Visions of Sustainability: Cities and Regions

Visions of Sustainability

The destructive environmental impact of exorbitant levels of resource consumption, pollution and waste production, specifically in developed countries and cities, is an area of rapidly increasing concern. Efforts to find ways to generate sustainable development have intensified, with scores of research programmes and professional teams searching for viable approaches to, and strategies for, sustainable development. Political institutions, too, are in the process of developing indicators of sustainable development. This new book examines the sustainability of cities and regions and concludes that currently sustainability is not achievable. By identifying how cities and regions in the past have maintained or lost sustainability and how cities and regions of today might achieve sustainability in the future, it • • •

gives a clear definition of sustainability, and an understanding of its true meaning provides a new conceptual framework for the assessment of the sustainability of cities and regions identifies research that will allow the systematic establishment of the appropriate indicators for sustainable development in cities and regions.

Drawing on ideas from the study of complex systems, the authors have developed a framework to guide and direct much needed new research in the measures needed to achieve and maintain sustainability. The book will be of considerable help to local authorities and political and government bodies responsible for establishing guidelines for the planning and monitoring of sustainable urban development. It will be of fundamental interest to ecologists, environmentalists, geographers, regional planners and urban designers, both in private practice and academia. Hildebrand Frey is a retired senior lecturer in the Department of Architecture at Strathclyde University. He was the founder and Director of the Urban Design Studies Unit and the postgraduate urban design course. Paul Yaneske is currently senior lecturer in the Department of Architecture at Strathclyde University. He has been a partner in an environmental design practice, Associate Dean of the Faculty of Engineering and founding director of a research Unit dedicated to sustainability and environmental management.

Visions of Sustainability Cities and regions

Hildebrand Frey and Paul Yaneske

First published 2007 by Taylor & Francis 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Taylor & Francis Inc, 270 Madison Avenue, New York, NY10016 Taylor & Francis is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2007 Hildebrand Frey and Paul Yaneske

This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2007. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Every effort has been made to ensure that the advice and information in this book is true and accurate at the time of going to press. However, neither the publisher nor the authors can accept any legal responsibility or liability for any errors or omissions that may be made. In the case of drug administration, any medical procedure or the use of technical equipment mentioned within this book, you are strongly advised to consult the manufacturer’s guidelines. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Frey, Hildebrand, 1940Visions of sustainability : cities and regions / Hildebrand Frey and Paul Yaneske. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-415-42647-3 (hardback : alk. paper) -- ISBN 978-0-415-42648-0 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Economic development--Environmental aspects. 2. Environmental policy--International cooperation. 3. Cities and towns-Environmental conditions. 4. Regional planning--Environmental aspects. 5. Sustainable development--Moral and ethical aspects. I. Yaneske, Paul. II. Title. III. Title: Cities and regions. HD75.6.F735 2008 338.9'27091732--dc22 2007018397

ISBN 0-203-93492-X Master e-book ISBN ISBN-10: 0–415–42647–2 (hbk) ISBN-10: 0–415–42648–0 (pbk) ISBN-10: 0–203–93492–X (ebk) ISBN-13: 978–0–415–42647–3 (hbk) ISBN-13: 978–0–415–42648–0 (pbk) IBSN-13: 978–0–203–93492–0 (ebk)

Contents

List of illustrations About the authors Preface Acknowledgement List of abbreviations

vi vii viii x xi

PART I

The quest for sustainable development 1 2 3 4 5

United Nations frameworks for sustainable development The EU debate on sustainable development The UK guidance to achieve sustainable development Best-practice case studies Conclusions

1 3 34 40 47 55

PART II

A scientific foundation for sustainable development

59

Science, complexity and sustainability Settlements and cities in history that correspond to Types 0, 1 and 2 of sustainability Challenges to sustainability Availability and choice of options

61 79 95 111

Index

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6 7 8 9

Illustrations

Figures 6.1

Illustrative examples of network configurations that are (a) starlike, (b) chainlike and (c) something in between

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Tables 1.1 6.1

7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4 9.1

Sustainable development: the key aspects An interpretation of the four states of sustainability in terms of their fundamental differentiating features and organisational frameworks Population growth in Europe between 1000 and 1350 AD The ecological footprint of Scottish cities The ecological footprint of other places Breakdown of the components of the ecological footprint of Scottish cities Land categories/uses of global land area

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76 83 88 88 88 113

About the authors

Hildebrand Frey is a retired Senior Lecturer in the Department of Architecture, University of Strathclyde. He came to the department from architectural, urban design and urban planning practice in Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Australia and the United States. He was the founder and Director of the Urban Design Studies Unit and the postgraduate urban design course at the department. For many years he investigated the morphology of cities and city regions, their macro- and micro-structure, their land-use patterns, infrastructure and transport networks as well as the socio-economic profiles and environmental conditions and methods of stakeholder and community involvement in urban planning and design. He is author of many publications focusing on the link between research and research application and has studied the challenges of sustainable urban development and form for many years. He is currently co-investigator of the City Form (Sustainable Urban Form) Consortium, financed by EPSRC, and responsible for the search for ways in which (sub)urban neighbourhood areas can be transformed into sustainable communities. While dealing with issues of sustainability, he became convinced that the usual interpretation was far too narrow and needed a scientific approach. This, and very fruitful discussions with Dr Yaneske in the same department gave rise to the writing of this book. Paul Yaneske is Senior Lecturer in Building Technology and Environment within the Department of Architecture at Strathclyde University in Glasgow. He originally graduated in physics and mathematics, followed by a doctorate in civil engineering. He has variously been a partner in an environmental design practice, a university company director, an Associate Dean of the Faculty of Engineering, and founding director of a research unit dedicated to sustainability and environmental management. His commitment to seeing research carried through into practice resulted in the unit having a substantial track record in turning research ideas directly into commercial products and in a successful university spin-off company. Involvement in the environmental management of the built environment led to an interest in the sustainable design of cities and, recently, a growing interest in the particular problems associated with providing accessible environments for those who have moderate to very severe visual disability. He hopes to find his way about for some time to come.

Preface

There is no doubt that sustainability is a complex issue in general and that the sustainability of cities is a complex problem of particular urgency in today’s world. This book came about because we decided to explore the challenge of complexity head-on. Sustainability is usually described as being composed of a balance between environmental, social and economic concerns, all of which involve complex systems. In fact, we are all surrounded by and are part of complex systems even if we cannot yet exactly define what a complex system is. But that is not the point. We draw on ideas from the study of complex systems not because it offers ready-made answers but because it offers insight into new ways to look for them. The book is divided into two parts. In the first part we look at the quest for sustainable development at international, regional and national levels. The investigation has shown that the complexity of social, economic and environmental issues of sustainability is understood, and comprehensive policy statements are developed at international level through the United Nations. However, when it comes to the translation of policy statements into sustainable development action plans, the comprehensive view is lost, as nations do what they consider best for their development with little or no coordination at regional and global level. The inevitable outcome of this is that some of the overarching parameters are compromised and that sustainability at a global level is not achieved – and under current arrangements is not achievable. In the second part we start by bringing together some important ideas from the science of complex systems. We find we can break down sustainability into four states of complexity which correspond to lifelessness, the natural world, our world and tomorrow’s world, and we explore what each of these has to tell us about sustainability. On the way, we also come across the intriguing idea of emergence and how self-organisation and structure can arise. We then look at how the states of sustainability can be applied to understanding the fate of cities in the past and how the sustainability of a city has depended on the maintenance of a viable bioproductive hinterland and a symbiotic relationship between the city and this hinterland that has provided it with all it needs to function and enabled its inhabitants to maintain their standard of urban living. In the penultimate chapter we draw together from each of the states a number of fundamental challenges to achieving such sustainability. Finally, we review what we have learned and summarise what outstanding issues need urgent action. As we said at the beginning, sustainability is a complex issue, and one of the biggest challenges to writing this book was the spread of disciplines that needed to be

Preface

ix

drawn upon, each with their own conceptual frameworks and jargon. This separation of knowledge into specialisations is a real barrier to the study of complexity. It helped that one author was an architect with a systems background and the other had come to architecture from a background in hard science. It is also rather ironic and symptomatic of the problem that although we had worked in the same university in the same department in the same building for many years, it was only a chance conversation during a coffee break at a presentation of the university’s Faculty of Engineering research to outside bodies that we discovered our common interest. But then, as complex system theoreticians might say, it’s a small world.

Acknowledgement

The authors would like to thank Richard Lorch, Editor of Building Research and Information (BRI) for his extremely helpful and encouraging comments in the development of what was originally to be an article in BRI but grew, as a result of our email correspondence, well beyond the size for the journal.

Abbreviations

ACC BOD CIS CSD DCLG EFA ESA ETS FBC GC GDP GEMS GHG GVRD HDI IEP IMF IRP IRPTC IRS MDGs NASA NRTEE ODA OECD PPG SARS SPM UNCED UNEP UNFCCC UNMRP WCED WTO

Administrative Committee on Coordination (of the United Nations) biological oxygen demand Commonwealth of Independent States Commission on Sustainable Development Department for Communities and Local Government ecological footprint analysis European Space Agency Emissions Trading Scheme Fraser Basin Council Governing Council (of the United Nations Environment Programme) gross domestic product Global Environmental Monitoring System greenhouse gas Greater Vancouver Regional District Human Development Index Integrated Evaluation Programme International Monetary Fund Interdisciplinary Research Programme International Register of Potentially Toxic Chemicals International Referral System Millennium Development Goals National Aeronautics and Space Administration National Round Table on the Environment and Economy official development assistance Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development Planning Policy Guidance severe acute respiratory syndrome suspended particulate matter United Nations Conference on Environment and Development United Nations Environment Programme United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change United Nations Millennium Research Project World Commission on Environment and Development World Trade Organization

Part I

The quest for sustainable development

Chapter 1

United Nations frameworks for sustainable development

Introduction Sustainability has been an important notion far back in time, as will be made clear later in this book. One excellent example is the use and management of forest resources for a sustainable yield of timber, which is said to have begun in the sixteenth century in Germany and Japan (Wikipedia/Forestry). In Germany it came about as the result of mining of metals and salt, for which a steady supply of timber and fuelwood was essential. To guarantee supply, timber production in managed forests became an industry. It was realised that the amount of wood a forest produced is limited by the natural rate of growth of trees, and that therefore a steady supply of timber was guaranteed only if its harvesting remained within the capacity of replanting and natural regrowth. At the end of the eighteenth century, Georg Ludwig Hartig (1764–1837), a German agriculturist and writer on forestry, formulated this concept of a sustained yield in a way that anticipates the Brundtland Report’s definition of sustainability, as will be seen shortly: All wise forest management must ... have woodland valued ... and endeavour to utilize [forest resources] as much as possible, but in such a way that later generations will be able to derive at least as much benefit from them as the present generation claims for itself. (quoted by Klose, 1985)

Moreover, [t]he concept of sustained yield and permanence, which was formerly applied only to the production of timber, has since been extended to cover all functions of the forest, that is to say its commercial, protective and recreational functions, and is the guiding principles for all forest measures. (University of Göttingen: Forestry)

In comparison, the contemporary concept of ‘sustainable development’ has been the focus of a convoluted debate that started only about 30 years ago. To gain an insight into this debate – what it has achieved or not achieved in terms of understanding what sustainable development means, or what it has achieved or not achieved in terms of translating the concept of sustainable development into practice – it is essential to investigate the major contributions to what we today understand the key characteristics of sustainable development to be:

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development and improvement of the human environment, specifically the environment in which we live and work, without irreversibly damaging the natural environment; preservation, management and use of non-renewable natural resources such that future generations will have the same access to them that we claim today; use of renewable natural resources within the producing and replenishing capacity of the biosphere.

This chapter will show that it is not such a problem to define what sustainable development is but that it seems to be extremely difficult to translate that definition into action programmes at global, regional and national levels. The chapter will therefore explore manifestations of the principles of sustainable development and attempts at their implementation at global, regional and national level. It will become clear that most of the programmes are top-down initiatives developed by the United Nations as framework for all global nations, the European Union as framework for all member states of the Union, and national governments as frameworks for all local authorities. Very few are bottom-up initiatives by non-governmental organisations. It will also become clear that the principles of sustainable development are clear and comprehensive but that many of the action programmes derived from them are vague if not blurred, and lack unambiguous targets or threshold values. As a result of this, the judgement of what is good for people and what is good for the environment is largely left to those making decisions at a local level based on assumptions, rather than knowledge and experience, driven by local needs and aspirations and, most importantly, by economic considerations. This investigation will focus on a number of key contributions to the debate on sustainable development promoted by the United Nations. It will not be possible within the context of this book to do full justice to all UN events and programmes, to the preparatory work that led to international conferences and to the numerous UN organisations that have contributed to it. The chapter tries nevertheless to gain an understanding as to why it seems to be so difficult to translate proclamations published at such conferences into workable action programmes that would lead to sustainable development.

The report The Limits to Growth to the Club of Rome, early 1972 Just a few months before the hugely important UN Conference on the Human Environment at Stockholm in June 1972 that set into motion the debate on sustainable development, The Limits to Growth: A Report for the Club of Rome’s Project on the Predicament of Mankind (Meadows et al., 1972) was published in London. It was commissioned by the Club of Rome, a think tank of scientists, economists, businesspeople, international civil servants, and politicians from five continents, with the mission ‘to act as global catalyst of change that is free of any political, ideological or business interest’ (Club of Rome website, ABOUT). The research for the report

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focused on five major global trends: accelerating industrialisation, rapid population growth, widespread malnutrition, depletion of non-renewable resources and a deteriorating environment. Using the method of system dynamics – which is based on the recognition that the structure of a system (the relationships among its components) is often as important as the components themselves and was at the time a significant breakthrough, as it was a non-military use of scenario forecasting – a large-scale computer model was constructed to simulate likely future outcomes of the world economy on the basis of two key characteristics: exponential growth (of global population, industrialisation, depletion of resources, pollution, etc.) and fixed limits (of non-renewable global resources and of the replenishing capacity of the biosphere). Modelling led the researchers to two conclusions: 1

2

If the present growth trends in world population, industrialization, pollution, food production, and resource depletion continue unchanged, the limits to growth on this planet will be reached sometime within the next one hundred years. The most probable result will be a rather sudden and uncontrollable decline in both population and industrial capacity. It is possible to alter these growth trends and to establish a condition of ecological and economic stability that is sustainable far into the future. The state of global equilibrium could be designed so that the basic material needs of each person on earth are satisfied and each person has an equal opportunity to realize his individual human potential. (Pestel, 1972, p. 1)

The researchers acknowledge that the model they had constructed is, like any model, imperfect, oversimplified and unfinished, but they feel that it is already sufficiently developed to be of some use to decision makers and that the basic behaviour modes that they have observed in the model are so fundamental and general that they do not expect the broad conclusions to be changed substantially by future revisions (ibid.). It is clear that at least the first conclusion of the report would be very controversial. During the 1950s and 1960s both the Western and the Communist worlds had had a period of immense economic growth, albeit with little if any attention being paid to its environmental impact. There was a strong belief that the market and technology would solve all problems for which human action is responsible (Suter, 1999, p. 2). The warning that we would run out of resources within the next 100 years if current growth trends were to continue was classified by both political systems as alarmist and a threat to stable government (ibid.). The Yale economist Henry Wallich labelled the book ‘a piece of irresponsible nonsense’. He stated that there was insufficient evidence for many variables in the model and that ‘the quantitative content of the model comes from the authors’ imagination’ (Wallich, 1972, p. 86). Unfortunately, the detailed model of The Limits to Growth team was not published until 1974 in the book Dynamics of Growth in a Finite World, so Wallich’s complaint had merit at the time (Wikipedia, Limits to Growth). Other criticism highlighted the

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The quest for sustainable development

weak database and the loading of the authors’ case by distinguishing between exponential growth of population, capital and pollution and incremental growth of technologies for expanding resources and controlling pollution (Suter, 1999, p. 2). It is symptomatic that only four years later a book entitled The Next 200 Years: A Scenario for America and the World (Kahn et al., 1976) presented an optimistic vision of the future. The authors expect future population growth not to be exponential but to decline steadily and come to a halt at the end of the 200-year period. The vision is, furthermore, largely based on the continuing evolution of technology, which serves to push back and even overcome natural limits: better irrigation systems, better farming techniques, development of new hybrid seeds, growing food with hydroponics, new solar technologies, nuclear power, ocean thermal power, and so on, technologies that will be developed as they are needed (ibid., pp. 4–11). Kahn, a member of the Rand Corporation think tank, and his colleagues were right regarding the slowdown of the global population growth, as we now know, and the new technologies they talk about are either already available or in the process of being developed. Fuelled by the growing success of space exploration and the huge technological advances that made it possible, the widespread belief that technology would solve the problems of shrinking resources makes it perhaps understandable that politicians on both sides of the Iron Curtain simply ignored The Limits to Growth. However, the report had shown that changing the parameters of the computer model, for instance by slowing down population growth, might only delay the most probable outcome of the trends they investigated, should other growth trends continue. Already in the 1960s and early 1970s, some of those behind the promotion of extraordinary technological utopias, specifically some members of Archigram, started to question the belief in the incorruptibility of technology. In The Shock of the Old, David Edgerton (2006) seriously questions whether future technological revolutions can continue to address our problems, and indeed whether existing technologies will continue to deliver benefits without significant negative trade-offs. The study by Meadows et al. did have some limitations, primarily as the result of the use of computer modelling, the success of which depends on the quality of data and the data-processing capacity of the computer. The book’s latest updated and expanded version was published in 2004 under the title Limits to Growth: The 30-Year Update (Meadows et al., 2004). The message has not changed and remains valid. By now it has become clear that we are already in a period of reduced production of non-renewable global resources, with oil and natural gas among the most obvious. The threat of diminishing oil and natural gas reserves and rising prices has led the energy supply sector in the United Kingdom to import gas from Norway, and the use of coal in fuel-powered electricity generators grew from 39.6 million tonnes in 1999 to 50.9 million tonnes in 2003 (DUKES, 2005). In continental Europe, similar trends can be observed. Sufficient resources are said to be available for another 40 or so years, but by 2040 or 2050 they are expected to be getting scarcer (Stern, 2007), and most European governments have acknowledged the possibility of an energy crisis. In the United Kingdom, as elsewhere in Europe, the expansion of nuclear power is being seriously investigated, as it is unlikely that alternatives will be found in the near future (DTI, 2006).1

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UN conference on the Human Environment, Stockholm, June 1972 Only a few months after the publication of the Report to the Club of Rome, the UN held a conference in Stockholm, and the warnings of The Limits to Growth must have been vividly in the minds of delegates. The conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm was the first of its kind to discuss issues of what we today call ‘sustainable development’. It brought together 113 nations and other stakeholders to discuss issues of common concern. The conference drew attention to the fact that the rapid progress of science and technology has given humankind the power to change the environment and that using that power wisely would bring about the opportunity to enhance the quality of life for all the world’s citizens, whereas its uncontrolled use can seriously damage the natural environment, something the pro-growth opponents to The Limits to Growth did not pay much attention to. The Stockholm conference, however, also talked about further development – that is, economic growth to enhance the quality of life of a growing global population – but without damaging the environment. Unfortunately, it remains undisclosed how the pursuit of growth is to be squared with that of environmental protection. The Stockholm conference also called not only for the improvement of the human environment but also for the preservation of the natural environment and for international cooperation to achieve this. It produced a number of proclamations and development principles (UNEP, 1972), the most important of which are vital enough to be summarised here: ●

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Humans have changed the environment to enhance their way of life, but there is visible evidence of ‘dangerous levels of pollution in water, earth and living beings; major and undesirable disturbance to the ecological balance of the biosphere; destruction and depletion of irreplaceable resources; and gross deficiencies, harmful to the physical, mental and social health of man, in the man-made environment, particularly in the living and working environment’ (proclamation 3).2 This damage must be remediated, and further development needs to take into account its impact on the environment, needs to incorporate environmental safeguards and must provide for any cost required to remediate further damage (principle 12).3 As the result of underdevelopment in the developing countries, there is uneven access to resources, resulting in millions of people having to live an impoverished, unhealthy and unsatisfactory life; the developed world has a responsibility to help the developing nations to achieve development and improvement of their people’s quality of life without repeating the mistakes made by the developed nations in their past development process (proclamation 4).4 Discrimination, apartheid, oppression and domination must be eliminated, as all people have the fundamental right to freedom, equality and

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adequate conditions of life (principle 1); equal opportunities to access of resources are essential to improve the living conditions of the vast majority of humankind, and this necessitates an entirely new attitude on the part of the developed countries towards their responsibilities (proclamation 4). ‘The natural growth of population continuously represents problems for the preservation of the environment, and adequate policies and measures should be adopted ... to face these problems’ (ibid., proclamation 5).5 ‘The natural resources of the earth, including the air, water, flora and fauna and especially representative samples of natural ecosystems, must be safeguarded for the benefit of present and future generations through careful planning and management’ (principle 2). ‘The non-renewable natural resources must be employed in such a way as to guard against the danger of their future exhaustion and to ensure that benefits from such employment are shared by all mankind’ (principle 5). The capacity of the earth to produce vital renewable resources must be maintained, restored or improved (principle 3).6 The discharge of toxic wastes above the capacity of the natural environment to render them harmless must be halted to avoid serious and irreversible damage to ecosystems (principle 6). ‘States shall take all possible steps to prevent pollution of the seas by substances that are liable to create hazards to human health, to harm living resources and marine life, to damage amenities or to interfere with other legitimate uses of the sea’ (principle 7). Economic and social development is essential to improve the quality of life of humankind (principle 8).7

Other principles call for the more rational management of resources and insist that development has to be compatible with human needs and not harm the natural environment. They call for the promotion and application of science and technology to identify, avoid and control environmental risks, for the education of people in environmental matters, for the cooperation of states regarding liability and compensation for victims of pollution and other environmental damage. There is a call for the handling of international matters concerning the protection and improvement of the environment in a cooperative spirit, and a demand that states should ensure that international organisations play a coordinating, efficient and dynamic role for the protection and improvement of the environment. The conference also called for the elimination and complete obliteration of weapons of mass destruction. All major global trends investigated in The Limits to Growth – population growth, widespread malnutrition (poverty), depletion of non-renewable resources, and the deterioration of the environment – are discussed at the Stockholm conference. They are, however, not simply elucidated; action programmes are suggested, to overcome the problems caused by the trends and by current conditions. It is quite obvious that the recommendations and development principles promoted and adopted at the Stockholm Conference represent a radical departure from the belief that the market will sort out all

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human problems, and a radical departure from contemporary economics. Pro-growth policies are accepted as being essential to generate the resources for improving the living quality of people specifically in developing countries; but uncontrolled growth is unacceptable, and external costs for the prevention and remediation of environmental damage caused in the pursuit of economic growth need to be accounted for. There is also a radical departure from contemporary practice in terms of social justice: the call for the abolition of inequalities, the elimination of weapons of mass destruction, and the call for the wealthier nations to help the poorer nations to improve their living standard is a reminder that the developed nations have a social and economic responsibility for the people in developing countries. There is furthermore a clear view that non-renewable resources, a healthy biosphere and biodiversity need to be conserved and improved for the benefit of current and future generations. Here again are clear precursors of the Brundtland Commission report of 1987. The Conference Declaration and Action Plan were published, and Earthwatch, the environmental assessment component of the Action Plan, was set up. In December 1972 the UN General Assembly adopted Resolution 2997, creating the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), a governing council, a secretariat and a voluntary Environment Fund (UNGA, 1972) to facilitate the UNEP’s environmental initiatives. In the years following the Stockholm conference, the UNEP was getting organised. Its governing council (GC) took on responsibility for the acquisition, assessment and exchange of environmental knowledge and information, and for assisting the formulation and implementation of environment programmes in regard of technical aspects. In 1973 the GC decided that Earthwatch would be one of the important instruments to identify and assess major environmental problems (GC Decision I (I) of 22 June 1973). In 1974 the GC authorised the development of the Global Environmental Monitoring System (GEMS) and that of the International Referral System (IRS) within the Earthwatch cluster (GC Decision 8 (II) of 22 March 1974). In 1975 the GC requested that high priority be given to the consolidation and improvement of Earthwatch and that the International Register of Potentially Toxic Chemicals (IRPTC) be established to optimise the use of chemicals for human wellbeing and to operate as a global early warning system of environmental side effects (GC Decision 29 (III) of 2 May 1975). Earthwatch was subsequently defined by the GC as ‘a dynamic process of integrated environmental assessment’ for data gathering, and data evaluation, and to provide a basis of information and understanding for effective environmental management (GC/61). In 1976 the GC requested the development of an Integrated Evaluation Programme (IEP) and an Interdisciplinary Research Programme (IRP) as a component part of Earthwatch along with GEMS, IRS and IRPTC. It is obvious that the machinery to deal with the complex environment and human systems was becoming complex as well. In the two decades after Stockholm the UNEP organised a number of conferences and conventions to discuss environmental issues such as the conservation of endangered species, the control of the movement of hazardous wastes and the reversing of the depletion of the ozone layer. The best-known convention was the 1987 Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer (UNEP, no date, p. 9). However,

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the focus of work was rather narrow; none of these events seems to have had the breadth of the discussions on the interdependence of social, economic and environmental dimensions of sustainable development that had taken place at Stockholm. The complexity of sustainable development leads to the fragmentation of discussions. Why there was at least a decade of a much lower level of activities is not immediately clear. Laurence Mee (2005), quoting Downie and Levy (2000), suggests: From the outset, UNEP spread its resources very thinly. Its initial programme had seven priority areas: human settlements and habitats (later to become the independent UN Centre ‘Habitat’), health of people and their environment, terrestrial ecosystems and their management and control, environment and development, oceans, energy, and natural disasters. Though it was supposed to play a coordinating and catalytic role (with most of the work being done in other agencies), it was expected to achieve this with a [small] budget reliant on voluntary contributions.

