Sustainability History Project

We had a recent assignment this quarter that echoed an assignment from the spring quarter (here) in which students uncovered two peer-reviewed sources to help them formulate interview questions and/or to provide materials for their essay assignment.

Highlights of this work below the fold.

One student found an interesting conflict in the approach of two authors writing about the urban environment:

“Scott Campbell references the age old battle of man vs. nature when discussing the development of a city within an environment. He seems to see what he refers to as ‘The Planner’s Triangle,’ or what we have deemed the three pillars of sustainability, as three elements that are at constant battle with one another. In his argument he states that sustainability is something of a dream, an unattainable utopia that will never come to be because of the continuing battle amongst the very elements it needs to thrive. He insists that humanity’s use of resources that are scarce and our drive to propel ourselves as individuals will certainly negatively impact the environmental and equity aspects of sustainability, effectively leaving the economy a giant in the aftermath and weakening whatever sustainable goals or ideals were initially being pursued.

In contrast, Erica Oberndorfer, et al., promote the concept of a harmonious union of the urban community and the environment. She argues that rather than the relationship between man and nature being one strictly defined by our consumption of it there is a reciprocal relationship that can be formed. She goes on to describe the concept of green roofs. Green roofs are an indicator that such a relationship can exist. Green roofs insulate buildings, add biodiversity to an urban watershed, filter water, absorb carbon, cool the air, and if the soil base is deep enough and the environment and access to the roof allow [and] can even provide food. In this way nature is allowed to remain and the urban community benefits. This example speaks to the harmonious union of the economy and the environment, but does not discuss the role of green roofs with respect to equity.”

To summarize, this student has found scholars with contradictory outlooks regarding the future of cities. Campbell asserts that the three pillars of sustainability are destined to be in conflict with one another, and, eventually, economic considerations will prevail over ecological and equity considerations. Oberndorfer, et al., on the other hand, argue that a productive balance between the three pillars of sustainability is possible, and this balance is apparent in green roofs.

One reason why these authors’ conclusions are contradictory might be that Campbell is arguing from a present-to-the-future point of view, whereas Oberndorfer, et al., apply a past-to-the-present lens. Therefore, Campbell projects into the future patterns that he perceives in the present; Oberndorfer, et al., applies evidence of green roof functioning to show how a specific engineering practice has already proven (to some degree at least) that the relationship between the built and natural environments can change to benefit both positively.

To conduct the kind of analysis that Oberndorfer, et al., provide, one must make use of quantitative data. By tracking, measuring, recording, collating, and otherwise producing and interpreting data, one can evaluate changes over time, test hypotheses, and discover patterns that can then be applied to improve systems. Unfortunately, people don’t always collect the necessary data to evaluate systems. Another student’s readings showcased situations where data is lacking: “Rosenberg, et al., points to the fact that society has ‘a lack of interest in pursuing post audits of major projects’ (Rosenberg 137).” This pattern is quite prevalent, unfortunately, and means that society often does not learn as much as it can from collective past experiences.

In large-scale infrastructure projects, for example, researchers have consistently found that advocates over-estimate returns and under-estimate costs. They call this tendency “optimism bias.” Regarding the source of this bias, some researchers have found that

political-economic explanations best account for the available evidence: planners and promoters deliberately misrepresent costs, benefits, and risks in order to increase the likelihood that it is their projects, and not the competition’s, that gain approval and funding. This results in the “survival of the unfittest,” where often it is not the best projects that are built, but the most misrepresented ones.[1]

Another student makes an observation about the potential results that come from not learning as much as possible from past experiences:

consequences of our actions typically become apparent to humanity after they begin to interfere with our plans and that consequences often begin to interfere only after it is too late to reverse the damage. It’s just hard to accept that until society realizes the gravity of what we are doing to our natural world and attempts to find a balance between economic and ecologic considerations, we are on a slippery slope to disaster.

Two students discuss readings that showing how researchers expand and modify research procedures to generate new kinds of quantitative data. One student found that this data enables researchers to pose and answer (at least provisionally) new questions:

The Top-down theory in which the apex predators of the food web play a large role in species diversity and abundance is a particularly new and unstudied way of looking at ecology of the oceans, but is being documented more often now that apex predator species have begun to dwindle across the world’s oceans.

Understanding these complex systems requires us to continually refine our methods of measuring and making sense of the environmental changes that humans bring about. In a similar vein, another student read a work that discussed

various methods of calculating salmon populations in the Columbia Basin. The study examines land use, land cover, geology, climate and structure of the salmon’s habitat. The study concludes that it is the local condition of these variables in each habitat that relate to the number of salmon redds found in that specific habitat (Feist, 731, 738). Therefore, since each habitat is unique conservation efforts must be specific for each habitat, as extrapolation of the findings of one habitat would not necessarily apply to another.

Collecting data is critical in any attempt to understand dynamic, changing systems, and researchers are constantly refining their techniques to record this data. What do we do with this data and the insights that result? Regarding species preservation, one student asks pressing questions:

It seems unethical to choose the one species’ survival over another. How then do we choose which species to conserve? The one with the most ecological, economic or intrinsic value to humans? Does the species even need to have a value to humans in order to deserve conservation?

