Sustainability connotes the possibility of a ‘system’ or ‘design’ to continue into the future when it works harmoniously with the environment, social, and economic factors. Is that Utopian thinking? For instances, in sustainable buildings design, the designers could and have to initiate a dialogue with the natural forces: sun, wind, water, land (soil), materials, and other resources available, renewable and non-renewable. The original theoretical premise of ‘Sustainability’ was to afford the needs of the ‘present’ without compromising ‘future’ generations’ ability to meet their needs, ALL WITHIN AVAILABLE RESOURCES. Considering the rapid changes in lifestyle and comfort notions, thanks to modern developments and connectivity, how many of our readily afforded resources in the environment are really renewable or how finite they are? That said, is the concept of ‘Sustainability’ or ‘Sustainable Design’ unsustainable, ambiguous or a theoretical illusion? If yes, can Regenerative or Net Positive Energy, Energy + design paradigms ameliorate the jinx, and how?
Well, if we consider that way, all of the environment, social, and economic factors would have value, good or otherwise.
What a good question! The answer hinges on your definitions.
Lets assume you are talking about a building (but any other flavour of Sustainable Design runs into the same issues). It has a defined site plan, and a limited disturbed area. What are the resources that are available to you? Just what is on the disturbed area? If the building is Green, but everyone drives 2-stroke cars to get to work, does it matter? What time scale are you talking about? 40 years, to the first major refit, or 200 years until the site has been completely redeveloped? Definitions matter.
The way I understand Sustainability is that it only has meaning at a community scale. Humans, business, buildings, etc are all too ephemeral to be able to be considered 'Sustainable' in and of themselves. The best that can be considered at a scale smaller than 'Community' would be to demonstrate that we are not making it harder for the community to be sustainable. That means using renewable resources that the community cares for and is obligated to at a rate less than they are regenerating, or using non-renewable resources at a rate that will approach asymptotically toward 0 over a reasonable time scale (eg, long enough to wean ourselves from it). It also means meeting needs that have been identified by the community - if it doesn't meet the priorities of the community, it may be 'Development' without necessarily being 'Sustainable Development'.
So, yeah, it is entirely possible that we can apply the concepts of Green Building, or Net Zero, or Regenerative design, and still end up with unsustainable communities.
The concept of Sustainable Development is sufficiently clear, but we (specialists) operate in silos, and no silo in isolation can lead to Sustainability. Start with asking about needs. Ian Gough has an excellent understanding of Needs, with the most fundamental need to be able to function as part of a community.
When you are researching the concepts, be sure to involve people who can provide as wide a spectrum of understanding are possible. Maybe ask a sociologist what are the needs of the community that a building can help satisfy? Ask grandmothers, and children; rich and poor. Ask medical professionals and ditch diggers, and so on. And then begin the design process, knowing what the problems really are - not just those coming from the architect's and engineer's perspective.
When you do your life-cycle analysis, divide the resources and ecological services into 4 categories:
#2 and #4 can be used without doing additional math. #3 you have to find a way to substitute with something else (generally through a re-design). An example might be fossil fuels - so design your building to not need fossil fuels at all. #1 you have to find a substitute for as well - but there may be complications, as the ecological niche gets changed/lost. The redesign here may be to find a way to ensure those services/resources are available in perpetuity, even if that means going out of one's way to enhance it. An example there might be groundwater - you've gone to water reuse, conservation, rainwater harvesting, and still you need a groundwater source. So work with a partner to ensure groundwater recharge is sufficient to always provide.
It requires working with the community - all Sustainable Solutions have the potential of being unique to each community, If the community hasn't said how they intend to manage the resources and ecological services over the lifespan of your building, then help them figure that out. You can't be sustainable in isolation of the community.
Really - a very good question. I'm stopping there - the answer could keep going for a while.
Thank you Ghada M.Ismael Kamoona
and Douglas Nuttall for your insightful comments. The original theory and the known or general parameters of 'Sustainability' as we know it today including environment, social and economic does require a long term strategy as Prof.Ghada M.Ismael Kamoona
rightly puts it. Douglas Nuttall comparative observation and analysis with an 'Ecological Niche' that has a set of limited action possibilities or Affordances is most appropriate. The set of affordances or sustainability features has an expiry date and the niche is specific to certain animals and type of action perform or actors involved. That, however, begs a question: "Is the term 'Sustainability' ambiguous or generic and is the original poetic theory or notion of the word being slowly replaced by more specific concepts, viz-a-viz: Regenerative design, Net Zero Building, Net Energy +, Passive, etc. Alternatively, can these new terms be just apart of the sustainability we are talking about? ThanksGhada M.Ismael Kamoona
and Douglas Nuttall
None of those concepts replace sustainability. In the absence of knowing what the goals and the boundary of needs the community chooses, none of those things will contribute meaningfully to sustainability. Once the community has established their 'just space', the designer can use the appropriate methods for achieving them.