We need to come back to this and to related issues later, but external events may have had an impact. One needs to remember that in 1973, shortly after the Stockholm conference, the world plunged into an energy crisis that was followed by a recession. As a result, any previously predicted growth patterns (especially those for the United States) were no longer credible, and voluntary contributions to the UNEP budget might therefore have been difficult to come by. One also needs to remember that a considerable shift of political thinking and action took place during the later 1970s and early 1980s, with little if any consideration for the environment, which led to the partial deregulation of development to rekindle economic growth, for instance in the United Kingdom during the Conservative government era. Furthermore, at a time when the Cold War was still on, the call for the termination of discrimination, apartheid, oppression, and domination might not have been too comfortable in political terms for some nations. The same is perhaps even more the case regarding the call for the obliteration of all weapons of mass destruction, because these were considered to be essential to prevent the Cold War from escalating into a very hot war. It was only in 1983 that preparations for discussions on all dimensions of sustainability at international level started again.

The Brundtland Commission and the report Our Common Future, 1987 In 1983 the General Assembly of the UN set up an intergovernmental body, the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED), also called the Brundtland Commission after the chair of the commission, Mrs Gro Harlem Brundtland, the then prime minister of Norway. Its tasks were: ● ●

to produce a report on the environment; to propose long-term environmental strategies for achieving sustainable development to 2000 and beyond;

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to recommend ways that greater cooperation could take place between developed and developing nations in the generation of common and mutually supportive objectives that reflect the interdependence of people, resources, the environment and development (UN, 1983).

The Commission launched the report Our Common Future, or the Brundtland Report (WCED, 1987), at the General Assembly of the UN in 1987. The report noted that ‘many present development trends leave increasing numbers of people poor and vulnerable, while at the same time degrading the environment’ (ibid., p. 19). One of its key messages to the world was that economic progress and development were sustainable only if depletion of natural resources and harm to the environment were prevented. The often-cited definition of sustainability as ‘development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’ is a further key message of the report that (renewable and non-renewable) natural resources should be accessible to all humankind now and in the future, which necessitates their protection and preservation. From this it follows that sustainable development requires patterns of production and consumption of resources that can be pursued into the future without degrading the human and natural environment. The report put forward three fundamental and interlocking components for sustainable development, components that should not be dealt with in isolation: ●

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environmental protection: the conservation and preservation of natural resources and of the environment by ways we develop and use technology (environmental sustainability), in balance with economic growth without damage to the environment: specifically but not exclusively to meet the basic needs of developing nations of food, energy, water, sanitation, [education] and employment (economic sustainability), and social equity: to achieve an equitable share of benefits of economic activities across all sections of society (social sustainability).

This stood in sharp contrast to the compartmentalisation of areas of concerns – that is, dealing exclusively with environmental, social or economic issues. One is, however, able to detect the same dichotomy as observed at the Stockholm Conference – the necessity of economic growth and the need to protect the environment – which is not discussed in detail and remains unresolved. The report adds another fundamental component: ●

If developing nations are allowed to meet their basic needs as defined above, as they must be, then there is a definitive need for a sustainable level of population which needs to be planned for.

On an international level, the report suggests a strengthening of the legal framework in support of sustainable development (ibid., chapter 12.1.2, article 18). The

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report suggests a new declaration of environmental protection and sustainable development, and a subsequent convention that would strengthen procedures for avoiding or resolving disputes on environmental and resource management issues. For this to be achieved, the report calls for a renewed confidence in the UN governing system. The primary concerns of this report are directly linked to those of the 1972 UN Conference on the Human Environment in Stockholm, which have been rehearsed in some detail above: economic growth, the protection of the environment, social equity (and specifically the right for developing nations to an equitable share of global resources and wealth), the preservation of natural resources, a sustainable level of population growth, and the remediation of environmental damage and the prevention of pollution. In contrast to the Stockholm Declaration and Action Plan, the Brundtland Report had considerable and immediate impact, as we shall see next.

The UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), Earth Summit I at Rio de Janeiro, 1992 The purpose of the UN Earth Summit at Rio, which took place from 3 to 14 June 1992, was ‘to examine progress made since Stockholm, and to elaborate strategies and measures to halt and reverse the effects of environmental degradation in the context of strengthening national and international efforts to promote sustainable and environmentally sound development in all countries’ (UNEP, no date, p. 11). Five separate agreements were made: ● ● ● ● ●

the Convention on Biological Diversity; the Framework Convention on Climate Change; the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development; Principles for Sustainable Management of Forests; Agenda 21 (a ‘blueprint’ for sustainable development).

The Rio Declaration and Agenda 21 outlined key policies for achieving sustainable development ‘that meets the needs of the poor and recognises the limits of development to meet global needs’ (Gardiner, updated January 2002, p. 1). This statement recalls the argument made in the Brundtland Report that the increasing global population needs to be planned for; in other words, owing to the finite nature of global resources and a growing global population, equal access of developing countries to global resources can be achieved only if either there is an increase in the consumption of natural resources, which might damage the environment, or the developed countries reduce their excessive levels of resource consumption, or both. Again the dichotomy between growth and limited resources remains unresolved. One hundred and seventynine governments adopted the agreements (UNCED, 1992). The conference also agreed that ‘indicators of sustainable development need to be developed to provide solid bases for decision-making at all levels and to contributing to self-regulated sustainability of integrated environments and development systems’ (UN, 1993). Agenda 21 also called for a further international law on sustainable development, focusing

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specifically on the balance between environmental and developmental concerns and the strengthening of existing international instruments and agreements in the field of environment, social justice and economics. Agenda 21 is the first comprehensive plan of action to be taken globally, nationally and locally in every area in which humankind impacts on the environment. It contains a core of sustainability indicators, with the help of which national governments and local authorities can generate policies and action programmes towards sustainable development. To monitor the development of Agenda 21 and generate progress, the UN Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD) was set up in December 1992. The content of Agenda 21 (UN CSD, 2001) reveals a broad spectrum of social, economic, environmental, institutional and operational dimensions of sustainable development that sum up those discussed and adopted in 1972 at Stockholm and in 1987 at the UN General Assembly and do not, therefore, need to be spelled out again. It is, however, of interest to investigate the Agenda 21 Action Plan, the type of indicators that are used and how the social, economic and environmental conditions of a region, nation or city are measured. How Agenda 21 works is explained as follows: Indicators can be defined as statistics, measures or parameters that can be used to track changes of environmental or socio-economic conditions. Indicators are developed in synthesising and transforming scientific and technical data into fruitful information. It can provide a sound base for decision-makers to take a policy decision on present as well as potential future issues of local, national, regional and global concerns. It can be used to assess, monitor and forecast parameters of concerns towards achieving environmentally sound development. (UNEP RRC.AP, 2004, p. 9)

Chapter 40 of Agenda 21 called on nations as well as international, governmental and non-governmental organisations to develop indicators, but also called for the harmonisation of sustainable development indicators at national, regional and global level. The Environmental Indicators for Central Asia, developed by UNEP and the Regional Resource Centre for Asia and the Pacific with the help of many individuals and institutions, exemplify what indicators are and how they are used to generate, in this case for a period between 1990 and 2000, social, economic and environmental profiles of a region (ibid., pp. 11–45): Social indicators ● ●

● ● ●

Population (population growth/decline) Human Development Index (HDI is a standard to measure the quality of life and the social freedom of opportunities enjoyed by the population) Population with income less than US$1 a day (percentage of total population) Infant mortality rate (cases per 1,000 life births) Life expectancy at birth (years)

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Economic indicators ● ●

● ● ●

Gross domestic product annual growth (percentage) Gross domestic product comparison (comparison of GDP with that of the world and the Asia-Pacific region) Gross national income (US$ billions) Gross national income per capita (US$ per capita) Energy consumption per capita (tonnes of oil equivalent)

Land indicators ● ● ●

Arable land per capita (hectares per capita) Forest area (percentage of total land area) Forest cover change (percentage of total land area)

Water indicators ● ● ● ● ●

Biological oxygen demand (BOD) level in major rivers (milligrams per litre) Population with access to safe drinking water (percentage of total population) Total water withdrawal (billion cubic metres per annum) Total water availability (cubic metres per capita per annum) Population with access to safe sanitation (percentage of total population)

Air indicators ● ● ● ●

● ●

CO2 emissions (metric tonnes per capita) NO2 concentration (micrograms per cubic metre) SO2 concentration (micrograms per cubic metre) Suspended particulate matter (SPM) concentration (micrograms per cubic metre) NOx emissions (thousand metric tonnes) SO2 emissions (thousand metric tonnes)

Biodiversity ● ● ● ● ●

Protected area (percentage of total land area) Threatened plants (percentage of plants threatened and vulnerable) Threatened birds (percentage of birds threatened and vulnerable) Threatened mammals (percentage of mammals threatened and vulnerable) Wetlands of international importance (number of wetlands)

The statistics generated for each of the indicators over a number of years reveal tendencies for the improvement or deterioration of social, economic and environmental conditions, in this case of the Central Asia region. Further reference to, and

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critical analysis of, the effectiveness of such an Agenda 21 Action Plan will be made at the end of this chapter.

UN General Assembly Special Session, 1997, Earth Summit II or Rio Summit + 5, New York) At the Earth Summit in Rio in 1992 it had been agreed that a review of Earth Summit progress, specifically regarding the implementation of Agenda 21, would be made in 1997 at a special session of the UN General Assembly. At the Rio Summit + 5 the UN CSD reported on uneven progress, with some nations having established a conceptual framework for sustainable planning, while others were still defining problems. The summit therefore focused on the accelerated implementation of Agenda 21. The resolution adopted by the UN General Assembly in September 1997 (UNGA, 1997) explains that the five years after the Rio Summit ‘have been characterised by the accelerated globalisation of interaction among countries in the area of global trade, foreign direct investment, and capital markets. ... The impact of recent trends in globalisation on developing countries has been uneven’ (ibid., chapter II, article 7). The resolution states that a limited number of developing countries had been able to take advantage of globalisation and had achieved accelerated growth in GDP per capita. Many others, in particular African countries and the least developed countries, had, however, shown slow or negative growth and continued to be marginalised. We are also informed that the state of the global environment had continued to deteriorate (ibid., chapter II, article 9). The assembly acknowledges further that a number of positive results had been achieved, but that the overall trends with regard to sustainable development were worse than they were in 1992 (ibid., chapter 1, article 4). We are further told that ‘[m]ost developed countries have still not reached the UN target ... of committing 0.7 per cent of their gross national product to official development assistance or the United Nations target, as agreed, of committing 0.15 per cent of gross national product as official development assistance to the least developed countries’ (ibid., chapter 2, article 18). Other problems that are highlighted are an increase in energy consumption and widening inequalities in income. The new resolution also called for new measures for the internalisation of environmental costs and benefits in the price of goods and services. It suggests that these could be achieved by governments shifting taxation on to unsustainable patterns of production and consumption and that such tax reforms should include progress in the reduction or elimination of subsidies to environmentally harmful activities (ibid., chapter 3, article 28 (a)). Progress would be reviewed at a further summit in 2002. It is thus clear that some movement had been negative, and generally progress had not been as fast as was expected at the Rio Summit. One explanation of this is that the description of sustainable development in Agenda 21 had called for a total shift in the status quo of prevalent value systems and institutional processes. Such global change could never have occurred over night. When progress was assessed at Rio + 5 [UNGA,

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1997] a number of gaps were identified, particularly with regard to social equity and poverty. This was largely reflected by falling levels of official development assistance (ODA) and growing international debt, along with failures to improve: technology transfer; capacity building for participation and development; institutional coordination; and reduce excessive levels of production and consumption. (Gardiner, R. updated January 2002, p. 3)

The preparation of the second Earth Summit was therefore overshadowed by the realisation that the Rio accord had not been followed up by many countries, specifically countries in the developed world. In addition, funding for the implementation of Agenda 21 had not increased as promised, but decreased from 1992 to 1997. ‘The result of this was an event [Earth Summit II] that did not give a clear message of where we might be going and how we might get there together. Instead it was filled with disappointment and frustration’ (UN CSD NGO, 2000, p. 1).

United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), Kyoto Protocol, 1998 Almost all the resolutions and declarations passed at Stockholm in 1972, New York in 1987 and Rio in 1992 were ‘Non-legally Binding Authoritative Statements of Principle, which are merely a set of guidelines, but failed to reach any significantly binding international agreement, with the sole exception of the Kyoto Protocol to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)’ (Heckmann, 2007, chapter 3.1). The Kyoto Protocol is a follow-on and further development of the Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC, 1997), which included an agreement that the developed nations would reduce their greenhouse emissions to 1990 levels by 2000 to counteract climate change. This pledge was voluntary and non-binding. The UNFCCC framework was signed by more than 150 nations at the Rio Summit in 1992. Owing to the continuing increase in emissions and their measurable impact, parties to the treaty convened in 1995 to establish a protocol that would be binding for the developed nations. The meeting took place in December 1997 in Kyoto and produced the Kyoto Protocol (envocare, 2000, updated 2007). The protocol was available for signature from 16 March 1998 for one year but would not come into force until 55 nations, responsible for 55 per cent of the global CO2 emissions, had ratified it. Some unresolved issues were to be dealt with in a two-year action plan with a deadline for completion in 2000. Two meetings took place (Buenos Aires, November 1998, and The Hague, November 2000) without being able to resolve the issues. There were tensions between what the scientists thought to be appropriate short-term reductions of emissions and what politicians, pursuing the self-interests of their nations, were willing to sign up to. There were, furthermore, nations that did not accept the underlying scientific arguments. In each meeting, therefore, the original targets were compromised. Finally, in May 2002 the 55 parties clause was reached, and the ratification by Russia in November 2004 satisfied

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the 55 per cent emissions clause. Some 141 countries had ratified the treaty, which pledges to cut emissions by 5.2 per cent by 2012. The way the compliance of signatories to the protocol for the reduction of emissions is handled by the Compliance Committee, and how successful it is in achieving results, will be discussed in the summary of this chapter. Ninety days later the treaty entered into force. In terms of governance, this was a considerable breakthrough for the United Nations. The United States, one of the world’s top polluters, did not sign up to the treaty for two reasons: the changes would be too costly to introduce; and the agreement is flawed, as large developing countries, including China, India and Brazil, are currently outside the framework.

UN Millennium Summit, September 2000, New York, and the Millennium Development Goals The UN Millennium Summit of 2000 in New York was the next important global meeting, held only two years after Kyoto. Rather than returning to the wide range of social, economic and environmental sustainability issues discussed at the Rio Summit in 1992, it focused on a limited number of what it called Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The summit also discussed the development of a pragmatic organisational framework in the form of global partnerships between the developed and developing nations, with the help of which the MDGs could be implemented in order to improve the living conditions and quality of life of the vast majority of the global population. The UN Millennium Declaration set a somewhat wider framework for the discussion of the MDGs. The declaration (UN, 2000) opens with a reiteration of values and principles of a more peaceful, prosperous and just world, many of which are reminiscent of the discussion at the UN Conference at Stockholm in 1972. It states that the central challenge the world is facing is to ensure that globalisation becomes a positive force for all the world’s people. ‘For while globalisation offers great opportunities, at present its benefits are unevenly shared, while its costs are unevenly distributed’ (ibid., article 5). The declaration identifies key objectives: peace, security and disarmament; development and poverty eradication, and the protection of the common environment (both of which will specifically influence the MDGs); human rights, democracy and good governance; protecting the vulnerable; meeting the special needs of Africa; and strengthening the United Nations. It is obvious that, very similarly to previous ones, the declaration sets out the broad contextual framework of which the specific MDGs are to be seen as an integrated part. However, the MDGs, developed from the declaration, then focus on very specific targets for progress in eight areas by 2015: reducing poverty and hunger by half; achieving primary education for all children; establishing equality for women; reducing under-five mortality by two-thirds and maternal mortality by three-quarters; reversing the spread of diseases, especially HIV/AIDS and malaria; ensuring environmental sustainability; and creating a global partnership for development, with targets for aid, trade and debt relief.

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The UN would help individual countries to reconcile the MDGs with their development plans and priorities by offering practical advice and assistance in designing policies and programmes. UN agencies, the OECD Development Assistance Committee and, if needed, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund would support MDG reports for every developing country. The UN Secretary-General’s global reports on implementing the Millennium Declaration would include the country-level reports, and all information would become a comprehensive database of global-level statistics. The UN Millennium Research Project (UNMRP) would help identify what is needed in terms of policy, expanded capacity, and required investment and financing for countries to meet their goals (UN DPI, October 2002). A series of awareness-raising Millennium Campaigns would be organised within countries to assist them in the pursuit of their MDGs. A review of progress would be presented to the General Assembly in October 2002.

UN Earth Summit III on Sustainable Development, Johannesburg, 2002 and subsequent summits and reports Ten years after the Rio Summit and 30 years after the Stockholm conference, Earth Summit III was to review progress on Agenda 21 and the Millennium Development Goals. The Assembly reaffirmed a full commitment to the implementation of Agenda 21, it reaffirmed the MDGs set at the Millennium Summit in New York in 2000, and it confirmed the UN as the ‘most universal and representative organisation in the world which is best placed to achieve sustainability’ (UN, 2002, chapter 1, article 32). It seems to be a standard pattern by now that the Assembly acknowledges again and again that the elimination of poverty, the improvement of social conditions and the protection of the environment are priority goals. The Assembly also notes that there is progress towards the MDGs but that it is uneven and too slow, and that the large majority of nations will meet the MDGs only if they receive substantial support (advocacy, expertise and resources) from outside. The challenges for the global community, in both the developed and developing world, are to mobilize financial support and political will, re-engage governments, re-orient development priorities and policies, build capacity and reach out to partners in civil society and the private sector. (UN DPI, October 2002, p. 1)

This means that the achievement of the MDGs was behind schedule, that there were problems with some developed countries still not having made concrete efforts regarding their official development assistance to developing countries, and that further progress would be discussed at the next Earth Summit in 2007 in Beijing. Things seem to go in circles. A UN press release in September 2004 entitled ‘UN finds progress on world anti-poverty goals but crisis areas remain’ states that considerable progress has been

UN frameworks for sustainable development

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made in the reduction of extreme poverty, the increase of school enrolment rates, the reduction of hunger, and the improvement of access to safer water sources. But the UN warn that progress has been hardest to come by in the poorest nations: those that are landlocked or least developed, and those that are in sub-Saharan Africa. In many cases, there is lack of significant progress or even reversal. There is a discouraging lack of progress on child survival and on very poor rates of maternity mortality that prevail in much of the world, and slow advances on access to improved sanitation.

Regarding negotiations within the World Trade Organisation, developed countries are faulted for the lack of willingness to allow a level playing field for developing countries to utilise their comparative advantages, particularly in agriculture and textiles (UN, 2004). The conclusions of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals Report of 2005 are no more encouraging (UN, 2005). In the foreword to the report, the Secretary-General of the United Nations highlights that there are some worrying findings. He states: [T]he report shows us how much progress has been made in some areas, and how large an effort is needed to meet the Millennium Development Goals in others. If current trends persist, there is a risk that many of the poorest countries will not be able to meet many of them. Considering how far we have come, such a failure would mark a tragically missed opportunity. This report shows that we have the means at hand to ensure that nearly every country can make good on the promises of the Goals. Our challenge is to deploy those means. (UN, 2005, p. 3)

The report emphasises the achievements and problems in the period 2000–2005: ●

●

●

Asia heads the way in reducing poverty rates, but the number of poor in Africa is rising. The very poor (in sub-Saharan Africa) are getting poorer. The decline in hunger is slowing, but sub-Saharan Africa has the highest rates. The setbacks in hunger (in Northern Africa, Western and Southern Asia and sub-Saharan Africa) nearly outweigh progress (by other regions). Eight of ten children in sub-Saharan Africa are out of school. In terms of gender equality throughout, girls lag behind boys in school enrolment, women still have a smaller share in paying jobs than men, more women than men work in low-status jobs, and men dominate decision making at the highest level. Regarding the reduction of child mortality, progress has slowed; meeting the target will require a drastic reduction in child deaths in sub-Saharan Africa and Southern Asia. Immunisation against measles saves lives, but not all children are protected.

20

●

●

●

●

The quest for sustainable development

Fewer women are dying during childbirth, but not in sub-Saharan Africa and Southern Asia, the regions with the countries most affected. The same regions also have the lowest percentage of deliveries attended by skilled healthcare personnel. HIV prevalence remains high in sub-Saharan Africa, as deaths and new infections mount. HIV prevalence has increased in all other regions; as the AIDS epidemic worsens, more girls and women are infected. Malaria attacks the poorest and most defenceless; tuberculosis, an old threat, has re-emerged. Regarding environmental sustainability, a number of rather uncomfortable results emerge from the survey: – Forests are disappearing faster in the poorest regions. (In the past decade, more than 940,000 square kilometres of forests were converted into farmland, logged or lost to other uses. Sustainable forest management is reducing pressure on the land and improving the livelihood of communities living in and around forests; still, there is a race against time.) – More areas are protected (13 per cent of the Earth’s surface by now), but loss of species and habitats continues (more than 10,000 species are considered to be under threat). – Progress is being made in providing energy efficiency, but more is needed. Transfer of clean technology and fuels to developing countries, where energy needs are skyrocketing, is not proceeding fast enough. Despite improved efficiency, total energy use continues to rise. – Rich countries produce the most greenhouse gases (developed regions, the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS)). – Ozone-depleting substances have been drastically reduced. – Access to safe drinking water has improved worldwide, but in Oceania, 48 per cent of the population is still unserved, in sub-Saharan Africa 42 per cent (owing to conflicts, political instability and low priorities assigned to investment in water and sanitation). – Half the developing world lacks improved sanitation. – Policy makers must focus on the poor in rural areas and urban slums (specifically in sub-Saharan Africa). – City dwellers are about to outnumber rural populations in the developing world.8 Disease, mortality and unemployment are considerablys higher in slums than in planned areas. The growth in the number of slum-dwellers is outpacing urban improvement (with the worst situation being in Southern and Eastern Asia, sub-Saharan Africa and Latin America and the Caribbean). With regard to development partnerships, aid is critical for the poorest countries, while middle-income countries benefit more from trade. Development aid has reached an all-time high, but remains at a historically low level as a share of donor-country income. Increases in aid are going mostly to debt relief (therefore least productive for development) and emergency assistance. Youth unemployment is a potential source of unrest; it is high in Northern and sub-Saharan

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Africa and has risen in all other regions. There is an insufficient supply of medicinal drugs. Overall, it is clear that in the five years of the MDGs programme a lot of improvement has been achieved, but it seems developing countries that are more advanced than others in their development (for example, Eastern, South-Eastern and Western Asia) have gained most. So, it seems that the programme serves the better off in the developing world more than the poorer countries; this is echoed in the foreword by the Secretary-General already referred to, and the report recommends that efforts to achieve the MDGs should focus on the poorest of the developing countries. There is one further observation that can be made: although the programme addresses the dichotomy between human needs and the viability of the natural environment, the environmental issues seem to have been pushed into the background, and no connections seem to be made between issues such as poverty, forest depletion and environmental degradation. It seems that the comprehensive sustainability framework that was first discussed in Stockholm and then expanded in the Brundtland Report and at the Rio Earth Summit is still there, but that discussion no longer focuses on the global system as a totality, with all its social, economic and environmental characteristics and problems. The fragmentation of a complex system into manageable chunks seems to have led to the loss of connections between individual characteristics and problems. The conclusions of the World Summit at the UN Headquarters in New York in September 2005 (UNGA, 2005) and the conclusions of the United Nations Millennium Goals Report 2006 (UN, 2006) are fairly similar. It is time to analyse why the achievement of so many of the MDGs and many other UN objectives seems to be delayed, if not threatened.

Review of efforts and achievements The investigation of the international debate on sustainable development started with The Limits to Growth and a very simple but convincing argument that there is an inescapable interdependence between economic growth and the resulting levels of production and consumption of resources on one hand and finite global resources on the other. The message is very clear: unless there is access to alternative resources, sustainability depends on humankind preserving non-renewable resources for future generations and living within the natural renewing capacity of the biosphere. The three major recommendations of the Conference on the Human Environment at Stockholm in 1972, the Brundtland Report of 1987 and the Rio Summit in 1992 are very similar, uncompromising and increasingly more detailed in their analysis: that the key components of sustainable development are: ●

●

●

economic growth generated by sustainable patterns of production and consumption of resources, to enable the social well-being and equity of all humanity and equitable access to resources now and in the future, while protecting the environment and the services it provides for humanity.

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The quest for sustainable development

All three conclude that, in order to achieve economically, socially and environmentally sustainable development requires: ● ●

●

●

rational management of resources and development; advanced science and technology to identify, avoid and control environmental risks, paired with the liability for polluters for damage done to the environment; education of people to develop their potential and become aware of and avoid environmental risks; collaboration of states of both the developed and developing world in, and an equitable share of responsibilities for, the pursuit of sustainable development, based on international and legally binding frameworks, coordination and prudent governance (see Table 1.1).

