Talk:Sustainability/Description/Archive 1

Proposed Structure

• Overview - may or may not be required as per quantity of content in this section
• Key Principles and Concepts - outline the key principles and concepts of sustianability, environmentalism, progression, evolution, holism, etc
• Sustainable Social Systems - social context description, social justice, community ownership, progressive sustained social systems, include links to relevant main articles
• Sustainable Economic Systems - economic context description, progression of current economic systems, grassroots economics, underground economics, etc, include links to relevant main articles
• Sustainable Resource Use - describe sustainable resource use and ecological contexts, may or may not require subsections, include links to relevant main articles

Water - sustainable water management

Energy - include subjects such as the sun, wind, geothermal, include links to main articles on renewable energy

Matierals - include concepts such as C2C, toxic material separation, sustainable materials, dealing with existing toxins & links to main articles

Description

Content that was here moved back to "measuring sustainability"

Key Principles and Concepts

Outline the key principles and concepts of sustianability, environmentalism, progression, evolution, holism, etc (actually these are under "People and the Environment")

Many of the key principles of sustainability have their roots in the observation of natural ecosystems. Recycling, such as the use of wastes as food, and other forms of interdependence, mean ecosystems can be complex and beautiful while requiring minimal inputs and producing effectively no waste.

At a global level, all life is linked through biogeochemical cycles, most notably those of water, oxygen, carbon, nitrogen and phosphorus. There is now clear scientific evidence that human activity is resulting changes in all of these cycles.

There is also evidence that human activity is having a rapidly escalating and potentially critical impact on the biodiversity of ecosystems, reducing their resilience and their capacity to support humans and life in general.

• GLOBAL GEOCHEMICAL CYCLES CRITICAL FOR LIFE
• 
  Nitrogen Cycle
• 
  Water Cycle
• 
  Carbon Cycle
• 
  Oxygen Cycle
• 
  Phosphorus cycle

It is difficult to know where to begin and end here. I have had a brainstorm with myself and come up with the following list of what seem to me to be important principles etc. I suppose we can tick, add, cross off etc. before putting it into prose, unless we want to keep it as a list. The way I have classified things may be done in a better way.

• Sustainability and ecology

Everything is connected

Ecosystems/biosphere

Natural cycles

Resources, populations and limits to growth

• Sustainability and technology

Reduce-reuse-recycle, decarbonisation, dematerialization and zero waste, resource intensity, resource productivity, soft technology, renewable energy, sustainable design

• Operational concepts

Sustainability measurement

Sustainability measurement is the evidence-based quantitative data used to guide sustainability governance

Sustainability governance(Implementing sustainability)

Sustainability can be studied, measured and implemented at many levels [frameworks, scales] of ecological, social and environmental organization over many scales of space and time.

Sustainability policy is implemented both formally (through the political process) and informally through networks of individuals

Sustainability science (provides the analytic framework)

Sustainable Social Systems

social context description, social justice, community ownership, progressive sustained social systems, include links to relevant main articles

The concept that humans have a place within the natural world has found expression in diverse cultures:

"Take away the centre shoot of the flax plant, and where will the bellbird sing?

What is at the centre of this world? It is people, it is people, it is people."

Maori proverb (New Zealand)

A range of social movements including environmentalism, holism, the green movement and deep ecology seek to reduce human impacts and to restore balance between the priorities of humans, and the protection of the natural world.

Many governments and companies actively promote "more sustainable" choices using the tools of social marketing; engaging individuals as consumers and seeking to point out the individual benefits of "green" choices. Overall, because human impacts are increasing, these efforts are almost certainly insufficient. There is increasing recognition of the need to engage people at the level of their values, rather than simply pointing out the benefits of a specific "green" product or behaviour choice.