When these questions are posed as historical questions, we can provide at least a preliminary answer: Generally, societies have endeavored to protect the more “charismatic,” “useful,” or “iconic” species, such as bald eagles, salmon, and condors.[2]

Just as societies choose to preserve certain species, they also choose sources of energy. Both issues are quite complex. One student is focusing his research on biodiesel as a fuel source for automobiles. In his readings he “learned that there is some controversy surrounding whether biofuel crops are ‘red’ or ‘green’:”

One paper claimed that the calculation of greenhouse gas emissions was underestimated because the people who calculated the formula for biofuels forgot to include land use in their estimate. Clearing the land would result in a huge amount of greenhouse gases being released from the earth. The problem with biofuels seems to be that while they do reduce greenhouse gases, creating the infrastructure for producing biofuel crops seems to release a large amount of green house gases [GHGs] and will keep increasing GHGs instead of reducing them. I think this all relates to the profession of the people I’m going to interview because their work depends on them trying to offer sustainable or green practices. They are trying to produce vehicles that reduce carbon emissions, and they may do so, but the production of a biodiesel vehicle is complex because of the variables associated with the fuel of the vehicle. . . . vegetable oil from other sources becomes more appealing than producing biofuels from scratch unless land use is properly utilized and necessary resource for people who are converting diesel engines to biodiesel.

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[1] For this quote, see Bent Flyvbjerg, “Megaproject Policy and Planning: Problems, Causes, Cures,” Thesis, Aalborg Universitet Institut for Samfundsudvikling og Planlægning, 2007 (accessed July 29, 2010). See also Flyvbjerg, “How Optimism Bias and Strategic Misrepresentation in Early Project Development Undermine Implementation,” Concept rapport nr 17, 2007 (accessed July 29, 2010), and Roger Buehler, Dale Griffin, and Michael Ross, “Exploring the “Planning Fallacy”: Why People Underestimate Their Task Completion Times,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 67:3 (1994), 366-381.

[2] See, for example, Peter S. Alagona, “Biography of a “Feathered Pig”: The California Condor Conservation Controversy,” Journal of the History of Biology 37:3 (Fall 2004), 557-583, Charles F. Broches, “Fish, Politics, and Treaty Rights: Who Protects Salmon Resources in Washington State,” BC Studies 57 (Spring 1983), 86-98, and Mark V. Barrow, Jr., “Science, Sentiment, and the Specter of Extinction: Reconsidering Birds of Prey during America’s Interwar Years,” Environmental History 7:1 (Jan. 2002), 69-97.

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Student Sources

Biofuels

Mark O. Barnett, “Biofuels and Greenhouse Gas Emissions: Green or Red?” Environmental Science & Technology 44:14 (2010), 5330–5331.

Arjun B. Chhetri, K. Chris Watts, and M. Rafiqul Islam, “Waste Cooking Oil as an Alternate Feedstock for Biodiesel Production,” Energies 1 (2008), 3-18.

Green Building

Erica Oberndorfer, et al., “Green Roofs as Urban Ecosystems: Ecological Structures, Functions, and services,” BioScience 57:10 (2007.), .

Scott Campbell, “Green Cities, Growing Cities, Just Cities?: Urban Planning and the Contradictions of Sustainable Development,” Journal of the American Planning Association 62:3 (1996), 296-312.

Hydrology & Hydropower

D. M. Rosenberg, R. A. Bodaly, and P. J. Usher, “Environmental and social impacts of large scale hydroelectric development: who is listening?” Global Environmental Change 5: 2 (1995), 127.

Marios Sophocleous, “The Science and Practice of Environmental Flows and the Role of Hydrogeologists,” Ground Water 45:4 (2007), 393.

Marine Ecosystems

Julia K. Baum and Boris Worm, “Cascading top-down effects on changing oceanic predator abundances,” Journal of animal Ecology 78 (2009), 699-714.

Shijie Zhou, et al., “Ecosystem-based fisheries management requires a change to the selective fishing philosophy,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 107:21 ((2010)), 9485-9489.

Blake E. Feist, E. Ashley Steel, David W. Jensen, and Damon N. D. Sather, “Does the scale of our observational window affect our conclusions about correlations between endangered salmon populations and their habitat?” Landscape Ecology 25:5 (2010), 727-743.

Bryan E. Wright, Susan D. Riemer, Robin F. Brown, Aicha M. Ougzin, and Katherine A. Bucklin, “Assessment of Harbor Seal Predation on Adult Salmonids in a Pacific Northwest Estuary,” Ecological Applications 17: 2 (2007), 338-351.

Public Health

Evangelical Covenant Church, “Haiti Relief Efforts Enter New Phase,” http://www.covchurch.org, July 12, 2010 (accessed July 26, 2010).

Sarika Chawla, “Haiti Disaster relief & volunteer vacations guide,” http://www.petergreenberg.com, n.d. (accessed July 26, 2010).

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