The clarity of the messages is remarkable, inescapable but uncomfortable. All three key events fail to explain how the conflict between the need for economic growth and the protection of the environment can be resolved. In a finite global system, any expansion of human resource consumption and the accompanying increase of production – necessitated by growing wealth of the industrialising countries and a growing global population – will inevitably affect the natural environment: nonrenewable resources will be depleted; forests will be transformed into agricultural areas to produce more food; and eventually the levels of consumption of renewable resources will surpass the natural replenishing capacity of the biosphere. Such change to the environment is leading not only to serious damage to the environment and its ecosystems but to potentially serious shortages of resources unless other means of producing them are found. What if only a non-growth or negative growth scenario would actually achieve sustainable development? All scenarios based on economic growth would fall flat on their face, as they would be pursuing an unsustainable development goal. What followed the Rio Summit was increasingly disappointing. The Rio + 5 Summit of 1997 complained about problems: falling levels of official development assistance; growing international debt; the failure to improve technological transfer, and capacity building for participation and development; the lack of institutional coordination; and the lack of the reduction of excessive levels of production and consumption. Rio + 5 ended with frustration. The Kyoto Protocol focused on a single parameter: the reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. The Millennium Development Goals of 2000 focus efforts on eight specific areas, mainly to achieve satisfaction of the most basic needs of the poorest of the developing countries. The list of these goals is rather unbalanced as environmental sustainability is, next to economic and social sustainability, one of the three overarching goals of sustainable development in comparison to the social goals in the list, and is hugely impacted by resource production and consumption levels of developed countries, the reduction of which is not included in the list of MDGs. Where is the warning of earlier key summits that sustainability can only be achieved by an integrated approach? The Earth Summit III in Johannesburg was chaotic, and largely focused on what was not

Table 1.1 Sustainable development: the key aspects

Rational management Coordinated global, regional and national governance Science advances • Identify, avoid and control risks • Education and training of people • Identify future development scenarios and sustainability targets and threshold values • Identify appropriate approaches to remediation of environmental damage and to ‘manage’ the biosphere, ecosystems (knowledge of the structure of ecosystems and the way they balance themselves) • Develop early warning systems and catastrophes relief responses • React to and prevent health threats, endemics Science and technology advances • Combat risks, threats • Remediate environmental damage • Increase biological productivity • Achieve efficient production of resources • Achieve full recycling of waste

Ecological economy • Economic development but without damage to the environment • Satisfactory jobs for all • Efficient production of goods and services by national rather than transnational companies to retain control and economic benefits • Protection of non-renewable resources, equitable access for all now and for future generations • Use of renewable resources within the replenishing capacity of planet Earth • More efficient use of resources (cutting out wastage, recycling all waste) • Reduced pollution (earth, water, air) to the assimilation capacity of the environment • Remediation of damage to the environment (internalised external cost)

Equitable and caring community • Social equity/inclusion • Equitable share of and access to resources, goods and services • High quality of life for all • Sustainable consumption levels: living within replenishing capacity of planet Earth • Reduced production of waste and recycling of all waste • Recycling of rain and grey water • Use of clean renewable energy sources • Protection of biologically productive land by compact urban development

Protected environment • Protection and preservation of non-renewable resources for future generations • Use of renewable resources within the replenishing capacity of planet Earth • Protection of all remaining natural areas and wildernesses and all water bodies • Protection and improvement of biodiversity • Reduced pollution (earth, water, air) to the assimilation capacity of the environment • Prevention and remediation of environmental damage • Protection of all forests, massive reforestation

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The quest for sustainable development

achieved. It seems that there is still a clear understanding of the necessity to tackle sustainability issues in their entirety but that there is neither the capacity nor the will nor, it seems, the proper institutional framework to propel this understanding into workable and affordable practical programmes. There are a number of factors that contribute to the slowing down of efforts to achieve sustainable development. The most obvious barriers for progress will be shortly scrutinised.

The fragmentation and lack of integration of UN programmes Principle 4 of the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development (UNGA, 1993) states in all clarity: ‘In order to achieve sustainable development, environmental protection shall constitute an integral part of the development process and cannot be considered in isolation from it.’ Laurence Mee, who participated in the UNCED preparatory process, remarks that this statement encapsulates the most difficult dilemma facing humanity and could have heralded an entirely new approach to solving it. The Rio conference engendered major global environmental agreements but left the UN’s institutional structure virtually unchanged: with a development ‘sector’ – the UN Development Programme (UNDP) – and an environmental ‘sector’ – the UN Environment Programme (UNEP). (Mee, 2005, pp. 227–228)

There is an inherent problem with the ‘decomposition’ of complex systems, like the human and natural environment, in order to make the systems’ complexity more manageable: the loss of the structural connections and interdependences of the individual elements of the system. And this is what seems to have happened when the all-embracing theoretical debates at UN conferences and summit meetings were translated into manageable action programmes. What contributed to this fragmentation is that different programmes are the responsibility of a host of different UN institutes and specialist units, each of which not only competes for funding but is ‘basically pursuing its own programme independently, jealously defending its mandate and guarding against “encroachment” of others on its turf’ (ibid., p. 242). What makes matters even more problematic is that UN agencies and specialist units frequently have overlapping interests and responsibilities. Mee illustrates this by listing agencies involved in developing programmes for the marine environment: the UN Environment Programme, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, the International Maritime Organization, the Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of Unesco, and global programmes run by the World Meteorological Organization, the International Atomic Energy Agency, the World Health Organization, the UN itself and the UN Industrial Development Organization. He concludes: ‘Despite some successful and ongoing attempts at coordination through bodies such as ACC (UN Administrative Committee on Coordination) and others, many parallel and competing activities persist.’ These are just some of the many other inherent problems highlighted by Mee (ibid., pp. 241–243). The focus of UN

UN frameworks for sustainable development

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institutes on their own programmes inevitably results in individual sustainability issues being pursued in isolation from others and the loss of the understanding of their mutual interdependencies and interactions, exactly what the first three global meetings at Stockholm, New York and Rio respectively said should be avoided. It seems very clear, therefore, that there is not only the fragmentation of complexly interwoven economic, social and environmental issues of sustainability into individual fragments and with it the loss of an insight into positive and negative trade-offs with other fragments, but also a lack of a theoretical basis for the discussion of sustainability and therefore an inability to construct the required regulatory structure that would be able to deal with it.

The UN’s lack of legislative power to ensure that targets are met The Brundtland Commission’s Report of 1987 was one of the first to suggest a strengthening of the legal framework in support of sustainable development (WCED, 1987, chapter 12.1.2, article 18). New UN legislation could not force governments to sign treaties, but it could make governments that have signed accountable for failing obligatory targets, as it has done in the Kyoto Protocol.9 To be able to ascertain whether national signatories have complied with an agreed reduction of CO2 emissions, the Kyoto Protocol set up a Compliance Committee to ‘strengthen the Protocol’s environmental integrity, support the carbon market’s credibility and ensure transparency of accounting by Parties’ (UNFCCC, no date, p. 1). The Compliance Committee is made up of a facilitative branch and an enforcement branch; the latter is responsible for determining whether a party to the protocol is not in compliance with its emission targets, the methodological and reporting requirements for greenhouse gas inventories, and the eligibility requirements for carbon trading. Any party not complying with reporting requirements must develop a compliance action plan. Nonetheless, it remains questionable whether any real enforcement of the protocol is possible, for a number of reasons (Heckmann, 2007, chapter 3.1).

The UN’s lack of capacity to monitor and coordinate local, national and regional sustainable development programmes The Rio Summit has called for Agenda 21 to be implemented by regions, nations and even individual cities. The UN CSD would provide guidance and would coordinate and monitor progress. The task of monitoring that all key sustainability issues are addressed, that the appropriate decisions are made and actions are taken at local, national, regional levels is hugely difficult, and it is questionable whether this or any other UN Commission is knowledgeable and powerful enough, and has the required human and monetary resources, to carry out this task. But leaving aside the institutional and managerial problems, and also leaving aside the question whether carbon emissions are or are not responsible for global warming and climate change, there is a problem of the answerability for carbon emissions at transnational level. Emissions caused by air traffic, and even more so by ship

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The quest for sustainable development

transports on the oceans, huge in quantities as they are, cannot clearly be defined as the responsibility of any one nation and are therefore not accounted for at all. This makes a mockery of otherwise serious attempts to reduce carbon emissions. It seems that both UNEP and UNDP and their subsidiary branches are not strong enough politically and legally to achieve a solution to these glaring problems.

The lack of science-based knowledge on environmental issues The Kyoto Protocol shows another intrinsic problem: uncertainty about the principles causing environmental modifications, in this example factors responsible for climate change: ●

●

There is consensus about anthropogenic activities linking to climate change but there is uncertainty about how much emitted CO2 can be tolerated by the environment, and there is uncertainty with regard to the actual outcome, for instance in terms of global temperature rise and its effects on desertification, flooding, migration, and so on, and what effect these would have on the carrying capacity of the globe. As a consequence of uncertainty, it is currently impossible to be sure that the proposed reduction of greenhouse gas emissions would slow down or even reverse climate change; it might have no impact whatsoever. Applying the precautionary principle, the only certainty of a positive influence of human activities on the environment would result from a complete halt of any processes that interfere with and change the environment: the depletion of nonrenewable natural resources; the depletion of forests and the resulting loss of biodiversity and water management; and the overconsumption of renewable natural resources, specifically by developed countries, beyond the natural replenishing capacity of the biosphere. Although efforts are being made to reduce some of the damage to the environment, a radical decision to halt all environmentally damaging human activities is, however, currently unacceptable politically and economically, as it would require huge resources and would more than likely slow down, halt or even reverse economic growth. Sustainability is clearly seen as a priority issue; but all we currently do is tinker with CO2 emissions, clean and renewable energy sources, the reduction of pollution in water bodies and the oceans, and so on. Important as they are as contributory actions, on their own they will not achieve substantial progress towards sustainable development. We are told again and again by progress reports that deforestation, loss of biodiversity and desertification continue at alarming rates; that consumption levels of the developed countries, to a large degree directly or indirectly responsible for the deterioration of the environment, are increasing rather than being reduced. It has also become clear that the depletion of some non-renewable resources, such as oil and natural gas, is so intense that future availability is under threat.

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The vagueness of proclamations and action programmes The investigation of the debates on key UN conferences has shown that many of the proposed action programmes are formulations of what the problems are and that the problems need to be solved but that there is no real translation of what are generally policy statements into practical and applicable action programmes. Even declarations as simple as ‘reducing poverty by half’ (MDG 1) are not really followed up by a statement as to how this goal is actually achievable, how much money is needed, and who should contribute how much. Contributions are voluntary, and individual developed countries donate what they think they can afford without reducing their ability to cater for their own people’s needs and aspirations. A good example of the vagueness of action programmes is Agenda 21. Let us return to the Environmental Indicators for Central Asia, developed by UNEP and the Regional Resource Centre for Asia and the Pacific. They exemplify what indicators are and how they are used to generate, in this case generally for the period 1990–2000, profiles and trends of social, economic and environmental conditions in a region. There is a worrying aspect: each of the indicators is assessed separately, and no mechanism is made available to establish the interdependencies between social, economic and environmental change trends. Surely, the change of total water availability from 5,674 to 657 cubic metres per capita per annum in Uzbekistan, a loss of over 88 per cent in only five years, must have some implications for the quality of people’s lives, for agriculture and food production, for climatic conditions, for biodiversity, etc., specifically if related to a population growth of 2 million to 24.8 million people, an increase of almost 9 per cent in the same period. These interconnections are not all as obvious as this example may show, but they need to be known in order to set priority areas in which progress is vital. But in the list of sustainability indicators taken as an example, for none of the change trends of values over the past ten years are the causes highlighted; if, however, as in this case, the causes for changes are not made known, it is virtually impossible to decide upon an appropriate action to stop or reverse the trend. Another worrying aspect is that no guidelines are made available for the interpretation of the collected statistical data. This may be understandable, as such an elucidation undoubtedly needs to take into consideration, first, general environmental conditions of the area under investigation such as climate, precipitation, soil quality, available water resources, and so on; and, second, socio-economic conditions, specifically the level of development achieved and the financial and human resources available. But leaving this aside for the moment, the lack of any guidelines or threshold values that ought to be achieved to attain socio-economic sustainability and a stable environment does not allow an assessment of the degree of ‘goodness’ or ‘badness’ of the current situation or trends, other than crudely understanding that things are moving in one or the other direction. The easiest way to translate a statistical profile into a value judgement is when for each parameter a target or threshold value is available that would allow existing data to be compared with a benchmark. It should be possible to establish threshold

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values at least for the majority of indicators, as most of them deal with quantifiable values and trends. Using Uzbekistan data from the Central Asia Environmental Indicators, a few examples illustrate how threshold or target values could help develop policies and action programmes: ●

●

●

For the ‘Water Indicator – Population with Access to Safe Drinking Water’, the logical target would be 100 per cent, as all people should have that service. Uzbekistan, with a year 2000 percentage of 77.1 per cent, is below that level, and as improvement tendencies are slow (on average 1.4 per cent per year), current policies should be reviewed to secure access for all people in the nearer future. For the ‘Water Indicator – Total Water Availability’, matters are not quite so simple, but are manageable. Taking regional and local climatic and other conditions into consideration, it should be possible to establish for particular global regions and locations how many cubic metres of water per capita per year should be available to achieve a good quality of life for all people and the maintenance of the bioproductive capacity of the land, and this quantity would be the target value. The minimum amount of water required per capita per year to avoid water shortages would be the threshold value. Assuming that the minimum value might be 500 cubic metres per capita per annum, then Uzbekistan with 657 cubic metres water per capita per annum in 2000 would be uncomfortably close to the threshold value, specifically when taking into consideration the considerable loss of water availability over the past five years. This insight would help in establishing priority efforts to increase the existing value by securing water from other sources or, if this is not achievable, by protecting and managing existing water sources in a more efficient way. To establish target or threshold values for biodiversity indicators is most difficult, and currently perhaps even impossible, as we know generally very little about the way in which the environment and ecosystems balance themselves. The effective management of ecosystems, for instance, so frequently called for by UN proclamations, would require a clear knowledge of their structures, of the key species upon which stability of the systems depends and the effect on the systems if one of these key species were to be lost. Without such knowledge, any managerial interference with these systems might actually contribute to their further deterioration.

Agenda 21 does not generally define threshold or target values for any of the indicators, even where it would be relatively easy to do so, despite the fact that the core function of the UNEP is to generate reliable environmental information for decision making. The interpretation of survey data and the decisions about what to do to improve conditions is therefore largely left to regional, national or local authorities without any specialist knowledge and has to rely on more or less intelligent guesswork or a trial-and-error approach. On that basis, the effect of chosen action programmes on the environment is unpredictable: they may achieve environmental improvements but they may also do significant and potentially irreversible damage to the environment.

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The lack of support for UN targets by developed nations The problem with targets and threshold values is that, owing to the considerable differences of conditions and constraints between as well as inside the developing and developed countries, even modest targets may be too high for the first to achieve and no challenge at all for the latter. To call, for instance, for a halt to deforestation and for substantial reforestation – to achieve the retention and improvement of ecosystems, the absorption of carbon emissions and the production of oxygen, the maintenance of water levels, the prevention of the depletion of biologically productive land, etc. – may be crippling the poorest of the developing countries, as deforestation produces muchneeded wood for export and firewood, and new agricultural areas for the production of food for own consumption and export, but no challenge for developed nations, as many of them have been pursuing a policy of reforestation for some time. But these capacity differences of individual nations to respond to environmental problems do not invalidate target values; what is required to overcome the differences is that those with lesser or no problems support others with greater problems. How otherwise is sustainability achievable? However, according to negotiations within the World Trade Organization, here is one of the core problems with regard to sustainable development: the lack of willingness of the developed countries to allow a level playing field for developing countries to utilise their comparative advantages (UN, 2004). The United States, the richest nation on Earth, claims that it cannot afford the levels of CO2 reduction set by the Kyoto Protocol, as this would seriously impact upon economic growth and the standard of life and resource consumption of its citizens. Are sustainability targets not achievable because some 20 per cent of the global population are too rich to afford getting a little less rich, and some 20 per cent are too poor to afford getting a little less poor? It seems that the root cause for the lack of success in the protection of the environment is the extreme poverty of some and the huge consumption levels of others. It also seems that the root cause of extreme poverty in some developing countries, notably in sub-Saharan Africa, is that the selfinterest of the wealthy nations in maintaining their standard of living is too great to provide the necessary resources to overcome poverty (GEO-3, 2000, p. 1). The quintessence of this is that the UN has adopted the concept of sustainable development in full – that is, including all key areas of social, economic and environmental sustainability – and wants the nations to follow suit. The nations, specifically those in the developed world, may have accepted the need to reduce pollution levels to some degree as long as it does not hurt, but they have not generally accepted the concept in full, especially not the notion of social and economic sustainability, because they fear that full implementation of the concept would cause a reduction in economic growth, and this they cannot afford because they need growth to support rising consumption levels. And the UN has virtually no power to make nations implement the full concept of sustainability. Unless and until governments, citizens and businesses in rich countries realise that their current quality of life will be potentially seriously affected in the not so distant future, they will not act. Curiously, this understanding seems to be clearer in some parts of the developed world than others.

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This then pushes the onus down to the level of individual nations as their governments are elected by, or generally representative of, the people and have legislative power to make the implementation of sustainability targets mandatory. Excessive production of pollution and waste and excessive levels of resource consumption could be taxed, equally so excessive wealth, but national governments would not dare to take such decisions for fear of losing the next election. There seems to be at least one rare exception, though: on 29 June 2006 the German Bundestag introduced a new tax for the rich, which came into effect on 1 January 2007. For individuals with an annual income of A250,000 or more, and for couples with an income of A500,000 or more, the top income tax level, previously 42 per cent, was increased by 3 per cent to 45 per cent. Provided that all other tax systems remain unchanged, the additional income tax will be used to reduce the gap between the rich and the poor (de.wikipedia). This is, however, certainly an exceptional case; owing to increasing global competition, nations and individual cities, when setting up their own version of Agenda 21, make decisions with local prerogatives and constraints in mind. It is therefore likely that local Agendas are all quite different, and are pursuing sets of different objectives with different action programmes. There is a likelihood that such Agendas may in rare cases be complementary; generally, however, they compete, and there is a good chance that competition may be harmful for both communities and the environment.

Notes 1 It is interesting to compare the reactions of scientists and politicians to The Limits to Growth – on grounds of insufficient data and questionable modelling approaches and underlying assumptions – with the reactions of scientists to the more empirically based and sophisticated ecological footprint analysis (EFA) of the combined consumption of resources and dissipation of waste, co-originated in the mid-1990s by Dr Mathis Wackernagel and Professor William Rees (Wackernagel and Rees, 1996). There were said to be a number of serious problems with EFA, in particular the translation of consumption levels into a single operational indicator (land area in hectares), which, a number of critiques considered, rendered EFA on its own unsuitable both for the definition of what the main problem is and for the development of adequate policy solutions (for the full argument, see van den Bergh and Verbruggen, 1999; compare also Ferguson et al., 2004). However, in view of the finite and shrinking quantities of non-renewable global resources and the limited natural replenishing capacity of the biosphere, the tendency of rising consumption levels of resources is bound to lead to the exhaustion of resources at some point, and the question is not whether this will happen, but when, if consumption levels are not drastically reduced. The message is essentially very similar to that of The Limits to Growth, and the EFA has become a very powerful tool for raising awareness of the impact of consumption on environmental and ecological sustainability. We will come back to this argument later in the book. 2 Here is a clear insight into the negative impact of pollution not only on the natural environment but also on human beings, and contemporary pictures of massive pollution levels and serious consequential health problems in China come to mind. 3 This clearly means that economic growth is only sustainable if the environment is protected from harm; it also means that external costs, usually ignored by contemporary growth economics, have to become part of the equation, that there is a price to pay for growth, and that this price may become higher the greater the rate of growth and the corresponding damaging change to the environment. But that there may come a point at which further growth and environmental protection is too expensive to be achievable is not discussed.

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4 Here is a call for developed nations not only to become supportive of industrialisation efforts by developing nations but also to help this process to become environmentally less destructive by providing advanced technologies that minimise environmental damage and other resources to remediate damage done. The cost of this kind of development will be high. 5 Although the proclamation also states that people are the most precious thing in the world, here is a clear understanding that population growth must be planned for, as it has implications on resource production and consumption, which in turn will have an impact on the environment. 6 These principles are clear precursors of the Brundtland Report’s definition of sustainability. 7 Principles 6, 7 and 8 illustrate the necessity of a balance between human requirements and the protection and conservation of a viable biosphere. 8 Increasing urbanisation is clearly something that has come up repeatedly in international debate, equally so global population growth, but the UN seems to feel unable to comment on both developments. The question that has to be asked is whether increasing urbanisation is an appropriate phenomenon or whether it needs intervention either to slow it down or change it, as even poor city dwellers use more resources than their rural counterparts. The question as to whether anything can or should be done to restrain global population growth and reduce resource consumption will be taken up in Chapter 3. 9 The European Union’s Emissions Trading Scheme, as an alternative, will be discussed in Chapter 2.

References Club of Rome Website, ABOUT. [online] http://clubofrome.org/about/index.phd. Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) 2006. The Energy Challenge: Energy Review Report 2006. Norwich: TSO. de.wikipedia. [online] http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichensteuer. Downie, D. L. and Levy, M. A. 2000. ‘The UN Environment Programme at a turning point: options for change’. In Chasek, P. S. (ed.) The Global Environment in the Twenty-first Century: Prospects for International Cooperation. Tokyo: United Nations University Press, pp. 355–377. DUKES (Digest of UK Energy Statistics) 2005. Fuel Used in Generation, chapter 5. URN no: 05/87a19. Edgerton, D. 2006. The Shock of the Old: Technology in Global History since 1900. London: Profile Books Ltd. envocare, 2000, updated 2007. The Kyoto Protocol, Background. [online] http://www.envo care.co.uk/kyoto_protocol.htm. Ferguson, L., McGregor, P., Swales, K. and Turner, K. 2004. The Environmental ‘Trade Balance’ between Scotland and the Rest of the UK. University of Stirling: scotecon. Gardiner, R. updated January 2002. Towards Earth Summit 2002. Briefing Paper, Stakeholder Forum for Our Common Future, London. [online] http://www.earthsummit2002.org/ Es2002.pdf. GEO-3 (Global Environment Outlook 3) 2002. Synthesis: Past, Present and Future Perspectives. UNEP: Earthscan. [online] http://www.unep.org/GEO/survey.htm. Heckmann, R. 2007. ‘Delivering sustainability: the effectiveness of regeneration plans in a market economy’. Unpublished doctoral thesis, Department of Architecture, University of Strathclyde. Kahn, H., Brown, W. and Martel, L. 1976. The Next 200 Years: A Scenario for America and the World. New York: William Marrow.

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Klose, F. 1985. A Brief History of the German Forest – Achievements and Mistakes Down the Ages. Eschborn, Germany: Deutsche Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit (GTZ). Meadows, D. L., Behrens, W. and Meadows, D. (eds) 1974. Dynamics of Growth in a Finite World. Cambridge, MA: Wright-Allen Press. Meadows, D. L., Meadows, D. I., Randers, J. and Behrens, W. W. III 1972. The Limits to Growth: A Report for the Club of Rome’s Project on the Predicament of Mankind. London: Earth Island. Meadows, D., Randers, J. and Meadows, D. 2004. Limits to Growth: The 30–Year Update. White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green Publishing Company. Mee, L. D. 2005. ‘The role of UNEP and UNDP in multilateral environment agreements’. International Environmental Agreements 2005, 5: 227–263. Rotterdam: Springer. Pestel, E. 1972. The Limits to Growth, Abstract. A Report to The Club of Rome. [online] http://www.clubofrome.org/docs/limits.rtf. Stern, N. 2007. The Economics of Climate Change: The Stern Review. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Suter, K. 1999. Fair Warning? The Club of Rome Revisited. [online] http://www.abc.net.au/ science/slab/rome/default.htm. UN 1983. Process of Preparation of the Environmental Perspective to the Year 2000 and Beyond. UN Document A/RES/38/161, 8.b. New York: United Nations. UN 1993. Earth Summit Agenda 21: The UN Programme of Action from Rio. New York: United Nations. UN 2000. United Nations Millennium Declaration. UN/A/Res/55/2. New York: United Nations. UN 2002. Report on the World Summit on Sustainable Development. Johannesburg, 26 August – 4 September 2002, A/CONF.199/20*, chapter 1, article 32. UN 2004. Press release, September 2004, New York: United Nations. [online] http://www.un.org/millenniumgoals/mdg_pr_09_2004.pdf. UN 2005. The Millennium Development Goals Report 2005. New York: United Nations. [online] http://unstats.un.org/unsd/mi/pdf/MDG%20Book.pdf. UN 2006. The Millennium Development Goals Report 2006. New York: United Nations, MDGReport2006.pdf. UNCED (United Nations Conference on Environment and Development) 1992. Rio de Janeiro, ‘Rio Declaration on Environment and Development’, ‘The Statement of Principles for Sustainable Management of Forests’ and ‘Agenda 21’. [online] http.www.un.org/esa/ sustdev/; ‘Sustainable Development’. [online] http://www.un.org/esa/sustdev/natlinfo/ indicators/isdms/table4.htm (Sustainability Indicators). UN CSD (United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development) 2001. Sustainability Indicators. [online] http://www.un.org/sustdev/natlinfo/indicators/isdms2001/table4. htm. UN CSD NGO (United Nations Commission on Sustainable Development, NGO Steering Committee) 2 February 2000. ‘Non Paper, Earth Summit 2002’, p. 1. [online] http://www.earthsummit2002.org/roadmap/ES2002.html. UN DPI (UN Department of Public Information) October 2002. Implementing the Millennium Declaration: Millennium Development Goals and the United Nations Role, Factsheet 1. New York: UN Department of Public Information. UNEP 1972. Declaration of the United Nations Conference on the Human Environment, Stockholm 1972. [online] http://www.unep.org/Documents.multilingual/Default.asp? DocumentID=97&ArticleID=1503. UNEP no date [2006?]. Organisation Profile.

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UNEP RRC.AP (United Nations Environment Programme, Regional Resource Centre for Asia and the Pacific) 2004. Environmental Indicators Central Asia, Pathumthani, Thailand: Asian Institute of Technology. [online] http://earthwatch.unep.net/europe/index.php (ICA.pdf). UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) 1997. Kyoto Protocol. [online] http://unfccc.int/resource/docs/convkp/kpeng.html. UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) no date. Compliance under the Kyoto Protocol: Compliance Mechanisms. [online] http://unfccc.int/kyoto_protocol /compliance/items/2875.php. UNGA (UN General Assembly) 1972. Resolution 2997 (XXVII) of the UN General Assembly, 15 December. New York: United Nations. UNGA (UN General Assembly) 1993. Report of the UN Conference on Environment and Development, United Nations, A/CONF.151/26/Ref.1. New York: United Nations. UNGA (UN General Assembly) 1997. UN Resolution A/RES/S-19/2. Programme for the Further Implementation of Agenda 21, adopted by the UN General Assembly 19 September. New York: United Nations. UNGA (UN General Assembly) 2005. UN Resolution 60/1, 24 October. New York: United Nations. University of Göttingen: Forestry in Germany. [online] http://www.holz.uni-goettingen. de/forestry/mining.html. van den Bergh, J. C. J. M and Verbruggen, H. 1999. ‘Spatial sustainability, trade and indicators: an evolution of the “ecological footprint”’. Ecological Economics, 29: 61–72. Wackernagel, M. and Rees, W. 1996. Our Ecological Footprint. Philadelphia: New Society Publications. Wallich, H. C. 1972. ‘More on Growth’. Newsweek editorial, 13 March, p. 86. WCED (World Commission on Environment and Development) 1987. Our Common Future: Report of the World Commission on Environment and Development. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wikipedia [online] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forestry. Wikipedia: unknown author, no date. Limits to Growth. [online] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Limits_to_Growth.