Sustainable Economic Systems

economic context description, progression of current economic systems, grassroots economics, underground economics, etc, include links to relevant main articles

Sustainable Resource Use

describe sustainable resource use and ecological contexts, may or may not require subsections, include links to relevant main articles

Water

sustainable water management

Energy

include subjects such as the sun, wind, geothermal, include links to main articles on renewable energy

Matierals

include concepts such as C2C, toxic material separation, sustainable materials, dealing with existing toxins & links to main articles

Mining

sustainable mining? is there such a thing?

Preliminaries

Just thoughts to throw into the arena at this stage: I feel we need to have established by this stage that we are talking about "sustainability" in the sense of the sustainability of the biosphere with the future of humanity as the major concern. In fact, we are talking almost exclusively about human impact on the biosphere (are we not?). Human impact, it seems to me, can be spoken about on many levels. For example - I like Ehrlich and Holdren's start - saying environmental impact = population x affluence x technology. However, this is not very "practical" so other people would take a more obvious approach by discussing human direct impacts on land, water and atmosphere ... logging, mining and such. However, these direct impacts are the result of a long causal chain starting with human consumption, lifestyle etc. For me these are key principles and concepts. Then, although it seems to really annoy a few people, I think there are three key operational concepts: (a) sustainabiity science (or environmental science if you like) providing underlying conceptual analysis (b) sustainability accounting (which is now I imagine by consensus sustainability measurement) as the evidence-based quantitative data used to guide sustainability governance (or implementation of sustainability policy if you like). On the latter it is important to allow for decisions made by individuals (and other agents) independently of the formal political process. There must be a simple way to express this? Anyway - I think we can spend many happy hours and days on this section but it will be a fabulous exercise. Of course a lot of this is already in the existing article.Perhaps I could make an effort to put ideas in point form to gert a scratchpad going (give me a little time). And I'm sure other people might have a completely different take on this. Also it is a major challenge to get "big picture" and "small picture" stuff in some sort of juxtaposition (see the scratchpad thoughts at the top of the page).

I have left out what is probably the most important concept of all - one that sounds so simple and that we all (I'm worst) ignore it all the time. And that is that we manage and conceptualise sustainability on many scales and timeframes. For example in talking about measuring sustainability it makes sense to use the Ecological Footprint as a measure of the global human impact on the planet. But it is surely perfectly valid for me or my council to calculate whether our little bit of the whole is sustainable. It is possible for a subset of an unsustainable whole to be sustainable. Anyway I am explaining (very poorly, it is way past my bedtime) that we need a bit on ecological and biological organisational hierarchies of various types (although this idea is familiar to ecologists and others I suspect the expression is a neologism Skip) ( Granitethighs (talk) 11:08, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

Good thought - but hard to explain and harder to reference. I think of it as a fractal quality of natural and human systems, but the only references I can find for this are specific to, for example, soils, or look a bit too counterculture for me to feel comfortable with. I'll keep looking...--Travelplanner (talk) 09:01, 2 December 2008 (UTC)

Any system, be it a house on a block of land in a big city, or an entire city, or an entire country, or the Earth, rely on a higher system. for example; a typical house gets its materials in its constructuion, water, energy, etc from the greater city system, so in order for a house to be totally sustainable, it must either separate itself from the unsustainable system or the greater system must also become sustainable. For this reason percentage estimates are often used. One example would be, again of a house, in which all the materials used are sustainable, low or zero embodied energy, generates its own electricity and catches its own water... This house could be said to be maybe 75% sustainable, or 90% sustainable. Your not aiming to attain 100%, is if everything is in perfect balance it would be at 100%, but as this never occurs, not even in Indigenous Australian nation's sustainable resource management, you'd always hover around 95-105% and this would fluctuate depending on what you take from and give back to the various systems, biospheres, ecosystems, etc. There are more encompassing and complicated explanations of this obviously, but this is the fundamental idea. Nick carson (talk) 02:13, 4 December 2008 (UTC)

Tackling this section...