It's not that the term isn't relavent, it's that the communities have not made the hard choices of what that 'just' boundary should be. We're still addicted to growth, and we don't want to think about something else.
Yes I agree! 'Growth' and the so called 'Development' is an addiction, and in some countries it becomes a political mandate or imperatives for any political parties who wants a bright and prosperous political career. Often, the environment and social concerns are neglected in favor of unsustain growth. These, ironically, have little to do with quality of life, social equity, or being ecological.
Growth is a means to hide bad management - if corruption or ignorance is absorbing 1% of GNP, then it's almost invisible at 10% annual growth, and it's glaringly obvious at 0% growth. If one is looking at Sustainability piece-meal, then one can argue that economic growth is good, and ignore the rest. And democracies require growth for stability - we would always vote for the liar that promises 2% growth over the honest person promising 2% contraction (and then complain we got what we knew we asked for).
The holistic approach would see that improving quality of life is good, and in so doing, it is entirely possible economic growth will occur. But that means economic growth becomes the side effect, not the cause, of development (development being the process of enhancing quality of life of the community)..
One has to work very hard to get to one’s goals in life. How much harder does to work to sustain these goals if they ever in fact are achieved.
Ales, you're right that we're actively trying to improve quality of life, or 'personal fitness', if you please. But that doesn't mean that the system is economic in nature. I would argue that the significance of the economic component of human wellbeing is vastly overblown.
Before I get to the data, I'm going to provide a couple of definitions. From Manfred Max Neef - he says quality of life comes from how we meet needs. From Ian Gough, the most basic need is to participate effectively in one's community. So the study of human wellbeing comes down to efficiently and effectively people are able to participate on one's community. The simplest method to do that is to measure the time used at activities expected to meet needs.
For example, using data from the 2005 Canadian GSS Time Use study, one can find:
Average time use by adults at paid employment that is expected to meet needs = 99 minutes/day/ca
Average time use by adults at paid employment = 211 minutes/day/ca
Average time use by adults in mobility related to paid employment = 21 min/d/ca
Average time use by adults at unpaid activities expected to meet the needs of others = 326 min/d/ca
Average time use by adults at unpaid activities expected to meet the needs of one's self = 594 min/d/ca
So, the paid economy, which is the whole of the economy that is understood using GNP and similar methods, amounts to a tiny fraction for the wellbeing of others (99 vs 326) and even less when considering our own wellbeing as well (326+594). If all one is considering is the GNP, one is operating close to blindly. Which is why, for example, that quality of life in North America has been pretty flat for the last 50 years, even though the economy has grown substantially (in both relative and absolute terms).
Either the concept of 'the economy' must be vastly expanded to include all activities that contribute to wellbeing, or the whole thing needs to be ignored while we are solving the real problems, and bring it in only at the end, when we are figuring out how to pay for it.
Douglas Nuttall I have to agree with you on the economic parameter. Economy, or GDP or GNP is more often merely statistics. It is not a reflection of quality of life, nor happiness. Case in point, if you look at the Largest economies by nominal GDP in 2018, it shows in sequence: US, China, Japan, Germany, UK, France. Quality of life or actual happiness in China cannot and is not better Japan, Germany, or the UK. Similarly, India would be much higher than happiest and healthiest countries like Finland, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, etc. And, according to my humble opinion, Aleš Kralj premise that all of the environment, social, and economic factors are fundamentally economic factors could be true in certain cases, but not all. But, all of the environment, social, and economic factors may inevitably interlinked, somehow, somewhere. I admit It's possible in the contexts of modern development and peoples' needs and notions on comfort and modern lifestyles, even if for worse if not better!
Well, if we consider that way, all of the environment, social, and economic factors would have value, good or otherwise.
According to Prof. Philip Stott " The unsustainability of sustainability" is based on:
Today, 'sustainable development' is an omnipresent, politically correct, palliative phrase with beautiful sound for inexorable and inevitable global change. It has been placed on a plate adorned as a placebo for eco-chondriacs around the world. It hides the fact that ecological and economic changes are the norm and not the exception; that balance solutions are impossible goals; and that we inhabit a very disturbed world, not in balance, where volcanoes erupt, earthquakes happen, tsunamis flood, seas rise (and fall), and the climate changes, under human or natural influence.
Theoretically, however, sustainability turns against reality. We are learning, from anthropology, via physics, to zoology, that the world does not function in equilibrium, but does so in very chaotic and unbalanced principles, whether with respect to the stock market or in climate change. Indeed, 'sustainability' is intrinsically a balanced idea that seeks balanced solutions. It is very easily used to soften the fact of change and, in doing so, scorns and minimizes human dynamism, creativity, adaptability, not to mention the natural harshness of the world.