Chapter 2

The EU debate on sustainable development

The first European response to the Brundtland Report was the Green Paper on the Urban Environment published by the European Commission in Brussels (CEC, 1990). The Green Paper highlights functional, social, economic and environmental problems of today’s cities and puts forward objectives towards a more sustainable urban environment. The Green Paper promotes the compact city and thus endorses the return to the ‘traditional’ dense and mixed-use European city that is seen to have urban qualities not provided by sprawling cities: ●

● ● ● ●

● ●

efficiencies in terms of the distribution of human activities; optimal use of its infrastructure and viable public transport and non-car-based movement systems (Lloyd-Jones, 2004, p. 19); the preservation of valuable land and energy through dense development; good access to workplaces, services and facilities and a reduced need to travel; the potential for social mixing; a high quality of life, a safe and vibrant environment as well as support for businesses and services as a result of the concentration of people and activities in urban quarters; reduced levels of pollution as a result of reduced car usage; vitality, diversity, and options for a wide mix of activities, social amenities and cultural facilities (Girardet, 2001, p. 49).

The focus on the characteristics of the city invigorated an intense and often rather hectic debate on sustainable urban form, on the compact city, on decentralised concentration or the polycentric city, and on compromise positions, a debate that is well documented (see Jenks et al. 1996; see also Frey, 1999, chapter 2). This focus not only on economic, social and environmental issues but also on the physical characteristics of the city is most refreshing, as in all the UN conferences and summits on sustainable development the impact of the city form on people and the environment – for instance, the impact of the inclusion of green spaces on human health, well-being and sanity and on biodiversity – is not discussed at all. This seems to have more to do with the UN’s focus of discussion on the environment and development on a global level on which the city is too small an entity rather than with the fact that most people involved in the international debate on sustainable development seem to be lawyers, scientists, politicians and bureaucrats. But the omission of physical characteristics of the city and city region is deplorable, as the Rio Summit calls for cities and

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local authorities to generate Local Agenda 21s without encouraging them also to include the appropriate indicators of urban form at large and of local places, urban spaces and landscapes. But even on a regional level the discussion of urban development cannot ignore the importance of the relationship between open green spaces and urban fabric, as this relationship is one of the keys to sustainability (see Hough, 1989). Later case studies will illustrate this. The link between city form and Agenda 21 is well established by the Working Group on Urban Design for Sustainability: it suggests that the ‘Short Cycles City’ model, a further development of the polycentric city, includes ecological and environmental principles. It ‘is associated with the environmental thrust of Local Agenda 21 and an emphasis on achieving local environmental sustainability through more effective local use of natural resources and recycling, greater local economic autonomy and a smaller “ecological footprint”’ (Lloyd-Jones, 2004, p. 19). In formal or structural terms this model responds to the existing nature of today’s networked city region and can be adapted and implemented in various urban forms such as dense city cores and new greenfield development. This model aims to increase the quantity, quality and accessibility of green spaces in cities, enlarging and integrating the green structure, for example through green networks and the landscaping of the public realm, giving additional possibilities for recreation and leisure as well as having an intentional ecological impact on the microclimate of the city and reducing the impacts of pollution. (ibid., p. 21)

However, when returning to the European debate on sustainable development, one should not be surprised that it follows very closely that at international level and has little to say on the urban environment. The European Union was founded with the Treaty of Maastricht in 1992, which came into effect in 1993. On 1 January 2007 the number of its member states increased to 27. Its main task is to promote throughout the Community harmonious, balanced and sustainable development of economic activities, a high level of employment and of social protection, equality between men and women, sustainable and non-inflationary growth, a high degree of competitiveness and convergence of economic performance, a high level of protection and improvement of the quality of the environment, the raising of the standard of living and quality of life and economic and social cohesion and solidarity among Member States. (The 15 Member States, 1997; Heckmann, 2007, chapter 3.2)

The three pillars of sustainability – sustainable economy, sustainable environment, and social equity – are all mentioned but, as further investigation will show, not fully developed. The objectives of the EU are:

36

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the creation of a common policy in the spheres of agriculture and fisheries, transport, commerce, environment, development cooperation and in the social sphere comprising a European Social Fund; the strengthening of economic and social cohesion and of competitiveness of Community industry; the contribution to the attainment of a high level of health protection, a high quality of education and training, the flowering of culture, the strengthening of consumer protection; a prohibition of custom duties between member states and quantitative restrictions on the import and export of goods; a coordination of employment policies; measures in the spheres of energy, civil protection and tourism; the promotion of research and technological development; and the creation of measures concerning movement of persons, trans-European networks, overseas trade and internal market competition (ibid., Article 3).

By now this sounds fairly familiar, but, in comparison with the relatively weak legislative position the UN finds itself in when pursuing the implementation of objectives through action programmes, the EU has the power to create and enforce legislation in areas set out by the Treaty of the European Union. In the context of international governance, the European Union holds a globally unique position. It is the largest federation of independent states, and holds considerable sovereignty that member states agreed to transfer to the Union. As such, certain areas of the European Union (EU) have the character of a federation, whereas in key areas of national interest, the members of the EU have given up relatively little national sovereignty. (Heckmann, 2007, chapter 3.2)

Nevertheless, the European Council has the power to generate in some areas legally binding regulations that override national legislation by the governments of member states. However, issues of environmental protection, of development coordination and of social cohesion are policy areas in which the EU can take action only if the objectives of the proposed action cannot be sufficiently achieved by the member states themselves. The Council cannot impose a prescriptive measure that would negatively affect one of the member states while being beneficial to another. The 2006 Report on Impact Assessment of the Commission of the European Communities (CEC) states that ‘the procedural nature of the obligation and the difficulty of establishing clear, measurable improvements in environmental performance for urban areas to achieve as a whole means that the final outcome of such obligations is uncertain’ (CEC, 2006, p. 27). The report acknowledges that providing support and facilitating the exchange of good practice and skills would not lead to the same positive impacts as an approach based on obligations. It found, however, that obligations that do not specify measures, outcomes and performance standards would equally have an uncertain outcome.

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The Commission of the EU therefore adopted a strategy of integrated sustainable development management on a voluntary basis. Key areas that require an integrated approach that responds to the conditions and constraints of individual local areas are air quality, transport and mobility, noise pollution, urban sprawl, waste disposal, energy and water usage, biodiversity, greenhouse gas emissions, and sustainable construction. In these areas the EU is limited to the creation of networking and demonstration projects; support, training and the development of required skills; the creation of a Commission Internet Postal for Local Authorities; offering financial support for investments to meet environmental priorities; support for capacity building by making funds available for research and training guidance at European level on the creation and implementation of sustainable transport plans and integrated environmental measures; and incentives to promote best practices adopted by national, regional and local authorities (CEC, 2006, pp. 20ff.). However, the EU has, and has used, the power to implement legislative measures regarding the environment: the preservation, protection and improvement of the quality of the environment and the prudent and rational utilisation of natural resources (the very words of the UN Stockholm conference), including oil products, natural gas and solid fuels (European Union, 2006). The EU has adopted legislative measures – not necessarily with obligatory targets but with an obligation to implement the programme – in areas affecting town and country planning, land use, the general structure of energy supply, groundwater pollution and air pollutants. Regarding energy efficiency through the reduction of CO2 emissions (CEC, 1993), member states are required to implement programmes in the field of energy certification of buildings; billing of heating, air conditioning and hot water costs on the basis of actual consumption; thermal insulation of new buildings; the third-party financing of energy efficiency investments in the public sector; and energy audits of undertakings of high energy consumption. There are again no obligatory targets, but the implementation of the directive is mandatory (European Parliament and the Council, 2002). Regarding waste and landfill, the EU asks for the prevention or reduction of waste production and its harmfulness; the recovery of waste by means of recycling, reuse or reclamation; the reduction of the movement of waste to a minimum (European Parliament and the Council, 2006). Other measures for the protection of the environment include the disposal of urban waste water; and the reduction of greenhouse gases and general air pollutants. The Montreal Protocol, the UNFCCC and the Kyoto Protocol control the reduction of CO2 emissions, predominantly by the transport sector. In conjunction with the Kyoto Protocol, the EU created the world’s only mandatory Emissions Trading Scheme (EU ETS), which commenced operation on 1 January 2005. ETS makes industrial decision makers realise the true cost of CO2 and the benefits of reducing emissions in economically beneficial ways to meet the Kyoto targets. ‘Emissions trading allows companies to emit CO2 in excess of their allocation of allowances by purchasing allowances from the market. Similarly, a company that emits less than its allocation of allowances can sell surplus allowances on the market’ (setatwork). The EU is likely to implement stricter measures regarding carbon emissions of vehicles, to

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continue the active promotion of alternative energy sources and to raise minimum standards for building materials and energy efficiency of buildings. We will not go into further investigation of other Directives, the total number of which by now is over 120, but it has become obvious that – thanks to its capacity for generating legally binding directives in some fields – the EU has adopted a much more methodical approach than the UN and has generated numerous target values and benchmarks, largely missing in Agenda 21, that enable nations and cities of the European Union to develop precise action programmes to meet the targets in the required time frame, thus eliminating the problem of decisions being made nationally and locally by people without special knowledge in the field of sustainability, decisions that result in uncertain outcomes. It is, however, abundantly clear that the target values and benchmarks developed by the EU deal predominantly if not exclusively with the reduction of environmental stress (by reducing CO2 emissions, achieving energy efficiency for cars, appliances and buildings, managing waste, waste water and pollution, improving river water quality, and so on), all environment-related issues largely of a technical-scientific nature that are measurable and quantifiable. It is also abundantly clear that little is said about sustainable urban development at large, or about biodiversity, resource consumption and social equity, all issues of a socio-economic and environmental-ecological nature that are largely not, or not directly, measurable and quantifiable. In these fields the European Council can only generate guidance, but even that guidance seems to be rather sparse. Any development decisions relating to these fields will therefore be carried out in individual member states and cities. These decisions will reflect local conditions, needs and interests, and will protect continued economic growth. They may, therefore differ from decisions of other member states. The EU supports member states and local authorities by promoting best practice and encouraging exchange of experiences between cities, but the coordination of national development plans is virtually non-existent. The inevitable conclusion is that true sustainable development is likely to be unachievable within the current EU framework. And this pushes the onus down to the national level. Any prescriptive measures beyond the EU Directives to achieve sustainable development have to be introduced at the national level, but to our knowledge no such measures have been implemented by any of the EU member states except again on a voluntary basis.

References CEC (Commission of the European Communities) 1990. Green Paper on the Urban Environment: Communication from the Commission to Council and Parliament. COM (90) 218 final. CEC (Council of the European Communities) 1993. Limitation on Carbon Dioxide Emissions by Improving Energy Efficiency. Council Directive 93/76/EEC, Official Journal L 237, 22/09/1993, pp. 0028–0030. CEC (Commission of the European Communities) 2006. Communication from the Commission to the Council and the European Parliament: Thematic Strategy on the Urban Environment Impact Assessment. EU document no. SEC (2006) 16.

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European Parliament and the Council 2002. On the Energy Performance of Buildings. Directive 2002/91/EC, Official Journal L 1/65, 04/01/2003. European Parliament and the Council 2006. On Waste. Directive 2006/12/EEC, Official Journal L 114/9, 27 April. European Union 2006. Consolidated Version of the Treaty on European Union and of the Treaty Establishing a European Union. Official Journal of the European Union, C321 E/1, Title XIX, Article 174. Frey, H. 1999. Designing the City: Towards a More Sustainable Urban Form. London: E. & F. N. Spon; New York: Routledge. Girardet, H. 2001. Creating Sustainable Cities 2nd edition. Dartington: Green Books. Heckmann, R. 2007. ‘Delivering sustainability: the effectiveness of regeneration plans in a market economy’. Unpublished doctoral thesis, Department of Architecture, University of Strathclyde. Hough, M. 1989. City Form and Natural Process. London: Routledge. Jenks, M., Burton, E. and Williams, K. 1996. The Compact City: A Sustainable Urban Form? London: E. & F. N. Spon. Lloyd-Jones, T. (ed.) 2004. Urban Design for Sustainability. Final Report of the Working Group on Urban Design for Sustainability to the European Union Expert Group on the Urban Environment, January 2004. setatwork: ETS – European Union Emissions Trading Scheme. [online] http://www.setat work.eu/euets.htm. The 15 Member States 1997. Treaty of Amsterdam amending the Treaty on European Union, the Treaties establishing the European Communities and certain related acts – Consolidated version of the Treaty establishing the European Community. Part One, Article 2, Official Journal C 340, 10 November, p. 0173. [online] http://eur-lex.europa.eu.

Chapter 3

The UK guidance to achieve sustainable development

The impact of UN and EU sustainable development guidance on UK policies The Brundtland Report of 1987, the European Green Paper on the Urban Environment of 1990 and the launch of Agenda 21 at the Rio Summit in 1992 had considerable impact on the European political scene. The UK response at national level was in the form of a number of Planning Policy Guidance (PPG) notes and a sustainable development strategy that signalled a major shift, in some areas a U-turn, in policy. The first of the guidance notes is worth summarising: ●

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PPG3: Housing (DoE, 1992) stresses the need to build a maximum percentage (around 60 per cent) of additionally required housing within existing urban areas to reduce the need to travel, halt urban sprawl, and to preserve open green areas and the countryside. This note is concerned about the government’s estimate that 3.8 million extra households would form between 1996 and 2021 and the impact this would have on the city and the countryside if the currently preferred form of living in low-density suburbia should prevail. PPG6: Town Centres and Retail (DoE, 1993) calls for the integration of retail outlets into, or adjacent to, urban cores rather than in out-of-town locations to maintain economically and socially vibrant core areas, increase accessibility and reduce car-dependent travel. PPG13: Transport (DoE and DoT, 1994) emphasises the interrelationship between land-use planning and transport. The key message is that the need to travel can be reduced by the appropriate location of development and by encouraging forms of development that promote sustainable modes of transport, including public transport. It also recommends that existing urban densities should be maintained and, where appropriate, increased. PPG15: Planning and the Historic Environment (DoE, 1994) is concerned about the loss of town centre facilities in many of the historical urban cores and points to ‘the capacity of historic towns to sustain development’. The UK Strategy for Sustainable Development (UK Government, 1994) was published in response to the Rio Earth Summit. It highlights the important role of the planning system in the pursuit of sustainable development and, reinforcing PPG13, the need to derive policy that relates land uses and transport.

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PPG1 (revised): General Policy and Principles (DETR, 1997) provides a more strategic view of the role of the planning system, specifically its contribution to sustainable development. It also summarises and thus reinforces other policies: the integration of land-use and transport planning; planning for housing; the importance of town centres; the role and importance of rural areas; the need for the conservation of our heritage. It furthermore stresses the role of design considerations in planning and contains a new section on the Citizen’s Charter and property.

Two observations can be made already at this stage. The first is that the vast majority of UK Planning Policy Guidance notes (many of which followed the initial PPGs mentioned above), and even to a degree the UK Strategy for Sustainable Development, are concerned not only with socio-economic and environmental qualities or inefficiencies of the city but also with urban form as it largely exists – a dense mixed-use core area, accommodating administration, business, retail and entertainment uses but very little if any housing, surrounded by sprawling low-density car-dependent housing areas – and the form and structure development should take for the city to become more sustainable – a revitalised mixed-use core area accommodating housing as well as all previous uses, and intensified (sub)urban areas in terms of population density and a larger variety of uses in order to support local services and facilities and public transport. It is obvious that the UK approach to sustainable development is largely pragmatic: it is out to solve existing urban problems and prevent such future problems. It is also obvious that much of what the government produces, including PPGs and departmental papers, is putting forward general or, in some cases, more precise targets that are not legally binding and cannot therefore be enforced. The United Kingdom being a member state of the European Union, it is the European Council that sets the only legally binding targets in the United Kingdom in the form of Directives. The government’s PPGs and other output are based on a broad and all-embracing canvas of social, economic and environmental indicators of sustainable development, largely in pursuit of Agenda 21, but action programmes focus on practical ways in which urban development should be handled and controlled by local authorities. This approach becomes evident in a number of ways, as will be seen shortly. The second observation is that the guidance notes seem to reorientate the political and planning view towards the traditional compact European town and city with a sharp edge to the countryside, medium to high densities and mixed uses throughout, and with the smallest ‘building block’ being the walkable urban quarter or neighbourhood with its own local services and facilities within walking distance of people’s homes. In the traditional town or city, neighbourhoods cluster to form urban districts with a district centre of higher capacity in comparison to that of the neighbourhood; districts cluster to form towns with their centres, and so forth. In view of the fact that the majority of the urbanised areas in the United Kingdom are not structured like that at all means that to achieve the projected view of the future urban world, a considerable amount of restructuring of towns and

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cities would be required. The message is clear: to achieve sustainability requires not only new development to be guided by appropriate urban models and targets but also the review of the forms, structure, land-use pattern and socio-economic conditions of existing urban areas. The prominence of this view of the city of the twenty-first century becomes obvious in the final report of the Urban Task Force, Towards an Urban Renaissance (Urban Task Force, 1999). There is, however, a problem that is frequently ignored. There is no firm empirical evidence, at least not yet, that any one form of urban development and management is more sustainable than any other. This holds true for a number of governmental guidance notes, as it does too for the Urban Task Force’s recommendations. Although we know that suburban sprawl in, say, Phoenix requires more transportation energy per capita than high densities in, say, New York City (Newman and Kenworthy, 1989), it is not clear whether the overall energy consumption per capita in New York City is less than that in Phoenix. And there are other factors to consider, such as resilience, vulnerability, safety and security, overall consumption of resources, generation of waste, and so on. It is prudent, therefore, to be aware of the lack of firm evidence on the design and management of cities.

The Urban Task Force report The Urban Task Force was formed on request of the then Deputy Prime Minister, John Prescott. Its mission is to reinvigorate and regenerate the city: The Urban Task Force will identify causes of urban decline in England and recommend practical solutions to bring people back into our cities, towns and urban neighbourhoods. It will establish a new vision for urban regeneration founded on the principles of design excellence, social well-being and environmental responsibility within a viable economic and legislative framework. (Urban Task Force, internal front cover page)

Working from an understanding that the modern city had failed socially, functionally and formally or spatially, the Urban Task Force recommends a return to a traditional, well-functioning, economically viable but also well-planned and designed and well-built and therefore human town and city, the theoretical foundation for which had been established by Kevin Lynch, Gordon Cullan, Christopher Alexander, Jane Jacobs, Oscar Newman and many others in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. The recommendation is that towns and cities of the future have to return to the universal urban model that had existed for millennia: neighbourhoods with local centres providing easy access on foot to services and facilities and public transport; a development and population density that supports these amenities; a variety of uses and social mix; streets and squares fronted, and thus made safe, by buildings, as spaces not only for mobility and economic activities but also for people and social activities. To achieve this requires the return to a design-based approach of urban development. These recommendations caused another major shift in UK policy and

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were to yield a new approach to the planning, design and building of new urban villages and sustainable communities, as we shall see. Part 1 of the report is on the sustainable city, and therefore of special interest in the context of this investigation. The key recommendation is to develop ‘a higher quality urban product by creating compact urban developments, based on the creation of integrated urban transport systems that prioritise the needs of pedestrians, cyclists and public transport passengers’ (ibid., p. 11). This is said to be achievable by the following action programmes: ●

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Create a national urban design framework, disseminating key design principles through land use planning and public funding guidance. Undertake area demonstration projects which illustrate the benefits of a designled approach to the urban regeneration process. Make public funding and planning permissions for area regeneration schemes conditional upon the production of an integrated spatial masterplan. Commit a minimum 65% of transport public expenditure to programmes and projects which prioritise walking, cycling and public transport, over the next ten years. Place local transport plans on a statutory footing. They should include explicit targets for reducing car journeys, and increasing year on year the proportion of trips made on foot, bicycle and by public transport. Introduce Home Zones, in partnership with local communities, which give residential areas special legal status in controlling traffic movement through the neighbourhood. (ibid., p. 11)

In contrast to much of the rhetoric of papers reviewed earlier, the Urban Task Force is out to solve the problem of 3.8 million new homes being required by 2021 and to achieve a more compact and more sustainable city form and structure supported by an integrated transport system. But the Task Force confirms that the regeneration of urban areas to achieve sustainable development focuses not only on accomplishing sustainable urban forms and structures but also on improving people’s prosperity and quality of life – that is, ‘not just housing and planning, but education, transport and fighting crime as well’ (DCLG, 2000, Executive Summary, p. 1). We have arrived at government’s response to the Task Force recommendations, which therefore do not need to be pursued further.

The government’s White Paper of 2000 The response of central government to the recommendations of the Urban Task Force report is the publication of the Department of Communities and Local Government’s White Paper Our Towns and Cities: The Future (DCLG, 2000). It is anchored in the understanding that people want the same things: ‘jobs, a healthy economy, a decent home, and good public services, and an attractive and safe environment’ (ibid., p. 1).

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Chapter 1 investigates the strengths and weaknesses of towns and cities in England. It suggests that in most areas there is much that is good and should be preserved and enhanced. In some areas, however, there are major problems: a poor environment, a failing local economy, inadequate services and serious social problems, including crime, vandalism and deprivation. These problems need to be addressed so that all can share in and contribute to the United Kingdom’s growing prosperity as a nation. Chapter 2 elaborates on the characteristics of towns and cities in England. There is reference to the growing number of smaller households that generates the need for 3.8 million additional homes by 2021. It talks about the exodus of people and businesses from our cities and towns to suburbs, fringe areas, shire towns and rural areas, leading to the expansion of urban areas and the loss of greenfield areas as well as the erosion of urban cores and the pricing out of rural communities by the better off, leaving towns and cities and reducing rural villages to dormitories. It highlights the growing social polarisation of previously healthy communities near the city centre, with those unable to move having to live in a poor environment with high levels of crime. It focuses attention on the wasteful use of natural resources and increased pollution caused by those who move out and travel greater distances, predominantly by car, to get to work, shops and leisure places. It suggests that conurbations perform less well than the rest of the country on most key indicators in terms of educational achievements, health, crime and deprivation. It states that towns and cities create the vast majority of domestic waste, of which only 9 per cent is recycled, in comparison to 30 per cent in many areas of Europe and the United States. Urban areas are said to produce nearly half of the United Kingdom emissions of airborne particles. The chapter talks about noise pollution, traffic congestion, fouling by dogs, litter and rubbish. But there are also positive signs. The population decline has slowed down (in some areas population has actually increased as a result of natural growth and international inward migration), and there is some evidence of population growth in core areas, and a growth in total employment during the 1990s. Then the chapter develops a vision that meets the challenges: people shaping the future of their communities, supported by strong and truly representative leaders; people living in attractive, well-kept towns and cities; good design and planning that make it practical to live in a more environmentally sustainable way with less noise, pollution and traffic congestion; and good-quality services – health, education, housing, transport, shopping, leisure and protection from crime – that meet the needs of the people wherever they are. Chapter 3 focuses on delivering better towns and cities through effective partnerships, joined-up strategies, effective policies and programmes, and the provision of required resources. Chapter 4 is about places for people, the creation of a high-quality urban environment. With reference to the Urban Task Force, this is said to be achieved by better planning and design, bringing previously developed land and empty property back into beneficial economic or social use, and by looking after the existing urban environment better and working to improve it further. It is made clear that to accommodate the 3.8 million additional households, urban space needs to be used

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well. To achieve sustainable development requires the discontinuation of previous planning policies that have allowed major shopping development outside urban areas; the fragmentation of communities and the separation of places where people shop, work, spend their leisure time; patterns of development that encourage unnecessary travel; poor-quality design and layouts; and poor building practices. The way forward is an approach to design and development of urban areas that makes efficient use of available land and buildings and reduces the demand for greenfield development. To achieve this requires the modernisation of planning and the reintroduction of spatial planning frameworks, improved local participation and delivery, quality construction and building regulations, the promotion of centres of excellence, setting good examples and showing the benefits of good design (in pilot ‘urban village’ projects), new financial incentives, state aid, and looking after the urban environment better. Chapter 5 is on creating and sharing prosperity. The government aim is for all towns and cities to be economically successful: identifying and building on their economic strengths; encouraging enterprise and innovation across society; providing employment opportunities for all; and promoting lifelong learning so they have a flexible and adaptable workforce. This can be achieved in a number of ways: learning from success; facilitating economic success through coordinated action with the national government establishing a macro-economic framework that supports a strong and stable economy, regional strategies for promoting sustainable regional economic growth, and local action to generate community strategy in response to local conditions and needs. This furthermore needs policies and programmes facilitating economic success; promoting a culture of enterprise and innovation; encouraging increased investment; providing employment opportunities for all; and providing an efficient, reliable and safe transport system. Chapter 6 talks about quality services and opportunities for all. It reiterates that the majority of people living in urban areas enjoy good services, safe surroundings and opportunities to enjoy culture, leisure and sport. In some areas there are poor-quality services, and people live in fear of crime. Government is promoting substantial improvements in all key areas to achieve quality services for all: higher educational achievements; an improved health service; the reduction of crime; improved quality of housing; efficient and reliable transport; a healthy and vibrant cultural, leisure and sporting life; a community legal service; transforming the most deprived areas; and a national strategy for neighbourhood renewal that integrates education, employment, health and crime issues with housing. The final chapter, Chapter 7, focuses on making the urban renaissance happen. The Urban White Paper is seen as the foundation for delivery and the completion of the first phase of the government’s long-term programme for improving and reviving our towns and cities. The government has provided substantial extra resources over the next three years to deliver better services in line with those strategies, and backed the resources with challenging targets set in public service agreements. And the government has developed good examples of new models for rejuvenating towns and cities through urban regeneration companies and Millennium Communities (the pilot villages schemes already mentioned). What is now needed is action by everyone (sec. 7.7).