We've got to organise the content we currently have into the proposed outline and source content that we don't have. In this section we are explaining/describing the various aspects of how sustainability is applied to various systems (resource management, water management, buildings, social systems, economics, etc). Remember, we're going to be explaining how these concepts, proposed systems and ideas can be applied in the "Application/Implementation" section later on in the article. Nick carson (talk) 01:51, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

Removed a lot of baggage information to pet projects some very iffy by another editor. Sticking with mainstream articles and not connecting multiple articles created by an editor here that are under review as perhaps neologisms or possibly non notable articles is not a good way to create a meaningful article. skip sievert (talk) 17:35, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

Skip, something unrelated to our project but if you look at the Sustain (disambiguation) page you will see about half of the current entries that are currently in WP under Sustainable (Sustainable advertising, Sustainable agriculture etc.). Roughly how many of these would you regard as neologisms and would you explain your answer please? Granitethighs (talk) 10:05, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

No idea... here is an example at random. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sustainability_advertising

Does it have value? Hard to say. skip sievert (talk) 16:20, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

I agree with skip but not in the conventional sense... Pretty much all of these terms are just progressions of their root terms, for example; we should be discussing sustainable forestry within the forestry article as it is a progression of forestry, not something completely different. The exception here is that sustainability is only recently being seriously applied in many of these fields so in the short term at least we can justify the use of separate articles for things like 'sustainable build' and the like. I'd recommend that where possible, we include section in the root articles about their progressions towards sustainability and direct readers to their dedicated 'sustainability X' articles. So in a sense, most if not all of them are neologisms that will inevitably be merged into their root articles as their subject matters progress. Nick carson (talk) 00:19, 14 January 2009 (UTC)

Keeping this particular section or article heading with attendant info

May not be warranted as it is covered currently in Sustainability/Measuring sustainability area of article. It may be important to keep as simple and uncomplicated in presentation as possible. Having a guideline is always a good idea. When it needs amending or rethinking, being open for reasons of flow and presentation is important also. It appears the information currently related to this page is either already in the other section Sustainability/Measuring sustainability or could be. So... it may make sense to get rid of this sub category, or rename Sustainability/Measuring sustainability to something like Describing and measuring sustainability. For that reason it is proposed that this particular sandbox page probably could be deleted, to simplify things and make sure the focus goes to the other page mentioned http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Sustainability/Measuring_sustainability. skip sievert (talk) 16:47, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

Offering for this page

We seem to be at a stage where it is not so much "content" that is a challenge, as "structure". There is a danger of unnecessary repetition, presenting ideas in an illogical way and so on. I think it is worth revisiting our section headings and coming to an agreement about how we tackle what is left. There was general agreement that the "Description" section was the next hurdle and I have proceeded along those lines. The following is an attempt to get the reader into a mind set that will help in reading the rest of the article. I have tried to incorporate the major concepts that people will encounter and give an overall perspective (I've also included a lot of what has been presented on this page) Let me know what you think. If you like it it may be necessary to reconcile current content with this. More key ideas can be added in here and left out elsewhere - anyway, we'll see. Granitethighs (talk) 05:13, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

Page warranted?

It may not be warranted as it is covered currently in Sustainability/Measuring sustainability area of article. It may be important to keep as simple and uncomplicated in presentation as possible. It appears the information currently related to this page is either already in the other section Sustainability/Measuring sustainability or could be. So, it may make sense to get rid of this sub category, or rename Sustainability/Measuring sustainability to something like Describing and measuring sustainability. It is proposed that this particular sandbox page probably could be deleted, to simplify things and make sure the focus goes to the other page mentioned where this material is being covered. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Sustainability/Measuring_sustainability. Also, things like you have listed Grassroots democracy - involving people and communities in understanding problems and developing new solutions ... is probably not really connected or could be interpreted in a lot of ways... so as to be sort of empty sounding or political sounding. Democracy as a concept should probably not be knocked around here... or it seems like sloganeering. Also trying to link things to a page you created which is under question as to notability and sourcing, Sustainability science may not be a good idea.skip sievert (talk) 05:26, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

Key Principles and Concepts

All human activity influences sustainability, which is managed by integrating environmental, social and economic factors and is carried out at many scales of human and environmental organisation. . In most instances management involves the interplay of the three pillars as they relate to the consumption and use of biophysical resources (water, energy, food, materials, biodiversity).