This is particularly exposed in the much touted concept of a "sustainable climate", the most grotesque of the absurdities. The idea that climate can be managed in a predictable way by manipulating only one factor, carbon dioxide, among several thousand other factors involved, remains an 'Alice in Wonderland' science, where the verdict comes before the trial. This is the ad extremis misconception: the stupid human arrogance of wanting to maintain a 'sustainable climate' - a 'stable climate' - very vividly demonstrates the false illusion of the myth of 'sustainability'.
sustainability" is an unreal, and potentially dangerous, concept. It has become part of a hegemonic language of an insidious new Great Narrative that strives to fill the authoritarian vacuum left by the bitter collapse of Communism and Marxism. It is none other than Old Socialism ... entering through the kitchen.
Ultimately, however, we need stronger, more flexible and growing economies, coupled with a political will to help the poorest, those most afflicted by unpredictable and inexorable changes. In addition, we should strive for diversity in energy production, not because of climate, but because diversity is the key to flexibility.
It is time, once again, for real development to become more 'sexy' than the 'environment' designed by the greens of Northern NGOs, for the compulsory use of the poor of the Southern Hemisphere.
it seems to me that it is a quite extreme position, and as any extreme should be carefully taken into account
Pablo - that is a great explanation, and I couldn't agree more that SD has been served up as a placebo. But that doesn't mean that SD is in fact an oxymoron, but rather that we use it oxymoronically because everyone wants to claim they are on the side of the angels (particularly when they aren't).
Your explanation misses one important component of dynamic systems - they aren't static. No attempt at making a static system will work, as you rightly point out - the world is unbalanced, and locking it into any one condition will lead immediately to collapse. Sustainability is not about making a static system, it is about creating one that is in dynamic equilibrium. It's like a river - it will move, with a bit of erosion here, and a bit of deposition there, and the flows will always be changing, and the resident species will change, but the river will be there. Same with sustainable communities - they will adapt, evolve, and may fall to some form of succession. But not because we should have known better and failed to act prudently.
If we can have foresight, we have to use it. We can't rely only on the last 200 years of history to guess how the next 200 years is going to go. We can see that fossil carbon will reach a peak production in a foreseeable future. We can see that peak energy production (at least the existing technologies) will occur in a foreseeable future. If we don't have economies that are independent of fossil carbon in the next 25 years, or economies that can grow independently of energy production in the next 45 years, then we are all in for a very rough ride.
The purpose of a growing economy is to enhance well being of the community, yes? Rising tide floats all boats, and all that? Then let's focus directly on that well-being, and make that happen.
Douglas Nuttall and Pablo Baisotti , thank you for the wonderful insights. While SD may seem like a placebo or an oxymoron term at times, the theory does account for the actors, social or human responsiveness. In fact, James Gibson covered that mutually responsive interrelationship between the ecology, enviromeant and the actors: animals and humans in his seminal studies on The theory of affordance. A niche can't exist without mutual affordances. "The natural environment offers many ways of life, and different animals have different ways of life. The niche implies a kind of animal, and the animal implies a kind of niche. Note the complementarity of the two. In architecture a niche is a place that is suitable for a piece of statuary, a place into which the object fits. In ecology a niche is a setting of environmental features that are suitable for an animal, into which it fits metaphorically." (Gibson, J., 1977; 1979).
Direct affordance by Gibson (1977), refers to all action possibilities depending on users’ physical capabilities. However, in human-computer interaction (HCI) expert Don Norman’s 1988 book, The Design of Everyday Things, affordances became defined as an indirect, perceive action possibilities. So, in the context of SD the possibity of its being an ornamental placebo or its being an oxymoron theory can be accounted for as a mutual complementary relationship between the actors and the environment: social and environment. These Theoriesand approaches could be prescient, per my understanding and observation.
My head is spinning, this i ery interesting conversation. I agree with parts of my antentversaions. W eed a a society to respect the envrnment, the lyers that drive the fores for and against sstaniabiliy and the instrinstrinic values that drive the sustanibilimodel. From a farming backrondupet is aninteresting possibility. P@b makes a great point aoutb extremismablo Baisotti. Douglas Nuttall also makes an important pointthat SD needs to be treated seriously. Don't ll the messenger, but there are a lot of either tongue in cheek or silly comparisons being made. The environment is suffering because of our selfishness. I do not know the answer, it is not simple or possible without global cooperation, but we should be fighting alot harder than we have been.
bridigi diot savant
Nice contribution from Pablo Baisotti. I learned from it. Thank you.
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