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Summary of and comments on the Urban Task Force report and the Urban White Paper It can be concluded that the 2000 Urban White Paper sets out a comprehensive plan for social, economic, environmental and physical improvement programmes with an array of targets. As the Urban Task Force recommended, a programme of Millennium Villages and Sustainable Communities was started even before the publication of the Urban Task Force report in 1999. It is accordingly possible to see the direct impact of government policies and Urban Task Force recommendations in community pilot projects developed on the basis of a sustainable development framework that can be upgraded using the feedback from the monitoring of the pilot villages projects, and this is a rare coincidence. If monitoring is consistent, then it might be possible to generate empirical values that lead to sustainable development. Neither the Task Force report nor the Urban White Paper makes any direct references to the UN events and proclamations in Stockholm in 1972, New York and the Brundland Report in 1987, and the Rio Summit and Agenda 21 in 1992. But their influence is obvious and will become specifically clear when we review the United Kingdom Millennium Community programme brief in the next chapter. In contrast to the UN proclamations, the two United Kingdom documents are narrower in their field of vision of sustainable development and do not consider environmental, social and economic issues on a global level. When the two documents talk about environment, they focus very clearly on the local, regional and national English environment, not the United Kingdom as a whole (although their impact on Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland is considerable), or even the global environment. This explains why some important issues of sustainable development are not covered at all, specifically resource consumption levels and ecological footprints, which in the United Kingdom are way above the average global share per capita of bioproductive land and therefore not sustainable, as will be shown later in the book.

References Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) 2000. Our Towns and Cities: The Future. London: TSO. Department of the Environment (DoE) 1992. Planning Policy Guidance 3: Housing. London: HMSO. Department of the Environment (DoE) 1993. Planning Policy Guidance 6: Town Centres and Retail. London: HMSO. Department of the Environment (DoE) 1994. Planning Policy Guidance 15: Planning and the Historic Environment. London: HMSO. Department of the Environment (DoE) and Department of Transport (DoT) 1994. Planning Policy Guidance 13: Transport. London: HMSO. Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions (DETR) 1997. Planning Policy Guidance 1 (revised). London: TSO. Newman, P. and Kenworthy, J. 1989. Cities and Automobile Dependence. Aldershot: Gower. UK Government 1994. Sustainable Development: The UK Strategy. London: HMSO. Urban Task Force 1999. Towards an Urban Renaissance. London: E. & F. N. Spon.

Chapter 4

Best-practice case studies

Introduction So far the investigation has focused on sustainability frameworks as promoted by the United Nations, the European Commission and the UK government. It is now time to investigate how such frameworks are employed – that is, to search for integrated and comprehensive city and city region models, policies and plans currently being pursued in the attempt to establish sustainable development. Two cases will be investigated. The first is that of the Millennium Villages and Sustainable Communities initiative of the UK government. The second is one of the most impressive sets of development frameworks for an urban region, the Greater Vancouver Regional District (GVRD).

The UK Millennium Villages and Millennium Communities programme The previous chapter briefly discussed the Urban Task Force recommendations of 1999. One of its proposals is that area demonstration projects should be undertaken that illustrate the benefits of a design-led approach to urban regeneration. Even before the publication of the Urban Task Force Report, the Secretary of State for the Environment, John Prescott, launched the Millennium Communities Programme and, in July 1997, the first Millennium Village development competition (on a site at Greenwich, London). The programme is intended to set the standard for 21st Century living, and to serve as a model for the creation of new communities. This is to be done through encouraging innovation in building technologies, increasing economic and social self-sufficiency, achieving exemplar standards of functional urban design and focusing on sustainable development that addresses energy and conservation issues and building technologies. The second Millennium Village is being developed at Allerton Bywater, east of Leeds, and the winning consortium was announced during June 1999. These first two Millennium Villages are to herald the beginning of a rolling programme, which is set to create between five and ten new sustainable communities throughout the UK. (ODPM, 2005, chapter 1, sections 1.2.1 and 1.2.2)

Other projects are to be carried out in West Silverton and Waltham Forest, both in London, and at the Duchy of Cornwall’s Poundbury scheme in Dorset.

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English Partnerships set up the Millennium Communities programme in conjunction with the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister; the programme is now the responsibility of the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG). Its key objectives are to provide a range of high quality innovative homes to facilitate an environmentally friendly lifestyle. Each of the seven new developments will include green open spaces, wildlife areas and recreation facilities to provide public and private spaces where people want to live and community life flourishes. Good transport links, shops and community facilities are a priority and planners have been tasked with giving as much thought to the need of pedestrians and cyclists, as they do car-users. These concepts do not mean that all communities look the same. Each one has been individually master-planned and designed to take account of the local environment. (English Partnerships, 2007)

By now there are five more Millennium Communities schemes, in Manchester, King’s Lynn, Telford, Milton Keynes and Hastings. Both programmes are an astonishing and inspiring undertaking in scale and ambition because they are potentially capable of generating the firm evidence base that is currently missing for more sustainable future settlements. We are not aware of a similar attempt on a similar scale to plan, develop and then test a number of pilot settlements anywhere in Europe. There are, of course, urban village or urban quarter projects in continental Europe – for instance, in Germany the well-known urban quarters Vauban and Rieselfeld in Freiburg im Breisgau, or the French Quarter in Tübingen – but these projects are initiated by individual local authorities and are therefore not coordinated by common development objectives and criteria, as are the Millennium Villages and Sustainable Communities in the United Kingdom. Surprisingly, China is currently building several new towns which exceed the size, scope and time frame of the Millennium Villages, and several of these have environmental imperatives based, as we understand, on a central government sustainable development programme. The Millennium Villages project brief states the study purpose: to facilitate the subsequent evaluation of the Millennium Villages initiative and to draw out the transferable lessons which could be fed back into their development. The research would also aim to support the achievement of sustainable communities more generally in a wider range of contexts, including local housing and regeneration programmes in urban areas, small towns and rural areas. (ODPM, 2005, section 1.3.1)

The project’s key goal, to create sustainable settlements and sustainable communities, is based on the notion of sustainable development as defined by the Brundtland Report, the World Conservation Union (IUCN, 1991) and the Aalborg Declaration (ICLEI, 1994), which bring together the key concepts of sustainable

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communities (ODPM, 2005, sections 2.2.1–2.2.4): the need to reconcile and integrate environmental requirements on the one hand and human requirements on the other; the need to preserve resources for future generations; meeting the social, environmental and economic needs of all residents while maintaining the social, environmental and economic systems on which these depend; the sustainable settlement as a dynamic, self-maintaining, interconnected social, economic and environmental system (which meets its needs and manages its impacts internally, or by fair reciprocal arrangement, and not by dumping its problems on other places); equity between people; and community participation. These key concepts, all rather familiar by now, are translated into a ‘working definition of key aspects of sustainable communities’ (ODPM, 2005, section 2.5.1), as part of the value of the project is seen as being ‘to clarify and refine what we mean by a sustainable settlement. Initial definitions should only, and can only, be the starting point: in applying them we will find how they need to be changed and improved’ (ibid., section 2.5.2). The study adopted several broad themes or criteria for a sustainable community, which were then used in the evaluation of the first test places: resource consumption should be minimised;1 local environmental capital should be protected;2 design quality should be high; equity and social inclusion should be increased; participation in governance should be as broad as possible; and the community should be commercially viable in the sense of not requiring public subsidies to maintain its performance on the other criteria. A further criterion, ‘integration’, was included in the list on the basis of an understanding that a sustainable settlement would have all seven characteristics or qualities without unduly compromising the achievement of individual characteristics. This list does not really look like a clarification of the concepts of sustainable development of Stockholm, the Brundtland Report, the Rio Summit and Agenda 21, and it does not really look like a working definition either, because it is far too vague to be directly implemented without there first being developed an interpretation of what the criteria actually mean in operational terms. In view of the importance and ambition of the programme and the cost of the projects, this is somewhat disappointing. However, for the Sustainable Communities projects very specific environmental and quality benchmarks for energy efficiency, water consumption, building defects, recycling, and health and safety on-site were set which developers are required to meet; these benchmarks are updated for each new development project (English Partnerships, 2007). It is not possible to go into a detailed examination of any of these projects. We are referring to the evaluation by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister of what had been achieved by 2005. A final evaluation result is as yet unavailable, as some of the projects are still under development, but also because it is perhaps too early for an effective post-occupancy evaluation. Nevertheless, the ODPM evaluation indicates that some of the village projects seem to have been more successful in their response to specific project criteria than others and that some villages are performing better overall than others, and that therefore lessons can be truly learned. It can therefore be expected that future projects will have programmes that have been improved as a result of the feedback obtained from the evaluation of current projects.

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The conclusion is, however, that, similarly to Directives and recommendations at EU level, the pursuit of objectives of sustainable development in the UK projects discussed focuses primarily on indicators that are valid for local sustainable development, although action is being taken to protect the local and national environments from pollution. But the global dimension of sustainability, specifically in terms of production and consumption of global resources and in terms of the protection of the global environment, is not included. What will therefore be achieved is a number of Millennium Villages and Sustainable Communities that satisfy the sustainability indicators set at national level but do not satisfy indicators set at global level. These villages and communities will be locally ‘sustainable’ despite the fact that their resource consumption levels are way above those that would achieve global sustainability, as we shall see later.

Development frameworks for the Greater Vancouver Regional District (GVRD) The plans for GVRD have been developed over the past one and a half decades or so, including citiesPLUS, Canada’s entry to the Sustainable Systems Design International Competition, 2001–2003, sponsored by the International Gas Union. The theme of the competition was ‘Urban Design for a Sustainable Future’; the subject area was existing cities with a population of over 100,000; the task was to develop proposals for a city design 100 years in the future, proposals concerning the city’s future evolutionary process, and proposals on energy systems based on life-cycle analysis. Nine cities from Russia, the United States, China, Canada, Japan, India, Germany and Argentina submitted proposals. The competition brief acknowledges that important initiatives such as Agenda 21, the Kyoto Protocol, the World Water Forum and others have already addressed global issues, but points out that they were not specifically linked to urban form and its impact on energy consumption and the improvement of the environment (competition brief, section 1). The Canadian entry, citiesPLUS, which featured the Greater Vancouver Region, won the grand prize. The project involved over 500 experts and participants from 30 cities across Canada and was led by a partnership of the Greater Vancouver Regional District, the Sheltair Group (a private sector consulting firm), the International Centre for Sustainable Cities (an international NGO), and the University of British Columbia’s Liu Centre for the Study of Global Issues [an academic think tank]. (Timmer and Seymore, 2004, p. 37)

The plans for GVRD – which include the Livable Region Strategic Plan, the Sustainable Region Initiative and citiesPLUS: Planning for Long-Term Urban Sustainability, a 100-year sustainability plan for Greater Vancouver – were generated by researching, and bringing into practice, urban concepts of liveability, sustainability and resilience that together define the quality of life of the city residents (Timmer and

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Seymore, 2004) and by generating non-traditional, consensus- and voluntary agreement-based governance models to tackle issues of sustainability transgressing political boundaries, necessitating the management of entire bioregions (Alexander et al., 2004). There are many other similar models and plans for and good practice cases of sustainable development elsewhere, but the GVRD approach is arguably more consistent and more comprehensive, and is taken here to stand as best practice example. Five key components of research and the generation and implementation of development models and policies for the GVRD can be identified: ●

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All long-term plans are based on an understanding that non-renewable resources need to be preserved; that the productivity and assimilative capacity of the biosphere are limited; that living systems around the globe are in decline; and that there are indicators from natural systems, including fisheries and agriculture, that we may be reaching limits of natural resources under our current management system (WWF, 2002). Therefore, the impact of current consumption levels on the environment and global ecosystem needs to be controlled (Timmer and Seymore, 2004, p. 37). This component establishes a reference to global contextual conditions that constrain, or ought to constrain, urban development. Urban growth is consolidated into compact cities to achieve a compact metropolitan region with integrated transport systems. Open green space, agricultural land and forests are protected; local stakeholders are involved in the generation of urban development models and the monitoring of their outcomes; and community areas are planned to be compact and economically thriving, with a mixture of uses, social inclusion and equity, access to local services and facilities as well as public transport and open green spaces within walking distance, safety and security, good health, and a sense of centrality and belonging (ibid., pp. 20–29). Here some of the previously investigated characteristics of the ‘Short Cycles City’ are pursued for a city region and its settlements. The city’s ecological footprint needs to be adapted and, in the case of the developed world, reduced to achieve an equitable allocation of resources between all global inhabitants. This is believed to be achievable by advanced technologies that reduce resource waste and at the same time use resources more efficiently (see von Weizsäcker et al., 1998, Factor Four; see also Hall and Pfeiffer, 2000, p. 38), but also by improving the city’s operational efficiency, by reducing environmental impacts, by local and global remediation of damaged land and ecosystems, and by enhancement of agricultural and forestry production (Timmer and Seymore, 2004, pp. 38–40). This component will have to be investigated in more detail in what follows. The impact of previous decisions and policies and the outcome of projects and experiments is monitored, feedback on any damage to the environment will lead to corrections, and development plans are long term as part of an ongoing planning process (Timmer and Seymore, 2004, p. 40). This component promotes in environmental terms a rigorous reactionary approach that also requires to be pursued further.

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Policies and plans are developed for entire bioregions that cannot be tackled by the current situation of competition between neighbouring cities and communities. To that end, non-traditional forms based on consensus and voluntary agreement replace traditional forms of urban governance (GVRD’s ‘model of regional federation’; the model of the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy based on direct participation of government, private and civil sectors) (Alexander et al., 2004, pp. 6–10).

The programmes progressively developed and implemented since 1989 reflect all sustainability issues discussed previously. In terms of governance, the city region is planned to be resilient – that is, to have the ability to adapt to changing circumstances while providing for the basic needs of residents and ensuring quality of life. Plans are developed for a 100-year period to ensure the city and the city region’s ‘long-term survival as well as [their] integrity, normal functioning, and self-reliance’ (Timmer and Seymore, 2004, p. 40). The management of the development process is adaptive – that is, it has the ability to respond to unexpected but inevitable outcomes of planning policies, which are treated as experiments from which to learn. Monitoring structures provide information about progress and changes. Furthermore, policies are developed and implemented in partnerships between the private, public, academic and civil sectors, and a network of 30 national and international cities has been created to share expertise, methods and tools. Importantly, it was recognised that competition between neighbouring cities may lead to decisions that undermine their own environmental or social interests, and that local authorities need therefore to work with others in the region to tackle issues such as water, transport, pollution that require the collaboration of authorities in a region or even a bioregion. The approaches and experiences in the GVRD were collated in a series of discussion papers in preparation for the World Urban Forum in June 2006, held in Vancouver. The cases of the GVRD, the Fraser Basin Council (FBC) and the National Round Table on the Environment and Economy (NRTEE) were investigated using UN HABITAT criteria for good governance, and offer valuable information for other cities and city regions, although needing adaptation to local circumstances. Further investigations focus on the city’s security, on the threats to cities ranging from hybrid catastrophes and pandemics such as SARS [severe acute respiratory syndrome], fire, drought, floods etc. to the impact of urbanization, environmental degradation, geopolitical instability in the form of global terrorism, and related large scale forces that are shaping the cities in the 21st Century. (Axworthy et al., 2005, p. 5)

Moreover, ‘the impact of environmental disasters ranging from large scale, naturally occurring events such as earthquakes and mudslides, to more localized catastrophes such as Chernobyl, Exxon Valdez, Walkerton, Ontario; or the recent power outages in the USA and Canada’ is said to demonstrate ‘how inter-dependent,

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interactive, and fragile our systems and networks have become. Threats such as these expose the intrinsic vulnerabilities of city form and function’ (ibid., p. 5). [T]he structure of the city is becoming increasingly dependent on highly centralized networks and infrastructure. The growing complexity and interdependence of technological systems makes it more likely that damage to one system component will radiate outwards to other components. We can see such knock-on effects when infrastructure systems are compromised. (ibid., p. 13)

The suggestion is made that with regard to the security of the city, ever more centralised systems – from power grids to pipelines, water supplies, financial nodes and emergency services and computer networks – increase the risk and the probability of system failures or direct attacks while ‘decentralised models support the capacity for self-management, built-in redundancy and adaptable systems’, are less vulnerable and should be introduced into city planning (ibid., p. 13). Here it again becomes abundantly obvious that the discussion on sustainable development has to include city and city region form and the infrastructural networks. The understanding that such networks become more vulnerable the more they are centralised and less vulnerable the more they are decentralised helps to generate cities and city regions that are resilient to systems breakdown and attacks. But another safety issue is investigated: the threat to the safety of communities in Vancouver, the significant impact of poverty, unemployment, mental illness, lack of affordable housing, crime, drug abuse, etc. on ordinary people, which is said to be getting worse. The image of Vancouver as one of the world’s most desirable or livable cities appears in stark contrast to a growing public perception that neighbourhoods are under siege, the streets are not safe, and people are forced to resort to more and sophisticated methods of defending their personal space and private property. (ibid., p. 14)

In January 2004 the mayor of Vancouver convened a Neighbourhood Forum on Livability and Safety. [C]ommunities feel under siege because of what is perceived to be a dramatic increase in crime, drug abuse, and poverty. Areas that are in transition with boarded up buildings, deteriorating streetscapes and a lack of housing and job opportunities are perceived to be dangerous and a haven for lawlessness. (ibid., pp. 15–16)

Causes include housing cost increases that outpace income levels, putting people at risk of homelessness. The mayor intends to set up a caucus of Vancouver’s politicians from all levels of government, community agencies, concerned citizens,

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the media, support groups and critics to collectively address issues of crime, poverty and safety. It seems that aVncouver, more than other cities, has successfully pursued the revitalisation of its downtown area by creating high-quality dense urban living with first-class public amenities, but has become the victim of its own success: it has not been able to avoid an increase in the gap between the rich and the poor people and the advantaged and disadvantaged urban areas; in other words, it has not, or at least not yet, achieved one of the key components of sustainable development: social equity.

Notes 1 This refers to resources needed to build the Millennium V illages and Sustainable Communities, not the resource consumption of individual people in the communities to sustain their way of life. 2 The emphasis is on local, not global, environmental capital.

References Alexander, D., Seymore, N. K ., Babicki, D. and Ferguson, J. 2004. The Capable City. aVncouver: International Centre for Sustainable Cities. Axworthy, L., Fallick, A. L. and Ross, .K2005. The Secure City, aVncouver Working Group Discussion Paper for the World Urban Forum, 2006 . aVncouver: Liu Institute for Global Issues. English Partnerships. 2007. Millennium Communities Programme. o [ nline] http:/ w / ww. englishpartnerships.co.uk/ millcomms.htm. Hall, P. and Pfeiffer, U. 2000. Urban Future 21: A Global Agenda for Twenty-First Century Cities. London: E. & F. N. Spon. ICLEI (International Centre for Local Environmental Initiatives) 1994. European Campaign for Sustainable Cities and Town: The Aalborg Declaration. Brussels: ICLEI. IUCN (International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources) 1991. Caring for the Earth: A Strategy for Sustainable Living. Gland, Switzerland: IUCN. Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (OPDM) 2005. Millennium Villages and Sustainable Communities, 6 July 2005. [online] http:/ / www.communities.gov.uk/ pub/ 426 / Millenniumvillagesandsustainablecommunities-id.1505426 .pdf. Timmer, .Vand Seymore, N. K . 2004. The Livable City. aVncouver: International Centre for Sustainable Cities. von Weizsäcker, E. U., Lovins, A. B. and Lovins, L. H. 1998. Factor Four: Doubling Wealth – Halving Resource Use. Londan: Earthscan. WWF (World Wide Fund for Nature). 2002. The Living Planet Report. Gland, Switzerland: WWF. o [ nline]http:/ w / ww.pana.org/ news_ facts/ publications/ general/ livingplanet/ index.dfc.

Chapter 5

Conclusions

Introduction The investigation of the quest for sustainable development at international, regional and national levels has shown that there is a reasonably clear idea of the complexity of social, economic and environmental issues of sustainability and an understanding that their interdependencies and interactions have to be taken into account. As far as the theoretical discussion goes, the complexity is understood, and comprehensive policy statements are developed at international level through the UN. However, when it comes to the translation of policy statements into sustainable development action plans, then the comprehensive view of social, economic and environmental indicators is lost as nations focus on those parameters they consider essential for their development and ignore others. They do what they consider best for their development, with little or no coordination at regional and global levels. The inevitable outcome of this is that some of the overarching parameters of sustainability are compromised and that sustainability at global level is not achieved and is not achievable. A number of factors are responsible for this.

The lack of a moral obligation to achieving social equity In developing countries, absolute poverty is mostly seen as a lack of opportunities and therefore as a lack of social justice, and can, it is thought, be rectified by developed countries offering them equal opportunities, equal access to resources and social equity. In the developed countries, comparative poverty is either seen as the result of society and needing to be rectified by society, or seen as a result of the personal choice of individuals which they themselves need to rectify. Individual members of the community do not accept any moral responsibility for those socially excluded and marginalised, as to look after them is the task of the social welfare system. National governments have first and foremost the duty to look after the nation and the quality of life, security and safety of its people, and accept only reluctantly a moral obligation to help people in developing countries living in absolute poverty (Heckmann, 2007, chapter 3.1) – hence the weak support for some of the Millennium Development Goals.

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Invisibility of the impact of resource consumption in developed nations A problem related to the lack of moral obligation is that the environmental impact of much of the resource consumption in the developed countries is not observable by the consumer, as it occurs in far-distant countries. Deforestation in developing countries – to generate wood and agricultural land to grow more food for own consumption, but primarily for export involving mostly transnational companies – is hidden from the consumer. The result is loss of biodiversity and desertification and the loss of nutrients in the producer countries as waste is dumped in the consumer countries. It should not astonish us, therefore, that the majority of consumers are not too concerned about the impact of their consumption levels.

The nature of current conventional economics Conventional economics as currently practised is largely responsible for the increasing strain on global resources. The economic performance of nations is generally measured as gross domestic product (GDP), a large component of which is generated by consumption. The way to increase economic performance is therefore by increasing consumption, which in turn demands increased production. In conventional economics, the productive capacity that produces the goods and services is considered to be a function of human-made capital only, excluding non-renewable and renewable natural capital, which is considered to be a free good that cannot be depleted (Daly, 2001). Further excluded are the costs for repair of damage to the environment as a result of production and consumption. The strain on global resources is considerable: in the past two decades, global consumption surpassed the productive capacity of the globe. Global population growth and increasing consumption levels in some of the developing countries that have achieved a more advanced level of industrialisation aggravate this development. An imposed reduction of consumption – which would result in a reduced GDP; that is, a reduced economic performance by the nation – is currently politically unthinkable, and the only acceptable direction of development is one forward to even further growth (Heckmann, 2007, chapter 2.3.1). The inevitable outcome of the continuing pursuit of economic growth and of increased consumption and production will be an eventual shortage of resources, as predicted by The Limits to Growth, unless we find a way to achieve an increase in growth without increasing depletion of natural capital (Gilman, 1992, pp. 52ff.). As long as this is not the case, increasing consumption levels in the developed world will continue to deplete natural capital and threaten access to the same resources by future generations. Attempts to reduce resource wastage in the production and consumption process, a Factor 4 approach (von Weizsäcker et al., 1998), will reduce resource consumption but will only buy us time, as this reduction will soon be caught up by increasing population and consumption levels. Today, the view that natural capital is a free good that cannot be depleted is unacceptable; the consumption of natural capital has to be accounted for in full.

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Gilman (1992) argues that traditional economic theory has therefore reached a crisis, and a failure of the theory is becoming more acute all the time. He suggests that the productivity rate of natural capital has to be maximised, and an investment into its increase (e.g. through the planting of new forests, oil crops, etc.) is needed. The question remains, however, whether there is a sufficient amount of disused but potentially productive land available for such crops or whether an increase can only be achieved either by changes in current land use – for example, by transforming forests into agricultural land, with all the environmental problems and the loss of biodiversity this would entail – or by the production of artificial biospheres. But there is another problem. The development of a global economy has become possible through a combination of free trade with free capital movement. Formerly national companies have become transnational companies, and this has liberated the international flow of capital, which was formerly under the control of national governments. The global economy therefore takes away national gains from trade in order for some transnational companies to create trade gains on a global level. The effect of ‘footloose’ capital on national governments is that the capital formerly used to finance the implementation of policies for a common good is no longer rooted on national ground. If transnational companies that are not confined to national boundaries perceive national policies to be financial burdens, they relocate to a more cost-friendly nation. Globalisation therefore strengthens the power of transnational companies and international financial organisations such as the WTO and the IMF, weakens the power of national and sub-national communities, and can have disastrous effects on local and even national economies (Heckmann, 2007, chapter 2.3.1). In other words, our current economic system is hub centred, formed on the basis of preferential attachment, and virtually uncontrollable. That the weakest and poorest nations will get even poorer, the strongest and richest companies even richer and that social and economic equity will not be achieved or, more likely, are not achievable seems, under current rules of conventional economics, to be an inevitability. It should not, therefore, come as a surprise that no UN programmes to combat extreme poverty and to achieve social equity have succeeded as yet.

Lack of knowledge of environmental and ecological systems As has already been touched upon in the review of efforts and achievements (Chapters 1–4), there are considerable areas of scientific ignorance and uncertainty about the principles causing environmental modifications, for instance climate change. We know little about the way in which the environment reacts to pollution or the depletion of natural resources. Nor do we know much about the way in which ecosystems balance themselves, what structure they have, what key species play important roles and what effect the loss of one or a number of them would have on the balance of their ecosystems. It is therefore extremely difficult to ‘manage’ the environment and to ‘manage’ ecosystems, as so frequently demanded by the UN declarations. The choice of the protection of a particular species is therefore inevitably based on trial and error, and

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the outcome of a decision is uncertain – that is, it might either strengthen or damage the ecosystem the species is part of. However, if the knowledge we currently have, albeit insufficient and incomplete, is combined with the precautionary principle, then there is sufficient and robust information for action to be taken now.