A number of key goals for global sustainability have been isolated:

• Intergenerational equity - providing future generations with the same environmental potential as presently exists
• Decoupling economic growth from environmental deterioration - managing economic growth to be less resource intensive and less polluting
• Integration of all pillars - combining sectors when developing sustainability policies
• Ensuring environmental adaptability and resilience - maintaining and enhancing the adaptive capacity of the environmental system
• Preventing irreversible long-term damage to ecosystems and human health
• Ensuring distributional equity - avoiding unfair or high environmental costs on vulnerable populations
• Accepting global responsibility assuming responsibility for environmental effects that occur outside areas of jurisdiction
• Grassroots democracy - involving people and communities in understanding problems and developing new solutions

The three pillars are used to manage both direct human impacts on land, waterbodies and atmosphere and the indirect impacts of resource use at many scales and in many contexts e.g. sustainable cities, eco-villages, sustainable agriculture, sustainable living and a number of general approaches are now applied at all scales. Traditionally resource use needs have been met by increasing the supply but there is now increasing demand management), and for all goods and services sustainability management can be improved using renewable resources where possible but, if not, by knowing their embodied resources in order to minimise resource intensity while maximising resource productivity over the whole life cycle (see life cycle assessment). This monitoring process will be assisted over ther years to come by increasingly sophisticated methods of sustainability measurement and improved environmentally sensitive technology. Other methods of managing resource consumption are listed below:

• Water - recycling, effficient irrigation, matching water use to sites with sufficient supply; anticipating the effects of climate change.
• Energy - maximising use of renewable resources and minimising use of fossil fuels to become more energy efficient and carbon neutral. ( see decarbonisation)
• Food - minimising resource inputs of industrial agribusiness and maximising local food production through permaculture, urban agriculture and other low-resource methods; low meat and dairy diet (see vegetarianism).
• Materials - managing materials, chemicals and waste to simulate the cyclical processes of nature using such methods as recycling,industrial metabolism, and green design.
• Biodiversity - improved local and international environmental legislation to reduce impacts and protect biodiversity.

Granitethighs (talk) 05:16, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

Comments

This is good work, GT. It flows well from the definition section and exposes the reader to some basic concepts relating to sustainability. I don't follow the argument that this should be combined with the measuring sustainability section (they are both sections in the same article, after all). I think our original thinking, and outline, are taking shape well. Once the reader has assimilated the basic concepts, s/he will be able to grasp the more technical/scientific aspects of measurement. Sunray (talk) 07:15, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

Using abstracted political commentary serves no purpose. Grassroots democracy - involving people and communities in understanding problems and developing new solutions In effect this phrase means nothing... and the rest of the info in the section is so vague as to be meaningless. skip sievert (talk) 18:18, 9 January 2009 (UTC)

One way of looking at this is that unless there is collective action, it will be difficult, if not impossible, to achieve a more sustainable society. Creation of a conservation ethic is one thing that will only occur within groups. Information-sharing is also crucial, as is education. Cooperation on off-grid energy systems means that a community can work together to achieve something that may not be otherwise feasible at the local level. Why grass roots? Because social movements tend to occur at the grassroots level. Why democratic? Equality ensures a fair share for all. Sunray (talk) 07:12, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

Tangling politics into this will not make for an interesting or valid presentation. Politics is run by special interest groups that are seeking money. Money is antithetical to sustainability.. because money seeks to multiply itself by what ever method.

