciled

• Moved the debate beyond limits to growth by focusing the content of growth

• Extended concept of development

• Included justice (although vague)

Consensus – but about what?

• ”The concept [of sustainable development] – the broad meaning of the term – became widely accepted, but the conception, which includes the principles required to apply a concept, remained (and remains) in profound dispute.”

Strong vs Weak Sustainability

• Weaker: The rate of change of total net capital wealth should not be allowed to be persistently negative. Natural capital can be substituted for human-made capital.

• Stronger: Natural capital is to a greater or lesser extent non-substitutable

Environmental systems provide vital functions

that cannot be replaced by human action

Millennium Ecosystem Assessment –

conceptual framework: biodiversity

and human wellbeing

Dimensions of sustainability

Jerneck et al 2011

Dimensions of responses to sustainability challenges

Jerneck et al. 2011

What are the needs of future generations?

• Technological optimism?

• Principle of precaution?

• Assumptions concerning interests and preferences

Intergenerational equity and Sustainable development

Summers & Smith 2014. The role of social and intergenerational equity in making changes in human well-being sustainable. AMBIO 43: 718 – 728.

• Equity is a pre-requisite for human well-being and for Sustainable development

The five dimensions of sustainability

Seghezzo 2009

Seghezzo 2009

“Space, time, and human aspects are not independent from each other and interact in complex ways.”

Updating SD post -2015 critical themes

– Nature-culture-society. How is this formulated – as a unit or as separate ‘systems’? Social-Ecological Systems or ‘Socio-Natures’ or triangular system of different spheres?

– Growth vs Re-distribution: Expressions of development as growth of what? Or redistribution among regions, groups and individuals?

– Spatial and temporal scales: global-regional-local; present time and business as usual vs historical-present and future generations

– Cultural diversity and e.g. spiritual dimensions – how are they addressed and formulated

The inter-linkage between Biodiversity and Cultural

diversity – TEK, in CBD - article 8j – cited:

• ”…Respect, protect and maintain knowledges, innovations and traditions among indigenous and local communities

• with traditional life styles that are relevant for the conservation

• and the sustainable use of biological diversity, • and encourage a wider application of those, • with consent and participation of the peoples with such • knowledges, innovations and traditions, • and encourage a fair and equitable distribution of the

benefits arising from the use of such knowledges, innovations and traditions.”

What is at stake?

• Equity (Murphy 2012; Summers & Smith 2014)

• Democratic influence in political decisions

• Participation in management of resources, co-management

• Knowledge integration

TEK/ILK and Biological Diversity

TEK, Traditional Ecological Knowledge; ILK, Indigenous and Local knowledge: A cumulative body of knowledge, practice and belief, evolving

by adaptive processes and handed down through generations by cultural transmission, about the relationship of living beings (incl. humans) with another and with their environment (Berkes 2008)

Fikret Berkes. 2008. Sacred ecology

Transdisciplinary knowledge

• NAPTEK, Nationellt program för lokal och traditionell kunskap

relaterad till bevarande och hållbart nyttjande av biologisk mångfald, Naptek, samordnas av Centrum för biologisk mångfald (CBM). Naptek är en del i Sveriges genomförande av konventionen om biologisk mångfald

TEK as scientific tool

• Saami names for lichen – distinguish between different species used as grazing species for reindeer

• Very far from the common Swedish confusion of naming of the lichen species used for Christmas decoration…(’renmossa’)

• Cladonia stellaris Tjoelmehke-burhvie

• Species name : Tjoelmehke

• Habitat : burhvie

Abandon GDP as a measure to human wellbeing

• Indicators for sustainability…

• Ecological footprint

• Other measures of human well-being?

Human wellbeing and economic

growth Inglehart et al. 2008

References – not complete…

Armitage, D., Berkes, F. & Doubleday, N. (eds.) 2007. Adaptive co-management. Collaboration, learning and multi-level governance. UBC Press. Vancouver; Berkes, F. 2008. Sacred ecology. Routledge. London.; Biersak, A. & Greenberg, J.B. (eds). 2006. Re-imagining political ecology. Duke Univ. Press. Durham.;Carson, R. 1963. Silent spring.; Costanza, R. (ed.) 1991. Ecological economics. Columbia Univ. Press.; Crosby, A.W. 1986. Ecological imperialism. The biological expansion of Europe 900-1900. Cambridge University Press.; Davidson, B. 1989. Modern Africa; A social and political history. Longman Group.

Hornborg, A., Clark, B. and Hermele, K. 2012. Ecology and power. Struggles over land and material resources in the past, present and future. Routledge. London.; Hornborg, A., McNeill, J.R. & Martinez-Alier, J. 2007. Rethinking environmental history. World-System History and Global Environmental Change. Altamira Press. Lanham, Plymouth.; Jackson, T. 2011. Prosperity without growth. Economics for a finite planet. Earthscan. London.; Lyttkens, CH 2012. Människan – en ohållbar historia? Möjligheter till en hållbar utveckling ur ett historiskt perspektiv. Göteborg.; Martinez-Alier, J. 2009. Socially sustainable de-growth. Development and Change 40: 1099-1119.; Martinez-Alier, J. in press. Environmental justice and economic de-growth: an alliance between two movements.; Merchant, C. 1980. The death of nature: Women, ecology and the scientific revolution. Harper & Row. San Fransisco ; Merchant, C. 1989. Ecological revolutions. Nature, gender and science in New England. The Univ. North Carolina Press. Chapel Hill.; Mies, M. & Shiva, V. 1993. Ecofeminism. Fernwood Publications, Halifax, Nova Scotia & Zed Books, London.; Odum, E.P. 1969. The strategy of ecosystem development. Science 164: 262-270. ; Peet, R. & Watts, M. (eds.) 2004. Liberation ecologies. Environment, development, social movements. Routledge. London.; Seghezzo, L. 2009. The five dimensions of sustainability. Environmental Politics 18: 539-556.; Shiva, V.1997. Biopiracy: The plunder of nature and knowledge. South End Press. Boston.; Söderqvist. T.1986. The ecologists. From merry naturalists to saviours of the nation. Almqvist & Wiksell. Stockholm.; Sörlin, S.1991. Naturkontraktet. Om natur-umgängets idehistoria. Carlssons. Stockholm. Waltner-Toews, D, Jay, J.J. & Lister, N-M.(eds.) 2008. The ecosystem approach. CUP. NewYork.; Widgren, M. 2012. Landscape reserach in a world of domesticated landscapes: the role of values, theory and concepts. Quaternary International 251: 117-124.; Wägner, E. 1940. Fred med jorden.; Wägner, E. 1941. Väckarklocka.