Conclusion The conclusion is that barriers for achieving sustainable development are the current lack of a moral obligation to accomplish social equity, the lack of concern about the environmental impact of consumption levels, and the current lack of knowledge on socio-economic, environmental and ecological systems. It is therefore imperative to take a step back and start afresh with the definition of sustainability and develop, on the basis of that definition, a clearer understanding of what we might have to do to achieve sustainable development. The next chapter presents a scientific definition of sustainability, which in the subsequent chapter is used as a basis for the investigation of how cities and nations have in the past achieved the state of sustainability and continued to exist for centuries or have lost the state of sustainability and perished. From the definition of sustainability and from what we can learn from such cases it will be possible to define the options open to us to achieve sustainability.

References Daly, H. 2001. ‘Five policy recommendations for a sustainable economy’. In Douthwaite, R. and Jopling, J. (eds) FEASTA Review No. 1. Dartington: Green Books. Gilman, R. 1992. ‘Design for a sustainable economics’. In Dancing toward the Future. Issue 32 of In Context, pp. 52ff. Heckmann, R. 2007. ‘Delivering sustainability: the effectiveness of regeneration plans in a market economy’. Unpublished doctoral thesis, Department of Architecture, University of Strathclyde. von Weizsäcker, E. U., Lovins, A. B. and Lovins, L. H. 1998. Factor Four: Doubling Wealth – Halving Resource Use. London: Earthscan.

Part II

A scientific foundation for sustainable development

Chapter 6

Science, complexity and sustainability

Introduction Sustainability is a very big concept, so big that it is virtually incomprehensible. Not surprisingly, there is a temptation for us to break the concept down into compartmentalised issues that seem easier to understand and manage, but this runs the danger of our being misled about the true nature of what is a very complex system. In his response to the question ‘What is the single most important environmental/population problem facing the world today’, Diamond (2006, p. 498) captures the essence of this danger in his answer that ‘The single most important problem is our misguided focus on identifying the single most important problem!’ In other words, the real world is full of interactions and connections. At the end of the twentieth century, discoveries in network theory took what had been a largely abstract area of mathematics marching into the real world (Buchanan, 2002). From ecosystems to the Internet, from economics to the spread of disease, we are now beginning to understand how the way things are connected influences the behaviour, development and, importantly, the vulnerabilities of such complex systems. In this chapter we use the science of complex systems, including the new science of networks, as a means to gain insight into the general problem of sustainability. Because sustainability is such a broad concept, it necessarily involves many disciplines, each of which will have evolved their own conceptual frameworks and terminology. This is a barrier not only for the layperson but also for the expert trained in a particular discipline when trying to access and understand information from many different fields. In the present circumstances we hope to offer some insight into how it all adds up. Anyway, since the ideas presented here are generated from a scientific viewpoint, we can usefully provide some background at this point. In short, science involves systematically gathering empirical data, trying to generate a useful conceptual model to explain what has been observed and, at its best, translating this into a mathematical model that not only fits with what has been observed but, importantly, can accurately predict what will happen in the future and when something is changed. The description ‘hard science’ is often applied to subjects like physics in which the whole process is undertaken. For the most part, hard science has progressed by reducing the system under observation to manageable proportions and looking for general rules of behaviour that can be applied universally. In practical terms, the success of this approach can be seen in the technology that surrounds us in everyday life and that provides us with an engineered, rather

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than natural, environment. However, the reason why this approach works is by no means a trivial question, as we shall see later. The real world is full of complex systems such as the environmental, social and economic systems that are commonly quoted as being at the core of sustainability. On a different scale, the biochemistry of a living cell and the wiring of the human brain are also complex systems. So what is a complex system? Actually, the term ‘complex system’ encompasses many attributes, but the ones that follow are particularly relevant.

Interactions and connections Complex systems are made up of many components or entities interacting with each other. There is a complication in that these interactions are non-linear because of feedback, which literally means everything can affect everything else, either directly or indirectly.

Dynamics Non-linear systems can behave very differently from linear systems in which cause and effect are always proportional. For instance, they can undergo large changes in response to a small input, popularly known as the butterfly effect,1 and exhibit complicated, even unpredictable, outcomes, and they can adapt to new conditions. This kind of behaviour falls within the scope of chaos theory (Gleik, 1988). It might be thought that the behaviour of such systems would be all over the place, but the evidence from the world around us is of organisation rather than anarchy. This emergence of self-organisation in complex systems is one of the great unsolved problems of science, though there have been several suggestions as to how it might come about (Strogatz, 2004, p. 287). As if the complication of non-linear behaviour were not enough to deal with, the structure of the large network of connections through which the many components of a complex system interact has its own influence on the way a system functions (Barabási, 2003). So, we have to take network structure into account as well.

Structure There are a multitude of real-world networks that are found at different scales and with different content such as social networks, ecological food webs, power grids, transport systems and the Internet. Irrespective of what the nodes of a network actually represent, these networks share the common feature of nodes being connected by links. Towards the end of the twentieth century, discoveries from the study of large-scale real-world networks changed previous assumptions on the nature of network structure. These networks are evolving, not static, and not all nodes may be equivalent, so that the way they are connected matters. This leads to a new set of properties that have to be taken into account (Buchanan, 2002; Barabási, 2003).

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One network measure that has turned out to yield useful information is topological distance, which is measured as the smallest number of links that need to be crossed between one node and another. If the distance frequency distribution peaks at around 5 or 6, say, the network is said to have small-world properties. The fact that any person is only a few social links from anyone else on the planet is fairly well known, but many other real networks, both natural and human-made, are also small worlds. There is more than one way to construct a small-world network, but the one where a few nodes preferentially increase their number of links compared to other nodes as the network grows is of particular interest. Unlike the static network models commonly studied in the past, real-world networks are characterised by being in a state of growth where, as with the Internet or electrical power grids, bits have been added at different times by different organisations. Even so, the addition of new nodes and the way in which new nodes are added often result in an organised network structure. For example, when new nodes are more likely to be attached to existing nodes with more connections than those with fewer – a process called preferential attachment – the distribution of links between nodes becomes arranged in a particular way. At one end of the distribution there are a large number of nodes with only a few links to other nodes, and at the other end a small number of nodes with an extremely large number of links that, for obvious reasons, are called hubs (Barabási and Albert, 1999). The World Wide Web, the first large-scale network to be studied in this way, shows this distribution, with some sites having a huge number of links but many others having few, as do species in ecosystem networks. A modification to preferential attachment is to introduce a competitive element to the attachment rule so that a node has more chance of attracting new connections if it has a higher fitness than another node and not simply because it is well connected (Bianconi and Barábasi, 2001). Newer nodes with a high fitness now also have a chance to acquire connections at an increased rate. This can still lead to hub-like networks but there is also a new possibility: that just one hub will come to dominate the entire network. In the business world that would be a monopoly. However, the history of airports suggests that problems of congestion in networks made up of physical components that occupy real space can ultimately limit further connection and begin a process of decentralisation towards a more egalitarian, but still small-world, distribution (Buchanan, 2002, pp. 121–137). The infrequent hubs provide the connectivity that not only makes such networks behave like small worlds but also makes them robust to random failures. There is a much higher chance of losing one of the far more numerous poorly connected nodes when the causes of loss are random. This is what has assisted ecosystems to persist despite a steady loss of species, and communication over the Internet to continue when some routers fail. The downside of such networks is that they quickly fall apart if hubs are made the target of non-random removal (Albert et al., 2000). There is also another aspect in that this kind of network structure may lower, possibly to zero, the threshold or tipping point of a system above which a change will spread, and this has influenced ideas on the spread of such things as disease and innovations (Buchanan, 2002, pp. 156–183; Barabási, 2003, pp. 123–142).

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The efficiency of transportation of a resource (e.g. blood, food, information) over a network may be a key property. The transport efficiency of a network is determined by its spanning tree, where only the links that minimise the (topological) distance of a node from the source are retained. A star-like network, in which all nodes directly connect to the source node, is the most efficient. A chain-like network, in which nodes link to one incoming and to one outgoing node except for the beginning and end of the chain, is the least efficient. The examples illustrated in Figure 6.1 could be imagined as networks over which some resource is transported into a settlement. In such networks a quantity called the area can be calculated which is directly related to the quantity of resource flowing through the chosen node, and a quantity called the transportation cost can be calculated from the area. The transport cost is proportional to the area to the power of 1 for a star, to the power of 2 for a chain and somewhere between for everything else.

a b

c Figure 6.1 Illustrative examples of network configurations that are (a) starlike, (b) chainlike and (c) something in between

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Modularity In our interconnected world there is a practical difficulty in deciding where to draw the boundary of a complex system. Nevertheless, we return to the point that the success of Western science has been founded on simplifying systems to a comprehensible few interactions that still yield useful results. How does this come about? The answer seems to be that our universe can be quite helpful in this respect. To illustrate this characteristic, take the case of Newton’s formulation of the law of gravity. This was a combination of intellect and good fortune in the sense that our solar system is formed in a very particular way, otherwise the history of science might well have been very different. The combination of planetary sizes and distances means that each planet largely behaves as if it is moving under the attraction of the Sun alone, and analogously for moons about planets, so that Newton could base his calculations on the interaction of just two bodies at a time. This is an example of what is now termed modularity, whereby there is a strong interaction between elements within a module but only a relatively weak interaction with elements outside. The technical term for this is near-decomposability, and this suggests a way in which complex systems might be broken down into bite-sized modules. What constitutes a module is becoming increasingly sophisticated as the understanding and application of the concept progress, but it seems that a basic description of a module is that of something which has its own structural and/or functional integrity (unfortunately the two do not always map on to each other) while being part of a larger system (Callebaut, 2005).Where a complex system can be disassociated into subsystem modules, there are three features that are of interest here. First, should a subsystem be subject to a perturbation or contaminant, modularity can help prevent the effects from spreading throughout the whole system. Second, up to a point, changes to a particular subsystem can be made independently of all the others, so allowing improvements to be brought about module by module. Otherwise, in a strongly connected system, the chances of making design changes in one part without introducing adverse affects elsewhere are very small. Third, we noted that the success of modern science has been based on breaking problems down, but this depends on the less obvious but increasingly appreciated fact that modularity appears to be common in both natural and human-made systems. This sounds like good news, because it provides justification for dividing up a big problem into smaller problems that can be managed. However, there appears to be a caveat. There is evidence to show that the way a system is divided up and represented actually constrains the set of solutions that can be found (Marengo et al., 2005). This has profound implications for a complex issue like sustainable development, because if we modularise the problem by decomposing it into inappropriate subdivisions or try to manage it through inappropriately structured organisational modules, then it is likely that no optimal solutions can be found and, worse, that we may become locked into solutions we do not want.

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Decomposing sustainability Despite any caveats, we do need strategies for decomposing sustainability into smaller problems that we can comprehend more easily and that also are consistent with the modularity of the underlying systems. In this spirit, we will try for a direct mapping between the basic definition and global objectives of sustainable development and its modular division and then see where it leads. The original definition of sustainable development applied at a global level and implied reaching a balance between the natural environment and human development (WCED, 1987). We can take this idea literally and write it like an equation (McDonach and Yaneske, 2002): Sustainability requirements = Biospheric requirements + Anthropocentric requirements

where the first set of requirements on the right-hand side represents maintaining a functioning natural biosphere and the second set represents the aims of human development. If we follow the mathematical analogy, then in principle both sets of requirements may be absent or present, either together or independently, leading to four different states of sustainability requirements. For convenience, when both biospheric and anthropocentric requirements are absent, the state of sustainability will be referred to as Type 0. Similarly, if only biospheric requirements exist, the state will be referred to as Type 1. Where both biospheric and anthropocentric requirements are present, the state will be referred to as Type 2. Finally, in the case that only anthropocentric requirements exist, the state will be referred to as Type 3. We can now explore what these states mean in reality and their implications for sustainability.

Type 0 state A Type 0 state is devoid of any life, human or otherwise, although, in a quite literal sense, it is the bedrock of life. It is a state in which inanimate objects passively react so as to come into equilibrium with their environment in accordance with the laws of physics and thermodynamics. It is the easiest state to maintain, because, in principle, it requires no input of energy. It is sustainable in the sense that, to all intents and purposes, Type 0 conditions can persist indefinitely, being the first and, probably, the last state of the universe. Where there are energy-level differences, the state can exhibit complex system behaviour in seeking equilibrium. Much of the solar system appears to be in this state of lifelessness, and scientific evidence suggests that it is the state in which the Earth began. On the Earth, the effects of heat from the planetary core, solar radiation and gravity have ensured that it is a dynamic state where violent events can occur. Such events are mostly geographically localised (e.g. volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, tsunamis, tropical cyclones), but they can also be abrupt and on a scale that literally defies comprehension (e.g. climate change including both warming and cooling, supervolcano eruptions, asteroid or comet strikes).

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Earthquakes The surface of the Earth is broken up into a number of tectonic plates in motion which, powered by heat from the Earth’s interior, are responsible over the long term for the position of continents, the size of oceans and the building of mountains. Most earthquake and much volcanic activity occurs at the boundaries of the tectonic plates as they move slowly but relentlessly against each other. An earthquake results when the stresses build up to the point where solid rock ruptures. Earthquakes may occur on dry land or under the sea. Small earthquakes occur more frequently than large ones, but one large earthquake can be expected to occur somewhere every year, and the largest several times a century (Jackson, 2006). Earthquakes have shaped the topology of sizeable areas of the Earth’s surface. Volcanic eruptions Volcanoes have played an important part in the formation of the Earth’s atmosphere and of the distribution of minerals in the landscape. While volcanic eruptions are common, the seriousness of their impact on human activities is mostly local rather than global, a famous example being the destruction of the city of Pompeii by an eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79. More recently, the Krakatoa eruption of 1883 caused local devastation and affected global weather patterns for several years afterwards, but even this is small scale compared with the impact of a supervolcano, a term first used in a BBC television programme shown in 2000 (BBC, 1999). The effects of very large eruptions have been described by Self (2006). Such a huge eruption would distribute ash over a continental-sized area and release acid gases into the atmosphere which would rapidly spread globally and persist for years, causing reduced surface temperatures. There have been cataclysmic eruptions in the past that have had global impacts, and, although they are rare events, there will be more. The most recent was that of Toba in Sumatra about 74,000 years ago, which is thought to have triggered years of global cooling and may have brought the human race uncomfortably close to extinction (BBC, 1999). Large eruptions insufficient to be classed as super-eruptions but still capable of causing severe global effects are much more likely. Tsunamis Earthquakes are the most common cause of tsunamis, which result from sudden changes in the sea surface. Other causes are submarine landslides, volcanic explosions and asteroid impacts, in order of decreasing likelihood (Bernard et al., 2006). Very large submarine landslides, often triggered by earthquakes, occur on a worldwide basis, but those caused by rockslides in fjords or by the collapse of the flanks of ocean islands are particularly dangerous (Masson et al., 2006). The effects of a tsunami can be localised or, as in the Asian tsunami of December 2004, have effects that can reach over thousands of miles. Smaller-scale tsunamis occur somewhere about once a year.

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Extreme weather and climate change Solar radiation powers the weather system, which can generate destructive events such as floods, tornadoes and tropical cyclones (hurricanes, typhoons). Extreme precipitation can lead to rivers overflowing into their floodplains, a regularly occurring event on a worldwide basis. The impact of a hurricane on land can be felt through a combination of high wind speeds, torrential rainfall and storm surge which is affected by the state of the tide and the topology of the coast both above and below sea level (McCallum and Heming, 2006). They are short-lived events, and the seriousness of their physical impact is local. On the other hand, we tend to think of the warming and cooling patterns associated with ice ages as long-term weather trends, although they are of global significance. There are a few things we know about ice ages. There have been more than one, and the present one has not quite finished because there are still ice caps at the poles. About 400,000 years ago the large-amplitude ice age cycle changed its period to 100,000 years from the 41,000-year cycle seen earlier, but the reasons for this are not understood (EPICA, 2004). Within ice ages there are periods of both colder and warmer conditions, and the frequencies of these periods correlate strongly with systematic variations in the Earth’s orbit around the Sun. The latest period of interglacial warming began about 11,000 years ago, and the obvious concern is as to how long it will last. The present configuration of land masses with a continent at the South Pole and a landlocked sea at the North Pole represent examples of two conditions that encourage the formation of polar ice sheets by preventing warm ocean currents from lower latitudes reaching the poles. Asteroid impacts At first sight, the solar system seems a place of orderly movement determined by the law of gravity. We can accurately predict the orbits of the planets for centuries into both the past and the future, and we have used this knowledge to slingshot unmanned probes on exploratory missions to the far reaches of the solar system. The movement of the many bodies in the solar system actually forms a complex system of non-linear interactions, and closer inspection reveals that the solar system has chaotic tendencies. One of these arises in the interaction between the giant planet Jupiter and the asteroid belt, and it could be responsible for ejecting the occasional asteroid in our direction, though most would go elsewhere (Strogatz, 2004, pp. 122–126). In any case, most of the 100 tonnes of material arriving from space each day is too small to be of concern, but the evidence of past impact craters shows that collisions of devastating proportions do occur. According to a review by Morrison (2006) of the hazards posed by asteroid and comet impacts, whereas the atmosphere protects the Earth from asteroids of less than 50 metres diameter, a large object of 5 kilometres diameter hitting the Earth would cause an extinction event. In between, an asteroid of 300 metres diameter would be sufficient to severely damage a small country, and one of 1–2 kilometres would be a global catastrophe. The greatest hazard comes from objects in the 100–200 metre diameter

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range. An impact on land would be equivalent in scale to a very large nuclear explosion but would be relatively harmless at sea. However, there is a whole different aspect to the Type 0 state. It is also capable of generating non-random form and structure. The solar system has a recognisably organised structure. A hurricane may be a violent event of a chaotic weather system but it also has a non-random structure. So does a diamond. How does order arise in such situations? As was noted above, there have been several suggestions as to how such self-organisation might emerge. One arose from a background in chemistry and the observation of ordered structure arising in chemical reactions (Prigogine and Stengers, 1986). In some circumstances, even self-replication can occur. Some molecules replicate more of themselves by acting as catalysts for their own reproduction, and the growth of crystals shows both structure and replication. Neither of these examples can be said to be living. They have not broken the mould of Type 0 state conditions. For that, we need a particular form of chemistry to come along.

Type 1 state Areas of pristine wilderness organised through the process of natural selection would represent a Type 1 state. In this case, the state is supported by the input of energy from the Sun and is dominated by the presence of natural capital. One quality that distinguishes living things from the inanimate is that they use energy to work actively against falling into equilibrium with their surroundings. With life on Earth as our only known example, we can interpret a Type 1 state as many different living forms being subject to the mechanisms of natural selection from which complexly connected ecosystems have emerged. Arguably, the presence of human life is not necessarily excluded; humans lived within the limits of a naturally renewing ecosystem in the distant past – arguably because archaeological evidence from all over the world shows that this apparent harmony with nature was only a result of low population and limited technology (Hallam, 2005, pp. 184–202; Diamond, 2006, pp. 3–10). From an anthropocentric point of view it is salutary to recognise that not all forms of possible ecosystem that could be classified as Type 1 will support human life. There exist many examples of ecosystems where conditions are too extreme for human survival (Wharton, 2002). Probably the example familiar to most people is that of the life found around deep ocean hydrothermal vents known as ‘black smokers’ because of the visual effect of the hot, sulphide-rich water they emit. In the absence of light, the oxidation of sulphides provides the energy to support these ecosystems. Less familiar is the fact that life exists deep under the surface of the Earth to the extent that the total biomass under our feet may exceed that on the surface. Such life, albeit microbial (bacteria, fungi, protozoa), may play a role in producing seams of minerals, natural gas and, just possibly, oil deposits. Since all individual living things ultimately die and become non-living, the continued existence of a Type 1 state requires a mechanism for renewal, and that mechanism is self-reproduction. Although self-reproduction is a distinguishing characteristic of living things, the self-reproducing structures of a Type 0 state could not

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be described as alive. The latter are examples of trivial self-reproduction as opposed to non-trivial self-reproduction, a distinction first made by the mathematician John von Neumann. The theory of non-trivial self-reproduction requires the existence of a Universal Constructor, which, for practical purposes, is something that can manufacture all the systems necessary for the purpose to hand from the raw materials available, given a set of instructions to follow. Non-trivial self-reproduction not only requires the Universal Constructor to construct a copy of itself but, in addition, it requires the means to separately copy the instructions and pass them on (Poundstone, 1987, pp. 177–195). Copying errors allow for the possibility of mutations. As the science of genetics advanced in the latter half of the last century, it was realised that von Neumann had described the basis for biological reproduction – that is, non-trivial reproduction based on the instructions encoded in the DNA molecule whereby DNA replicates itself through succeeding generations. The DNA of individuals within the same species is not identical, because of genetic variation, which comes about by chance and not, it is important to note, because it is needed in some way. Such variations are heritable and can be passed on to offspring. This provides one of the necessary conditions for the process of natural selection and is an important component of biodiversity. The other is the existence of characteristics or traits that cause differences in survival and reproduction rates. The concept of natural selection is reasonably straightforward to understand, though its mechanisms are not (Callebaut and Rasskin-Gutman, 2005). Individual organisms display traits that are a result of both their genetic inheritance and their environment, where the environment includes members of the same and other species. Favourable traits are those that increase the survival and reproductive success of the organism, but only heritable traits (e.g. webbed feet, eye colour) will be passed on to the offspring. The likelihood is that these offspring will be more successful at reproducing as well so that if environmental conditions remain the same for many generations, their descendants become increasingly common and spread their genetic inheritance of favourable traits throughout the population. When a species encounters different environmental conditions within its range, local variations can appear. Nevertheless, the number of favourable traits that can be spread in this way is limited, because natural selection can only act on traits that are available somewhere within the existing population. This and the rate of reproduction can act as a constraint on the ability to adapt. Natural selection does not, of course, affect just one species at a time. When individuals of many species are within the same habitat, selective pressures on individuals of one species will include those generated by other populations. The selection of favourable traits within any one species is influenced by those of others. This is a complex system of interactions, and exactly how the stability of such ecological networks is achieved, how long it takes to establish and how much stress it can resist are important questions to answer with regard to the sustainability of a Type 1 state. Food webs have been and remain an important object of study in ecology. They are networks of what-eats-what relationships. In food webs, the network has nodes represented by the species present in the system being studied and links representing

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the feeding relationships between them (Pascual and Dunne, 2006). Put simply, plants are at the lowest level of the food chain while predators are at the top, with herbivores in between. Actually, this is not quite true. Plants make a direct link to the Type 0 state because they make direct use of energy, water and chemicals from nonliving sources. Buchanan (2002) summarises the situation regarding ecosystems with the statement ‘We know next to nothing, and what we do know is worrying’. What we know we do not know about the structure and dynamics of food webs should be a cause of concern, and particularly to those attempting to manage the conservation or re-establishment of ecosystems. It is interesting, not to say sobering, to look at some of the issues in more depth. We could represent a food web in terms of its basic function of transferring energy up the food chain (Cartozo et al., 2006). Results reported for food web minimum spanning trees suggests that the exponent lies in the range 1.09 to 1.26, which would make a food web more efficient than a river system is in transporting water (Dunne, 2006). The deviation from unity may be because of species competition when a large number of species are competing for a finite resource (Cartozo et al., 2006). In some cases the ‘smart’ thing to do would be to stand back and pick off one of those feeding off the resource. This research suggests we can imagine food web structure to be based on a tree-like network related to the efficiency of energy transfer up the food chain which has been overlaid by lots of other links responsible for making the web robust to species extinction. Since links play such an important role in the food webs, it seems sensible to collect detailed data on them from field studies. But this is easier said than done. Unfortunately, there is no single accepted way to collect and compile food web data (Dunne, 2006). For instance, should detritus be included, which, though dead and diverse in character, is a fundamental part of most ecosystems (ibid.)? Parasitic diversity is undersampled and the taxonomy of how to classify parasites is unavailable, yet the diversity of parasitic species may exceed that of free-living species (Dobson et al., 2006). One conclusion is that since food webs have largely ignored parasites, they may be missing over half the species actually present in ecosystems and a great number of the links that are important to their structure. Another, backed by empirical observations, is that a healthy ecosystem is not devoid of parasites and pathogens, because their absence may lead to unbalanced species abundance and competition, with the further conclusion that pathogens may be comparable in their effect to predators. Food webs show a small value of the average distance, so they display smallworld behaviour (Cartozo et al., 2006). If, as research suggests, over 95 per cent of species are within three links of each other (Dunne, 2006), this level of connectedness is clearly of great importance to the spread of perturbations and contaminants within a web. It is also important in that weak links between species and not just strong ones play an important role in web stability (Dobson et al., 2006; Martinez et al., 2006). Some highly connected species, termed keystone species, are particularly important for web stability. Such species are like ecological network hubs. Food web simulations suggest that food webs are more robust to random loss of species than to that of