Democracy worked to a certain degree to empower certain special interest groups (Delian League) with wealth, status and prestige. Modern democracies are run by Corporate fascism.

Some Athenians became wealthy through trade and war.

`` In the case of a word like DEMOCRACY, not only is there no agreed definition, but the attempt to make one is resisted from all sides. It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it: consequently the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using the word if it were tied down to any one meaning. Words of this kind are often used in a consciously dishonest way. That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different. -George Orwell, Politics and the English Language - skip sievert (talk) 22:31, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

Grassroots democracy is a well-understood term. It is used by a reliable source. Hak and his colleagues have done a great deal of work on sustainability and sustainable development indicators for the EU. Work on sustainability indicators is important and I think it belongs in this article, if not in this section, in the "Measuring sustainability" section. Perhaps others could comment. Sunray (talk) 20:19, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

It was TP who pointed out that grassroots democracy was an omission and I think she was right. It also provides a link to "small scale" things after all these "large-scale" goals and that is where we are moving in the article now IMO. Granitethighs (talk) 22:38, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Skip, note that many grassroots political movements, activist groups, environmentalists, etc are started by real people who have a vested interest in progressing existing human systems, the only part that money plays in these cases is that of the obstacle to achieving their goals of adequate and timely progression. Such elements like grassroots democracy are essential to mention here as many are intrinsically tied to sustainability as current progressors of humanity. Nick carson (talk) 13:27, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Side bars

Biodiversity & sustainability
Biodiversity Conservation biology Convention on Biological Diversity Extinction Global warming Habitat conservation Millennium Ecosystem Assessment

Energy & sustainability
Decarbonisation Carbon neutral Climate change Carbon sequestration Coal phase out Electric vehicle Energy accounting Low Carbon Communities Plug-in hybrid World energy resources and consumption

Food & sustainability
Agroecology Community gardens Food miles Food security Food waste Guerilla gardening Local food Low carbon diet Permaculture Urban agriculture Slow food Urban gardening Urban horticulture Vegetarianism

Water & sustainability
Desalination Ocean acidification Water crisis Global water cycle Water footprint Water resources

Once we have covered the general principles of sustainability in the early stages of the article there is then the task of including what might be called "small-scale sustainability" which is hugely diverse and topic-dense but extremely important: it is also largely ignored by the sustainable development article. What I mean is the whole host of sustainability programs and practices at more grass-roots level - some that have been around for yonks and athers just beginning. I have worried about how we deal with all this. One approach might be to discuss general ideas in the main text and use side bars to give the reader a taste of some of the many small-scale approaches to sustainability. See the following as a sample of the sort of thing - what do you think? Granitethighs (talk) 08:15, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

I like the idea and I like these sidebars. Not all the links are to phenomena that seem to equate with "small scale" sustainability, but that is a quibble. We can fine tune it as (if) needed. Sunray (talk) 21:47, 10 January 2009 (UTC)

I like the idea, as long as they sit well in the arrangement of the section, as with images, they'll work really well as GT proposes. An alternative spot for them, or any we don't use in sections, would be in the 'see also' section. GT, I'm planning to open a can of worms in the sustainable development portal and try and get them to change the name to 'sustainability portal' and set them on the right path, condesention unintentional. (is condesention even a word?!) Nick carson (talk) 13:21, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

No, but condescension is ;-) Your approach to the portal makes sense. Keep us posted about the results of your initiative there. Sunray (talk) 15:58, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

Nick, sounds good to me - we will have a much stronger case when we have finished this article which wont be long now .... it will need a bit of work but what the hell. By the way I've noticed our "Blue Planet" is sometimes used as a symbol/logo for "environment" type things: it would be good if it can be confined to "Sustainability" associations. I'll look into that. Your idea of side bars in the See also is great - but there is the "Sustainability" bar at the bottom too - anyway we can think about that later.Granitethighs (talk) 21:29, 12 January 2009 (UTC)