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highly connected species (Dunne, 2006). Unfortunately, there is no way to reliably identify keystone species as yet. In addition, food webs are not the only networks. The mutual relationships between plants and the animals that pollinate them or disperse their fruits have played a major role in the generation of terrestrial biodiversity and have also given rise to non-randomly structured networks (Bascompte and Jordano, 2006). All in all, ecological networks are examples of complex adaptive systems of awesome complexity. It is not surprising that our ecological understanding is largely descriptive and based on challenging and painstaking observation. Understanding is hampered by the fact that ecological networks are difficult to sample, difficult to describe and difficult to model (Pascual and Dunne, 2006). While the universal rules of the Type 0 state such as the conservation of energy and of mass still apply, universal rules that can be meaningfully applied to construct mathematical models of ecosystems are proving hard to come by. It makes it difficult to know whether a modelling outcome is actually true or simply an artefact of inadequate data and/or the methodology used by the researcher. This is important because it limits our powers of prediction, yet how the properties of such networks persist and allow them to recover in the face of perturbations such as extinctions is a central question for today’s world. Scientific evidence is consistent with life having begun on Earth some 3.5 billion years ago, but complex life with hard shells and bones began only about 540 million years ago leaving sufficient fossils to provide evidence of five major extinction events in that time. These occurred at approximately 440, 360, 250, 200 and 65 million years ago respectively. Of these, the Permian–Triassic catastrophe 250 million years ago was Earth’s worst mass extinction with regard to the loss of biodiversity, which took 6 million years to recover (Hallam, 2005, p. 154). Nevertheless, life persisted, biodiversity increased and ecosystems reorganised themselves over time after each event, although the extinct species were gone for ever. Because species are linked to other species such as in predator–prey or plant–pollinator relationships, extinction of one species can lead to secondary extinctions, and these secondary extinctions are predicted to be much greater when species with many linkages go extinct as compared to random extinctions (Memmot et al., 2006). The authors found that the order in which species and their pattern of linkages is lost has an important influence on the rate of secondary effects. They refer to evidence that the loss of a species can cause the surviving community to adapt to the loss and raise difficulties for the reintroduction of the lost species at a later time, and to field observations which have shown that species at the top of the food chain are particularly vulnerable to a reduction in habitat, with a consequent cascading effect on lower feeding levels. Such effects have been experimentally confirmed in the case of insect predators with results that, in particular, have ramifications for predator diversity and plant productivity (Finke and Denno, 2004). Bascompte and Jordano (2006) note that while the elimination of pollinators or seed dispersers would have catastrophic consequences for biodiversity within decades, this is largely unexplored at ecosystem network level because attention has been focused on individual plant–animal relationships. It may be the case that a

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small set of species are responsible for the bulk of interactions and that the loss of just a few of these species could seriously compromise network stability. An interesting question is, do food webs simply collapse in the order in which they were assembled, and if so, how do they reassemble? Some light may be shed on this from the systematic observations taken in the aftermath of the volcanic eruption of Krakatoa in 1883, which destroyed all life on the island (Memmot et al., 2006). These observations suggest that there is a pattern as to how a food web and its links are re-established, with weakly linked plants and animals coming first. The dynamic behaviour of ecological systems is still a matter of debate and research. There is no doubt that ecological systems are complex systems. But does it matter? If, as is commonly thought, they function close to equilibrium, then their behaviour will be like that of a linear system where response is proportionate to the perturbation. If non-linear behaviour were to be exhibited, then the danger is that the response to a tiny change might grow disproportionately and that outcomes would be difficult to predict. There is very little hard evidence for this kind of behaviour, but there is some (Cushing et al., 2003). Highly controlled experiments on isolated populations of a particular species of beetle subject to imposed changes in death rates have shown evidence of non-linear dynamics, including the ‘butterfly effect’. It was also found that this chaotic-like behaviour could also be suppressed by small-scale intervention. However, whether non-linear behaviour would be seen in a fully connected ecological system remains a difficult question to answer. Nevertheless, the existence of non-linear behaviour in biology is not in doubt. The chemistry of life is founded on non-linear reactions. Such processes make possible the storage of information in DNA, the growth of a differentiated body from a single embryonic cell and the organisation of social insects. That uncomplicated insects such as ants can display very complex social behaviour cannot fail to impress and is still not fully understood today, though insights are being obtained by decomposing the superorganism into modular components (Winther, 2005). In fact, the observed social behaviour is an emergent property of a myriad of local interactions between ants in which chemical signals play a central role (Johnson, 2002, pp. 73–82). That complexity can arise from interactions between entities obeying a few simple rules applied over and over again has been known for a while, and how that understanding came about was reviewed some two decades ago (Poundstone, 1987). Its significance in enabling termites to begin building such a sophisticated construction as a termite nest was also understood (Prigogine and Stengers, 1986, pp. 181–187). A combination of randomness and positive feedback may not sound like a recipe for obtaining an ordered structure, but that is how a termite nest begins. Initially, termites wander on to the building site, randomly dropping lumps of matter impregnated with a chemical that attracts other termites. At some point, lumps will be dropped in the same place, and this increases the attraction of the burgeoning mound. As a result, the probability that more termites will be attracted and drop their lumps on the mound increases and the process escalates. Ultimately, the process leads to a regular set of columns with a distance of separation determined by the range of

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the chemical ‘smell’. The final nest provides a sophisticated living environment that may provide lessons for sustainable building (EPSRC, 2004). This is construction without a blueprint and is an impressive feat of engineering by nature. And that is the way it stayed for millions of years and possibly would have stayed in a sustainable condition had it not been for the appearance of a new type of constructor: humankind.

Type 2 state A Type 2 state is a mixed state and is the one most readily identified with the current objectives of sustainable development. While a Type 1 state continues to exist, a new way of organising the environment has emerged. Some 10,000 years ago, humankind began to mould the environment to its own perceived self-interest through a process referred to as artificial selection, which was applied to the domestication of plants and animals. Inadvertent at first but later planned, the selection of traits became driven by human choice, not natural selection (Dawkins, 2005, pp. 27–35). By making farming and agriculture possible, this allowed the transition from the nomadic hunter-gatherer cultures of the earlier Palaeolithic period to the settlements of the Neolithic period to take place and laid the basis for the rise of the urban and, ultimately, industrial societies seen today in the developed world. The ability to imagine abstract future objectives coupled with the ability to take present action to bring them about has resulted in the construction of an engineered environment. The engineered environment requires much greater effort for its maintenance than a Type 1 state. Just as a Type 1 state maintains disequilibrium with the lifeless Type 0 state, energy is the basis upon which the engineered environment of a Type 2 state maintains disequilibrium with the natural environment of a Type 1 state. One way to visualise such disequilibrium is to consider the constructs and processes within a major city that would not exist if the occupied space had remained an untouched wilderness. The question is not whether this disequilibrium is good or bad. It is whether this disequilibrium can be maintained in a sustainable manner, with the crucial element in the sustainability of a Type 2 state being the maintenance of the environmental services provided by the natural world. Then there is the whole question of the sustainability of the engineered environment itself. This environment contains built infrastructure and technological hardware and human culture in the broadest sense, and is full of human-made networks, both tangible and intangible. We need to understand the nature of the vulnerabilities in the systems we are constructing. However, the Type 1 state on Earth is also our only known example of a life-supporting system that we can study. Both in terms of ensuring the survival of the natural world and its services and in terms of learning how to construct sustainable systems ourselves, it is of fundamental importance to understand how the connections and interactions of the Type 1 state on Earth have enabled it to persist. There is, however, a difference between ecosystems and human-made networks. Ecosystems are mature and highly evolved whereas our systems are growing and evolving. Much of what was discussed in previous sections represents manifestations of general principles equally applicable to the complex

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systems of the engineered environment and need not be repeated here. There is also the problem of our lack of understanding of how these complex systems work. Another difference between natural and engineered environments is the scale of the role played by cultural inheritance in human affairs. Culture is a topic with many viewpoints, so we will continue to use the Type 1 state, a state based on non-random networks, genetic inheritance and natural selection as a reference in order to maintain a consistent thread. Social and economic systems also contain non-random connective structures. In fact, one of the earliest well-known findings of what would later become recognised as a small-world network was that an individual is only a few social links away from any other individual (Barabási, 2003, pp. 25–30). Cultural inheritance refers to information being passed between individuals within networks. Like genetic inheritance, cultural information such as language and beliefs can be passed vertically by parents to their children and on to future generations. Unlike a genetic inheritance, it can also be passed horizontally to non-relatives, as for example when a teacher instructs a class. Another difference is that cultural inheritance involves learning, and that raises the question of what is being passed on and how. Unlike a physical object such as a ball, an idea can be passed from one person to another while the first person still retains the idea. It looks like a form of self-replication, and this has led to the theory that there are units of cultural inheritance called memes taking part in an evolutionary selective process distinct from the genetic one (Blackmore, 1999). Memes have had a mixed reception, but the more general concept of culture being inherited and subject to evolution has been applied to the history of human culture (Shennan, 2002). For the non-specialist, the questions raised and the insights thrown up are valuable in themselves, irrespective as to whether the replicator or evolutionary aspects are accepted. For instance, there is more than one way to learn. Social learning, which is when we learn from others, is a good strategy for cutting down on the time and effort needed to acquire information, but it does have a drawback. It is especially efficient when circumstances are unchanging or only changing slowly, but in circumstances of rapid or abrupt change the historical nature of social learning can render it useless as a source of information. In such circumstances, learning by trial and error becomes the only available alternative strategy.

Type 3 state A Type 3 state would be represented by an engineered environment that is sustainable in its own right. It would be capable of an autonomous existence without any dependence on a Type 1 state. Given a source of energy, it would provide complete human life support within its boundaries on an indefinite basis. Surrounded by the extreme environment of space, the Earth provides the only known example of a finite, life-supporting sustainable environment. An engineered equivalent does not yet exist, but it would be of major significance in developing off-world activities, and its beginnings are already apparent in current and planned space exploration programmes. We can only guess at what will be the underlying design principle but, based on analogy with ecosystems on Earth, perhaps it would be based on von Neumann Universal

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Constructor principles, which could result in engineered self-reproducing systems that could build anything and carry on indefinitely.

Evolution and development We have used insight from the theory of complex systems in general and the new science of networks in particular as the context in which to take a view of sustainability that tries to be comprehensible while retaining both the system complexity and the scale of connectivity that lies at its heart. On the basis of the logic of the original definition of sustainable development (WCED, 1987), the idea of sustainability has been broken down into four states with different characteristics. Interestingly, we can identify these states with very real systems which, when viewed from the perspective of time, represent a historically correct sequence of development on Earth. In more scientific terms, we could describe this as the application of an evolutionary and developmental concept of modularity. A summary interpretation of the four states is given in Table 6.1. The states each have their own interpretation of sustainability, and their organising frameworks are neither necessarily compatible nor even driving in the same direction. They can be used to shed light on what relatively little we know, on what we need to know and on what risks need to be managed. They also shed light on the choices available to us and where we might be going.

Note 1 The phrase ‘butterfly effect’ is often used to encapsulate the idea from chaos theory that small differences in input can lead to large differences in output. Its origins are usually attributed to an address entitled ‘Predictability: Does the Flap of a Butterfly’s Wings in Brazil Set Off a Tornado in Texas?’ given by Edward Lorenz to the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1972.

Table 6.1 An interpretation of the four states of sustainability in terms of their fundamental differentiating features and organisational frameworks

State

Distinguishing characteristic

Design principle

Requirements

Type 0

Lifeless

Equilibrium

Type 1

Wilderness

Natural selection

Type 2

Urban development

Artificial selection

Type 3

Independent biosphere

Universal constructor

Both biospheric and anthropocentric requirements absent Only biospheric requirements present Both biospheric and anthropocentric requirements present Only anthropocentric requirements present

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Johnson, S. 2002. Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities and Software. London: Penguin Books. McCallum, E. and Heming, J. 2006. ‘Hurricane Katrina: an environmental perspective’. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A, 364: 2099–2115. McDonach, K. and Yaneske, P. P. 2002. ‘Environmental management systems and sustainable development’. The Environmentalist, 22: 217–226. Marengo, L., Pasquali, C. and Valente, M. 2005. ‘Decomposability and modularity of economic interactions’. In Callebaut, W. and Rasskin–Gutman, D. (eds) Modularity: Understanding the Development and Evolution of Natural Complex Systems. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 383–408. Martinez, N. D., Williams, R. J. and Dunne, J. A. 2006. ‘Diversity, complexity, and persistence in large model ecosystems’. In Pascual, M. and Dunne, J. A. (eds) Ecological Networks: Linking Structure to Dynamics in Food Webs. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 163–185. Masson, D. G., Harbitz, C. B., Wynn, R. B., Pederson, G. and Løvholt, F. 2006. ‘Submarine landslides: processes, triggers and hazard prediction’. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A, 364: 2009–2039. Memmott, J., Alonso, D., Berlow, E. L., Dobson, A., Dunne, J. A., Solé, R. and Weitz, J. 2006. ‘Biodiversity loss and ecological network structure’. In Pascual, M. and Dunne, J. A. (eds) Ecological Networks: Linking Structure to Dynamics in Food Webs. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 325–347. Morrison, D. 2006. ‘Asteroid and comet impacts: the ultimate environmental catastrophe’. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A, 364: 2041–2054. Pascual, M. and Dunne, J. A. 2006. ‘From small to large ecological networks in a dynamic world’. In Pascual, M. and Dunne, J. A. (eds) Ecological Networks: Linking Structure to Dynamics in Food Webs. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 3–24. Poundstone, W. 1987. The Recursive Universe: Cosmic Complexity and the Limits of Scientific Knowledge. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Prigogine, I. and Stengers, I. 1986. Order out of Chaos: Man’s New Dialogue with Nature. Flamingo edition, second impression. London: Fontana. Self, S. 2006. ‘The effects and consequences of very large explosive volcanic eruptions’. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A, 364: 2073–2097. Shennan, S. 2002. Genes, Memes and Human History. London: Thames & Hudson. Strogatz, S. H. 2004. Sync: The Emerging Science of Spontaneous Order. London: Penguin Books. WCED (World Commission on Environment and Development). 1987. Our Common Future. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wharton, D. A. 2002. Limits to Life: Organisms in Extreme Conditions. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Winther, R. G. 2005. ‘Evolutionary developmental biology meets levels of selection: modular integration or competition or both?’. In Callebaut, W. and Rasskin-Gutman, D. (eds) Modularity: Understanding the Development and Evolution of Natural Complex Systems. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 76–97.

Chapter 7

Settlements and cities in history that correspond to Types 0, 1 and 2 of sustainability

Introduction The definition of types of sustainability states has made it clear beyond any doubt that the essence of urban sustainability is a balance of biospheric and anthropocentric requirements. The sustainability of a city depends accordingly on the maintenance of a viable bioproductive hinterland and a symbiotic relationship of the city with this hinterland that provides it with all it needs to function and enables its inhabitants to maintain their standard of urban living. A brief analysis of settlement forms that emerged during the process of urbanisation will make clear that the types of sustainability defined in Chapter 2 coincide with different levels of urban development at which sustainability can be and has been achieved in full or in parts but has also been lost.

Type 0, or ground state, sustainability The description ‘Ground-State’ is borrowed from physics and denotes the least energetic state of a system. Type 0 sustainability corresponds to no life at all, a state in which the bodies of the solar system other than Earth have apparently persisted for aeons. It is the easiest state to occupy, requiring no input of energy, and is characterised by the absence of either natural or man-made capital. In practical terms, it applies to any state unable to support human life. (McDonach and Yaneske, 2002, p. 218)

There are cities of Type 0 sustainability: the ruins of ancient settlements surrounded by wasteland no longer capable of supporting human life. Some of these cities were destroyed by environmental catastrophes. Pompeii is the best-known example; it was covered by ash and dust from the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79, fully preserving its urban form and evidence of the social life at the time. Other cities were destroyed by enemies, for instance the Inca city of Machu Picchu, Peru, or Babylon, Nebuchadnezzar’s city on the River Euphrates, or Ur, also on the River Euphrates, about 150 miles south of Babylon. Yet others are the ruins of settlements that exploited their hinterland beyond its regenerative capacity and caused their own downfall. Easter Island, the world’s most remote inhabited place, is one example (Diamond, 2005, pp. 79–111). The island was settled around AD 400 by people arriving in large canoes from eastern Polynesia, most probably from the Marquesa Islands, bringing plants and animals. At this time

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the island was covered by lush vegetation with a subtropical forest of large palms and other trees, and rich in wildlife. Extensive ruins of settlements show a population spreading across the island and reaching as high as 7,000, eating a varied diet including dolphin meat from deep-sea fishing. The inhabitants practised slash-and-burn agriculture to remove forest cover, and by AD 800 the destruction of the forest environment was under way. In addition, the original religion of the islanders necessitated the transport of large carved stone figures from a single quarry site to their final coastal placement. There is a consensus that whatever the means of transport, wood was involved for making ropes and, for example, sledges or rollers. The loss of trees caused topsoil to erode and the productivity of the land to decline. By 1500, the loss of big trees meant the islanders could not build canoes for fishing. They were thus confined to the land in a degrading environment with no means of escape. All native land birds and half the seabirds were wiped out. By the time the first outsiders from the Netherlands arrived in 1722, the only seafood the islanders could access were shellfish from shallow water or rock pools, and the population had declined to around 4,000. The Dutch captain recorded that the island was an almost treeless wasteland with no shrub taller than 3 metres. It is a history of environmental degradation caused by overexploitation of a finite hinterland. It is ironic that a religion meant to ensure the protection of the island and its people contributed to its environmental destruction. Ultimately, the earlier religion was replaced by one based on fertility rituals, which have appeared many times in pre-scientific societies as an attempt to control the forces of nature, with particular reference to the abundance of food and the birth of children. It is interesting to speculate why people from an intelligent and adventurous Polynesian stock should rely on magic rather than seemingly common-sense environmental conservation.1 Another, much earlier example of a city that failed due to environmental degradation, this time the loss of water, is Piramesse, seat of power and thriving port built on the easternmost (Pelusiac) branch of the Nile at around 1250 BC by Rameses (the Great) II (Shaw, 2005). The city had an estimated population of 300,000 and accommodated a major garrison. It is described as the Venice of its day, with canals, fed by the Nile, providing drinking water, sanitation and transport. The city was built to last, with statues weighing up to 1,000 tonnes. Silt carried by the Nile periodically cause branches to silt up and switch to new locations, and 150 years after the death of Rameses II, the Pelusiac branch silted up and the blocked flow created a new (Tanitic) branch some distance away. Deprived of its lifeblood, the city failed. However, the investment in the city’s buildings was such that these were physically uprooted and moved 30 kilometres north to the bank of the new branch of the Nile at Tanis, leaving only the foundations behind. History tells that the destruction of the bioproductive capacity of a city’s hinterland through the exhaustion of its fertility and the available water supply has happened quite frequently, leading to the self-imposed collapse of cities of Type 0 sustainability. Many cities in history have taken essentials without giving anything in return. They have taken food without returning fertility to the soil; they have taken forest products without

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contributing to reforestation; they have taken water without ensuring sustainable supplies. Such cities have thus undermined their own existence, and ultimately caused their own demise. Dusty ruins, surrounded by wasteland, are all that remains of once thriving Ur and Babylon. Is the same being done by modern cities, but this time on a global scale? (Girardet, 1992, p. 22; compare also Runnels, 1997, pp. 72–84)

As long as the city–hinterland system was a relatively independent and self-sufficient local phenomenon, the demise of one city did not, or not seriously, affect others; however, if the city were the centre of a large empire, like Babylon and Imperial Rome, its collapse would have serious consequences for part or even the whole of the empire.

Settlements of Type 1 state of sustainability This state is one where humans are low in both numbers and economic development and simply live within the limits of a naturally renewing ecosystem. It was the state occupied by humans and their ancestors for millions of years. In this case, the state is supported by the input of energy from the sun and is dominated by the presence of natural capital. (McDonach and Yaneske, 2002, pp. 218–219)

This ‘wilderness’ state corresponds with pre-urban human existence of nomadic hunting, fishing and food-gathering cultures of the Palaeolithic and Mesolithic periods. People of these cultures lived within the limits of the natural renewing capacity of the bioproductive land and water areas that provided for all their needs, but they contributed to the decimation of the megafauna, such as mammoths, with little more than primitive spears and cunning. The New Zealand giant moa is one of the most recent extinctions. It looks as though humankind and its predecessors have always been an environmental hazard in waiting.

Cities of Type 2 state of sustainability In a Type 2 state where both biospheric and anthropocentric requirements are present, the application of artificial selection (Dawkins, 2005) by humankind has enabled a single species to challenge the supremacy of natural selection and mould the environment to its own perceived self-interest. This is evidenced in the selective breeding of plants and animals, which, by making farming and agriculture possible, allowed the transition from the nomadic cultures of the earlier Palaeolithic and the Mesolithic periods to the settlements of the Neolithic period to take place and laid the basis for the rise of urban and, ultimately, industrial society. The crucial element in the sustainability of a Type 2 state is the maintenance of a viable biosphere. Settlements of Type 2 state are sustainable as long as biospheric and anthropocentric requirements are in balance and any non-critical damage to the environment is repaired. Before studying contemporary cities, this state is best understood by investigating the characteristics of early cities and the way they maintained or lost sustainability.

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Early cities Most of the earliest cities are small in area and population, with notable exceptions such as Ur, Babylon and Rome, as already mentioned (see Morris, 1987, pp. 8–11). The limitation of the size of population of these cities is to a considerable extent dependent on the size and fertility of the available hinterland that provides for their citizens. The city’s relationship with and dependence on its hinterland is well illustrated by the locations of early city foundations. When rural population grows as a result of improved farming and agriculture and better harvests, population grows as well; rural land cannot, however, accommodate more people than there is room for and are needed to work the agricultural areas and pastures. There are only two ways of accommodating the surplus population elsewhere: it either moves to not yet occupied fertile land – as happened in the plains of Africa, America and Asia, where, as a consequence, no cities were founded during the early stages of urbanisation – or it is accommodated in cities with relatively small areas but with the capacity to accommodate thousands of people. In the regions of early urban growth – the ‘Fertile Crescent’ (southern Mesopotamia, the valleys of the Tigris and the Euphrates; Palestine; Egypt, the valley and delta of the Nile), the Indus Valley, the Yellow River, Mesoamerica (Aztec and Maya) and Peru (Inca) (ibid., pp. 3–4) – there were limited resources of fertile land; consequently, cities developed to accommodate surplus population. The inhabitants of rural areas surrounding these cities had, in turn, the new task of providing not only for themselves but also for the city population, and this created a further constraint on population growth (compare Humpert and Schenk, 2001, p. 55). The size of a city’s population depended upon a number of contextual and socio-political factors that determined how much in terms of materials, goods and food was available. The contextual factors are: ● ● ●

●

climatic conditions; the fertility of the hinterland; speed and capacity of transport of materials, goods and food (specifically perishable food); availability of transport routes: roads, trading routes, water channels, river and sea harbours. The socio-political factors are:

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the city as an independent or semi-independent entity that formed, together with its hinterland, a self-governing and self-sufficient city state, for instance the Greek polis; the city as centre of a larger economic, socio-cultural and political system, for instance an empire autocratically ruled by a king or small elite.

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Independent or semi-independent cities Independent or semi-independent cities and city-states were predominantly supported with materials and food from their local hinterland; their population size was therefore largely dependent on contextual factors. If such a city were landlocked and its hinterland of medium to poor fertility, its population would be rather small, say a few hundred or thousand, as productivity of the hinterland would be relatively low and materials and food would be imported with a transport system – ox or horse and cart – of rather limited capacity. The Greek polis illustrates this city–country balance; its mountainous hinterland with relatively low levels of fertility supported only a small population. A good example is Priene, located on the Ionian coastline of Asia Minor. In the fourth century BC it had a population of around 4,000. As a colonial city-state, it also illustrates how the Greek polis ensured its sustainability: when the population of a city-state on the Greek mainland increased beyond the carrying capacity of the hinterland, emigrant expeditions would be sent out to other parts of the Mediterranean to find a suitable place to build a new city.2 If an independent or semi-independent city was located at a navigable river or the sea and its hinterland was fertile, its population could grow to tens of thousands because more food was produced locally and, more importantly, food could be imported with a transport system of much larger capacity, consisting of ships in addition to ox or horse and cart. At the end of the fifth century BC, Athens, for example, had between 35,000 and 50,000 inhabitants. Its annual production of grain in its own hinterland was of the order of 19 million litres, its annual import of grain around 40 million litres, the only way in which it could sustain its comparatively large population (Kolb, 1997, p. 75). In Europe, most cities were founded between 1000 and 1350 AD as a result of improved agricultural production: three-field economy and development of agrarian technology, for instance plough and harrow, scythe, and flail. During that period, population figures in England, Germany and France grew by more than 300 per cent (Table 7.1). In Germany about 260 new towns were founded during that period. In the following years up to the present day, a maximum of 35 new towns were founded, mostly through expansion of existing settlements, as the potential of possible new city locations was for the most part exhausted in the large city boom (Humpert and Schenk, 2001 pp. 58–59).3 The European medieval city also had a limited size of area and population. In Germany, during the fifteenth century, Cologne was the biggest town, with around

Table 7.1 Population growth in Europe between 1000 and 1350 AD

Country

Population AD 1000

Population AD 1350

England Germany France

1.5 million 5.0 million 6.0 million

5 million 15 million 22 million

Source: Humpert & Schenk, (2001, p. 58).

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25,000 inhabitants, followed by Nuremberg with about 20,000 inhabitants (Kolb, 1997, p. 75). In 1377, London had a population of 34,971; York, the second largest town in England at that time, had 10,872 inhabitants, followed by Bristol with 9,518. Other English towns had between 1,500 and 6,000 inhabitants (Morris, 1987, p. 120). Generally, these largely independent or semi-independent early cities can be characterised as existing in a positive symbiotic relationship with their hinterland and can be classified as having a low Type 2 state of sustainability quite close to Type 1, with a balance of biospheric and anthropocentric requirements and either a way of life within the regeneration capacity of the biosphere or relatively low levels of negative environmental impact of human activities, requiring only low levels of remediation. Consequently, such cities continued to exist for centuries, and up to the beginning of the nineteenth century their size of population remained relatively small. In 1801, for instance, York’s population was still only 16,846 (Morris, 1987, p. 120). The distance between the outer edge of hinterland and these early towns was regularly 4 to 7.5 miles (about 6.5 to 12 kilometres). With astonishing regularity, the distance between towns, although clearly influenced by topography and geographical features, was 8 to 15 miles (13 to 24 kilometres). These distances have to do with the type and speed of transport available for a farmer who wanted to sell goods at the market in town – ox and cart with a speed of 4 miles per hour, horse and cart with a speed of 7.5 miles per hour – and the maximum travel time of 1 hour from farm to town and 1 hour back. The man who investigated this and predicted with astonishing accuracy what would happen if transport speed should become faster and faster is H. G. Wells, perhaps best known for The Time Machine, who in 1901 published his book Anticipations, which describes in chapter 2 ‘the probable diffusion of great cities’ (Wells, 1901, pp. 33–65). This diffusion of cities will be briefly outlined later. Cities at the centre of an empire The constraints regarding population size change completely for a city that is at the centre of a larger economic, socio-cultural and political system such as an empire, because the entire empire may become the ‘hinterland’ that would provide the city with materials and food. The symbiosis of such a city with its extended hinterland could still be positive as long as all citizens of the empire share the goods produced within the empire’s boundaries. But if the rulers or ruling elite of the central city become parasitic, then a negative symbiosis between city and hinterland results, based on war, exploitation and enslavement (Mumford, 1984, p. 133). The exploitation of the hinterland by the central city necessitates a sophisticated transport network on roads and water, organised and managed for trading, the import of materials, goods and food, and military control as well as protection of the provinces. The examples already mentioned are Greater Babylon of the sixth century BC – with a population estimated to have been as high as 500,000 and a size of around 1,900 hectares, almost four times the size of fifth-century BC Athens (Morris, 1987, pp. 20–21) – and the Imperial Rome of the second century AD with an estimated population of 1.25 million (ibid., p. 38) and a total built-up area,

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including areas immediately beyond the walls, of around 2,000 hectares (Mumford, 1984, p. 273). The parasitism of both Babylon and Rome increased, growing ever more exorbitant with their demand for visible wealth and power; instead of submitting these claims to the ordeal of reality and sharing more of the goods they monopolized with their fellow-citizens they inflated their demands beyond the possibility of their being locally executed. These impositions could be met only by extending the area of exploitation [by military force]: so that the growth of the great capital cities, like Nineveh, Babylon and Rome, was effected only by enlarging the dimensions of the tributary hinterland and by bringing about a negative symbiosis based on terrified expectation of destruction and extermination. (Mumford, 1984, p. 273)

Babylon was located at a junction of trading routes between the Persian Gulf and the Mediterranean – that is, it was in a key position within the ‘Fertile Crescent’ of the valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates, Palestine, and the delta of the Nile. Nebuchadnezzar’s reign started immediately after the Babylonians had destroyed the very rich Assyrian Empire; in 587 BC he captured Jerusalem. Babylon exploited its enlarged hinterland unabashed until it was destroyed by the Persians (see Morris, 1987, pp. 4, 10–11). Imperial Rome’s story is very similar. Rome was very successful in predatory conquest and formed ‘perhaps ancient history’s most fascinating and most complex urban agglomeration’ (Morris, 1987, p. 39). It extracted, ‘and became increasingly dependent upon, distant fields and factories for its supplies of grain, metal, textiles, papyrus, pottery, the more one-sided and monopolistic the relation [between city and expansive hinterland] became’ (Mumford, 1984, p. 279). The rather corrupt army guaranteed the flow of supplies. However, due to the overexploitation of the hinterland and the damage done to the environment as a result of this, the empire’s bioproductive capacity became increasingly smaller and resulted eventually in a shortage of food for Rome’s one and a quarter million or so inhabitants. Mumford sees the disintegration of Rome as ‘the ultimate result of its over-growth, which resulted in a lapse of function, and a loss of control over the economic factors and human agents that were essential for its continued existence’ (ibid., p. 277). Prosperity and population were declining and the barbarians began to infiltrate the over-extended empire. In AD 330 the empire split into two autonomous empires in the west (Rome) and east (Byzantium). In the east, Constantinople prospered while Rome declined, and in AD 410, at the end of a process of slow decline, it fell to Alaric and the Goths (Morris, 1987, p. 64). Girardet (1999, p. 17) sees Rome’s fate as the direct result of the massive exploitation of its very large hinterland: Throughout their history, cities have always depended on their hinterland. As the ancient city of Rome grew to a population of one million, forest and agricultural products were

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brought in from as far as North Africa. By 250 AD, the unsustainable exploitation of North African ecosystems had resulted in infertile soils, climate changes due to deforestation and increased salinity from irrigation and these factors combined and partially led to the [gradual] collapse of Rome and the Roman Empire.

Other major contributing factors were lead poisoning and plagues. There is now evidence that the economically, politically and agriculturally crippled population were dealt a decisive blow by a virulent form of malaria: Plasmodium falciparum. This is still the world’s deadliest infection and kills 3 million people a year. The suspicion is that increasing trade between Rome and North Africa could have led to mosquitoes being transported across the Mediterranean in ships. Genetic evidence shows that the disease entered Europe before AD 400. Archaeological evidence of a mass child burial in AD 450 indicates a major epidemic of a killer disease. One analysed bone from the site contains Plasmodium falciparum DNA. The large number of foetuses present indicates the same thing: miscarriage is a sign of this disease in pregnant women.

Contemporary cities in developed countries Type 2 sustainability corresponds to a state of much higher socio-economic activity which, in addition to the input of solar energy, requires a much more intense use of energy from other resources, e.g. fossil and nuclear fuels. It is the state most readily identified with the current objectives of the developed world, where both man-made and natural capital are significant. To be sustainable, the socio-economic system has to be sufficiently productive to have the capacity to invest in environmental remediation coupled with the fact that environmental degradation and/or artificiality must lie within the limits of acceptability by the population. (McDonach and Yaneske, 2002, p. 219) It is entirely possible that this state has not yet been reached while the limits to equilibrium for Type 1 sustainability have been passed in which case the present condition of the eco-socio-economic system is both transitional and unsustainable. (Yaneske, 2003)

As H. G. Wells had anticipated with astonishing clarity, not only did the development of faster and faster transport systems allow the city to take on ever-increasing dimensions of expanse and population, but its hinterland grew even larger because provisions could be brought in from an ever-increasing and ever more distant hinterland. Finally, the abolition of trade restrictions led to the development of a global economy; in turn, our cities’ hinterland has become the globe. By exploiting cheaper labour markets and goods in developing countries, as previous generations did in many parts of the British Empire, it seems that the predatory activities of Imperial Rome are being repeated, but this time on a global scale. Transport costs – either subsidised or amply compensated for by the low cost of goods available in developing countries – do usually not play much of a role; consequently, we rely less and less on

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more expensive local production; our open land is more valuable when developed, so more and more of the countryside is suburbanised. In turn, this creates even more dependency on bioproductive areas outside local, national and regional boundaries. Ecological footprints The way of life in cities of the developed world is characterised by high levels of consumption of resources and of the production of waste and pollution. There is one method, co-originated in the early 1990s by Wackernagel and Rees (1996), and now in common use in many countries, that helps to illustrate how much these cities rely on a size of hinterland per capita way above the average Earth share of resources: the analysis of our cities’ ecological footprints. The ecological footprint of a region, city or community ‘is defined as the bioproductive area (land and sea) that would be required to sustainably maintain current consumption, using prevailing technology’ (Scottish Executive, 2003, p. 193). The area is subdivided into bioproductive land, bioproductive sea, energy land (forest land and sea required for the absorption of carbon emissions) built land (buildings, roads, etc.) and biodiversity area (land and sea that would need to be set aside to preserve biodiversity) (compare Chambers et al., 2000). Ecological footprint analysis is based on the notion of land – specifically, bioproductive land – as a finite resource. The global land surface is less than 15 billion hectares, of which according to various estimates between 8.7 and 10.3 billion hectares (between 58 per cent and 69 per cent of the global land area) is bioproductive land (Chambers et al., 2000, p. 37). This land is not, however, a constant, as there is the risk of loss as a result of natural hazards such as earthquakes, volcanic eruptions or inundation. This land’s bioproductive capacity is also not a constant as there is significant human-induced degradation as a result of overgrazing, deforestation and unsustainable agricultural practices (UNEP, 1999). With a growing global population and a resulting increase in consumption on the one hand and a finite amount of bioproductive land with a shrinking production capacity on the other, the question is no longer whether but when the carrying capacity of the Earth has been reached, or, in other words, what the maximum global population is that the total available bioproductive capacity can support. Some data from the United Kingdom illustrate this problem. We use the figure of 11.7 billion hectares to represent the global bioproductive area, including bioproductive sea and other water areas (Der Fischer Weltalmanach, 2003). Accordingly, with an estimated global population of 6,148.1 million in 2001, the average share per capita is 1.9 global hectares, whereas the world’s average ecological footprint per capita is 2.2 global hectares. Provided the data are reliable, this means that we are consuming beyond the replenishing capacity of the biosphere. In 2001 the United Kingdom, with a population of 59.1 million, needed a total bioproductive area of 5.4 global hectares per capita to support the population’s level of consumption, of which only 31.5 per cent (1.7 global hectares per capita) is actually available in the United Kingdom itself, while 68.5 per cent of resources,

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requiring an area per capita of 3.7 global hectares to produce, are imported from other countries (ibid.). Data published by the Scottish Executive (2003, pp. 194–198) indicate that the ecological footprint of the four major Scottish cities has also long surpassed the average earth share available per global inhabitant. This is only possible as other cities in developing countries have much smaller ecological footprints. The ecological footprint per capita of our Scottish cities (Table 7.2) shows this very clearly (ibid., p. 196). The figures indicate that ‘the average city resident in Scotland uses about 2.5 to 3 times the average earth share of resources’, said to be around 1.92 hectares per capita (ibid., p. 196). Other footprints are added to allow comparison (Table 7.3). A breakdown of the ecological footprint of the four Scottish cities (Table 7.4) indicates what causes the large ecological footprints (ibid., p. 197). The table shows that by far the biggest components of the Scottish cities’ ecological footprint are the result of the production of waste and food consumption, followed by energy and transport, both of which are largely dependent on fossil fuel. In terms of environmental Table 7.2 The ecological footprint of Scottish cities

City

Area units per capita (ha)

Aberdeen Dundee Edinburgh Glasgow All Scotland

5.87 5.51 5.60 5.37 5.85

Table 7.3 The ecological footprint of other places

City

Area units per capita (ha)

Santiago de Chile The Hague (two studies) Various Dutch towns Oxfordshire Guernsey Sonoma County, California

2.64 4.46 and 4.90 4.53–4.87 7.46 8.60 9.10

Table 7.4 Breakdown of the components of the ecological footprint of Scottish cities

Data in area units

Aberdeen

Dundee

Edinburgh

Glasgow

Energy (domestic and commercial) Passenger transport Food Waste (domestic and commercial) Water (domestic) Built land Total (responsibility principle)

0.77 0.57 1.81 2.63 0.01 0.07 5.87

0.78 0.48 1.81 2.36 0.01 0.08 5.51

0.70 0.56 1.81 2.44 0.01 0.07 5.60

0.68 0.46 1.81 2.35 0.01 0.06 5.37

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impact it is clear that efforts to switch to clean, renewable energy and fuel are essential to reduce air pollution, but the reduction of the use of fossil fuels is not sufficient on its own to achieve sustainable levels of consumption. Even a radical shift from old to 100 per cent new, clean and renewable energy, desirable as it is to reduce air pollution, would not be enough; the remaining ecological footprint would still be well above the average Earth share. To get closer to an equitable share of global resources, cities in the developed world need to become much more self-sufficient in food and clean energy production and the management and recycling of waste. The very minimal impact of built land on the ecological footprint of the Scottish cities (only between 0.06 and 0.08 hectare per capita) seems to indicate that in global sustainability terms the density of cities is almost irrelevant; this is, however, a rather questionable conclusion, as is shown later in an attempt to establish the kind of landuse pattern that would allow us to re-establish a symbiotic relationship between our cities and their local hinterland – that is, to achieve a low Type 2 state of sustainability similar to that of the early city-states and medieval cities already discussed. There is the issue of the reliability of ecological footprint analysis (EFA). To establish how much bioproductive land and sea is available globally is already a rather difficult task. It is even more difficult to establish, for instance, the bioproductive capacity of land that varies considerably between global regions as a result of climatic conditions, rainfall patterns and irrigation, soil quality, crop rotation and agricultural practices, biodiversity, the kind of fertilisers used and many other factors. In the publication of the ecological footprint analysis of Scottish cities, the Scottish Executive, therefore, calls for prudence: Although this method has the advantage of providing an overview of individual city performance, it should be noted that the model that aggregates diverse ecological pressures is necessarily complex; assumptions contained within the model and/or inaccuracies in the data can potentially be both compounded and obscured. The robustness of the final figures must therefore be treated with caution. (2003, p. 194)

The popularity of EFA as a means to measure sustainability is implicit in its underlying argument that consumption is ultimately responsible for the use of resources and the generation of pollution and waste. The first conclusion of the report The Limits to Growth to the Club of Rome in 1972 comes to mind. EFA offers an easily comprehensible method of assessing the dependence of developed countries and cities on the hinterland of developing countries in order to sustain their current levels of consumption. EFA has therefore become a very powerful tool for raising awareness of the impact of consumption on environmental and ecological sustainability. But there are said to be a number of problems – in particular, the translation of consumption levels into a single operational indicator (land area in hectares) – which are considered by a number of critiques to render EFA on its own unsuitable for both the definition of what the main problem is and the development of adequate policy solutions (for the full arguments, see Van den Bergh and

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Verbruggen, 1999; see also Ferguson et al., 2004). The unreliable results of EFA are said to be the consequences of the lack of response to a number of issues: actual rather than hypothetical land uses and the difference between sustainable and unsustainable land use; differences in climatic conditions and the quality and productivity of bioproductive land already referred to above; trade-offs between environmental sustainability and the ecological resources of countries and regions; and the fact that political boundaries of countries and regions frequently do not coincide with the boundaries of natural areas or interconnected ecosystems (Van den Bergh and Verbruggen, 1999, pp. 64–68). However, the critiques of EFA are not questioning the fact that humankind has a rather negative impact on the local, regional and global environment and ecosystems which ecological footprints so vividly express (Van den Bergh and Verbruggen, 1999, p. 70); what they challenge is the adequacy of the accounting measures. Suggestions for improvement include calculating actual footprints of (un)sustainable land use; using a wider range of indicators and a modelling rather than an accounting approach; calculating the ecological footprints for ‘bioregions’ rather than political regions or nations; and comparing the actual land use with the quality and capacity of the available land (ibid., p. 70). Further suggestions are to use input–output accounts for environmental accounting and their extension to an inter-regional economy–environment social accounting matrix to allow the accurate tracking of resource use and pollutant generation (Ferguson et al., 2004, p. 4). Nevertheless, a problem that remains is the difficulty of acquiring reliable input and output data. Nonetheless, even if the margin of error of the accounting measures of EFA were to be considerable, the indication that there is a potentially huge problem should lead to policies and action plans to reduce the ecological footprints of cities, something every guidance note and conference declaration analysed in Chapters 1–4 is actually calling for, but neither the UN nor the EU nor individual nation states are doing anything about it. It needs little mathematical skill to assess the demands on the global biosphere when, as is likely to happen one day, all people in the now developing and soon to be developed countries will claim the right to have the same rather desirable consumption pattern as people in developed countries and cities. If the ecological footprint of, say, 4 hectares per capita is applied ‘not to the half-billion lucky citizens of the developed world but to the six billion people of the entire world, we find we need three planets Earth, which are unlikely to be available in the near future’ (Hall and Pfeiffer, 2000, p. 38). It can therefore be concluded that the cities of the developed world are in a state of unsustainability. Other local sustainability problems of cities in the developed world Next to the high levels of consumption and the production of waste and pollution leading to large ecological footprints with global implications, cities in the developed world are facing other, more local and regional problems, to be mentioned here only very briefly, which strategies, plans and policies for sustainable development have to take into account.

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There is, first, a considerable change in the population structure. Population levels are relatively stable, as birth rates have dropped sharply. In parallel, increasing wealth, a better quality of life and improved healthcare have resulted in an ageing population, with a growing percentage of pensioners to be supported by a shrinking percentage of economically active people. In 1950 the proportion of people over 65 was 7.9 per cent, in 2000 it was 13.5 per cent and it is expected to rise to 24.7 per cent by 2050, with the most rapid ageing occurring in Japan, Germany and Italy (Hall and Pfeiffer, 2000, p. 46). If past trends continue, public spending on old age security in OECD countries will make up 16.5 per cent of GDP in 2030 (ibid., p. 47). In parallel, the healthcare system finds it increasingly difficult to deal with the growing number of elderly people needing home or institutional care. This development is already causing the need to encourage skilled workers to immigrate into the United Kingdom. There is furthermore the transformation of cities in the developed world into service industry cities, which has led to the redundancy of traditional industrial labour and to structural unemployment. These factors, when combined, have a considerable impact on sustainability at city and local community level. They demand a review of the current expectation that, rather than individual people, the welfare state is responsible for the provision of unemployment benefits, healthcare, education and other services. Maybe communities will have to take more responsibility for providing personal services, for instance care for the elderly, and to generate entrepreneurial activities in a local, perhaps also informal, economy where only relatively small profits are made but they are retained in the community. As already concluded earlier, cities in the developed world have to become more self-sufficient and self-reliant, and this is one of the options investigated later that may be available to achieve a low Type 2 state of sustainability. A second issue of considerable concern is the growth of personal space per capita in developed nations. In terms of city expansion and further urbanisation or suburbanisation of open green spaces, population growth is – except in the south-east of England – not a key factor, but the growing number of smaller households, ensuring the growth of personal space, is. This phenomenon can be observed in many cities of the developed world. In England, for instance, it is estimated that 39,000 additional dwellings per year are required simply to accommodate population growth and changing patterns of household formation. To reduce the long-term upward trend of real house prices of 2.4 per cent per annum over the past 30 years to 1.8 per cent per annum to deliver greater affordability, ‘an additional 70,000 houses each year in England might be required. To bring the real price trend in line with the EU average of 1.1 per cent, an extra 120,000 houses each year might be required’ (Barker, 2004, p. 5). If the urgently needed new housing development, between 1 and 2 million new homes over ten years in England alone, were to be built in the form of low-density suburban development on greenfield sites (say with 20 dwelling units per hectare), the loss of open land would be enormous (between 500 and 1,000 square kilometres – that is, an area as large as one- to two-thirds of Greater London). Such development would offset attempts to reduce the city’s ecological footprint. It is all the more important that new housing is provided in medium- to high-density urban quarters,

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with mixed use, local services and a mixture of different dwelling and tenure types, located along public transport routes and as much as possible inside developed urban areas, achievable through the intensification of existing development.

Achieving a Type 3 state of sustainability It is possible to conceive of entirely new, artificial biospheres emerging and encountering their own problems of sustainability. In this sense, only man-made capital would be significant. For example, it could correspond to a state where resources and activities were associated with off-world activities. The early beginnings of the means to bring this about can already be seen. (McDonach and Yaneske, 2002, p. 219)

There are an astonishing number of people investigating the scenario of colonising space. It would basically repeat what the Greek cities did some 2,500 years back: colonise areas outside their own hinterland, areas on the Ionian coast of Asia Minor and on the coastlines of Italy and Sicily. Beyond the globe, our hinterland today, there is only outer space.

Lessons to be learned from settlements in history Throughout the history of urbanisation, the survival of cities had to do with the conservation of non-renewable resources and with living within the natural renewing capacity of their hinterland. The consolidation of urban development to preserve open land (and also to achieve liveable cities) as, for instance, pursued in the Greater Vancouver Regional District, seems therefore an eminently logical and important thing to do to guarantee that the city has a bioproductive hinterland. Another eminently logical and important thing is to make sure that the city is not consuming more resources than its hinterland can sustainably produce. Cities in the developed world, if not all cities, are pursuing neither of these objectives. They are therefore following the same path to self-destruction as some of the early cities, such as Imperial Rome, did. To prevent this from happening, three things need to be in place. First, the current reactionary approach to achieve sustainability needs to be replaced by the systematic appraisal of the current state of play and of what needs to be done to reestablish a symbiotic city–hinterland relationship. Second, in cases where there is certainty that human activity will cause damage to the environment, the reactionary approach needs to be complemented by precautionary measures to prevent damage occurring in the first place. Third, for cases where environmental damage is unforeseen or unforeseeable, resources need to have been put aside as insurance to fund future unknown remediation of damage that was not prevented because it was not foreseen. In the light of Chapter 2, some fundamental challenges to achieving these objectives while both maintaining the means and surviving long enough to do so will be discussed next.

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Notes 1 If we take H.G Wells’ idea of 1 hour’s travel each way per day, then the radius for travel on foot is 4 miles, giving a hinterland area of 50 square miles. This is of the same order as the area of Easter Island, suggesting that a population of c. 4,000 people is the bottom line sustainable limit for subsistence farming on this hinterland. 2 It is significant that this principle of urban growth not by expansion into its hinterland and beyond, as happens today, but by building a new city with its own hinterland after the first had reached its optimum or maximum population size, was reused only sparingly. The most striking example is Ebenezer Howard’s revolutionary city cluster concept, his group of slumless, smokeless cities, each of them surrounded by its own hinterland, which was to provide it with all needed food and materials and made it self-sufficient (Howard, 1898). Other examples are Abercrombie’s Greater London Plan of 1944 (Abercrombie, 1945) – in which new homes for all but 125,000 of 1 million people would be provided in new towns beyond the green belt – and his Clyde Valley Regional Plan of 1946 (Abercrombie, 1946) – which suggested the decentralisation of population from the overcrowded Glasgow into new towns, this time embedded in the green belt that was to contain the Clydeside conurbation and all the open farming land surrounding it, to be used to produce food such as milk, green vegetables, eggs, etc. ‘as closely as possible to the consuming areas’ (ibid., p. 133). 3 The intense period of population growth and urbanisation was abruptly halted by the Black Death, which swept Europe between 1347 and 1352, causing the death of 25 million people and the social structure of Europe to change fundamentally. It is said to have come to Europe from Caffa, a Crimean port town on the Black Sea where Italian merchants from Genoa maintained a thriving trade centre. They carried the Black Death to Italy. Cities were hardest hit. Europe was already weakened by exhaustion of the soil due to poor farming and the introduction of more sheep, which reduced the land available for corn. This indicates that, at that time, the city–hinterland system was becoming unbalanced (see [online] www.insectainspecta.com/fleas/bdeath/). The rapid spread of the plague had undoubtedly to do with the fact that a considerable percentage of people lived in densely developed cities and that the cities were well connected with each other through trade routes. One can speculate that the plague might have spread much more slowly and might have infected a much smaller number of people had urbanisation not been that far developed.

References Abercrombie, P. 1945. Greater London Plan 1944. London: HMSO. Abercrombie, P. 1946. The Clyde Valley Regional Plan. London: HMSO. Barker, K. 2004. Review of Housing Supply – Delivering Stability: Securing our Future Housing Needs, Final Report – Recommendations. London: TSO. Chambers, N., Simmons, C. and Wackernagel, M. 2000. Sharing Nature’s Interest: Ecological Footprints as an Indicator of Sustainability. London: Earthscan. Dawkins, R. 2005. The Ancestor’s Tale. Chapter 3. London: Phoenix. Der Fischer Weltalmanach, 2003. CD-ROM Data. Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag. Diamond, J. 2006. Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive. London: Penguin Books. Ferguson, L., McGregor, P., Swales, K. and Turner, K. 2004. The Environmental ‘Trade Balance’ between Scotland and the Rest of the UK. University of Stirling: scotecon. Girardet, H. 1992. The Gaia Atlas of Cities: New Directions for Sustainable Urban Living. London: Gaia Books. Girardet, H. 1999. Creating Sustainable Cities. Dartington, UK: Green Books, for The Schumacher Society.

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Hall, P. and Pfeiffer, U. 2000. Urban Future 21: A Global Agenda for Twenty-first Century Cities. London: E. & F. N. Spon. Howard, E. 1898. To-morrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform. London: Swan Sonnenshein. Humpert, K. and Schenk, M. 2001. Entdeckung der mittelalterlichen Stadtplanung: Das Ende vom Mythos der ‘gewachsenen Stadt’. Stuttgart: Konrad Theiss Verlag. Kolb, F. 1997. ‘Die Stadt der Antike’. In Hoepfner, W. (ed.) Frühe Stadtstrukturen. Heidelberg: Spektrum Akademischer Verlag. McDonach, K. and Yaneske, P. P. 2002. ‘Environmental management systems and sustainable development’. The Environmentalist, 22: pp. 217–226. Morris, A. E. J. [1979] 1987 (fifth impression). History of Urban Form: Before the Industrial Revolution. Harlow, UK: Longman; New York: John Wiley. Mumford, L. [1961] 1984. The City in History. Harmondsworth, UK: Penguin Books. Runnels, C. N. 1997. ‘Umweltzerstörung im griechischen Altertum’. In Hoepfner, W. (ed.) Frühe Stadtstrukturen, Heidelberg: Spektrum Academischer Verlag. Scottish Executive 2003. Review of Scotland’s Cities: The Analysis. [online] http://www.scotland. gov.uk/library5/society/rsca-00.asp, and published: rsca.pdf. Shaw, I. (ed.) 2003. The Oxford History of Ancient Egypt. Oxford: Oxford University Press UNEP (United Nations Environment Programme) 1999. Global Environmental Outlook 2000. London: Earthscan. van den Bergh, J. C. J. M. and Verbruggen, H. 1999. ‘Spatial sustainability, trade and indicators: an evaluation of the “ecological footprint”’, Ecological Economics, 29: 61–72. Wackernagel, M. and Rees, W. 1996. Our Ecological Footprint. Philadelphia: New Society Publications. Wells, H. G. 1901. Anticipations of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon Human Life and Thought. London: Chapman & Hall. Yaneske, P. 2003. ‘Visions of Sustainability’. Paper given at the CBE Seminar ‘Sustainability and the City’ on 16 October at The Lighthouse, Glasgow.

Chapter 8

Challenges to sustainability

Extreme natural hazards Even though the Type 0 state is essential for life on Earth, it also exposes life to extreme natural hazards. The combination of our increasingly interconnected world with its increasingly urbanised and growing population has raised the level of threat from extreme natural hazards to one without historical precedent. According to Huppert and Sparkes (2006), the possible consequences of such an event include global economic crises; many millions to tens of millions of deaths; catastrophic and irrecoverable destruction of mega-cities and possibly whole countries; global disruption of food supplies, transport and communications; severe climate states; and environmental pollution on a global scale. Serious global economic, social and environmental consequences do not require just an asteroid strike or super-eruption but could follow from a regional event or one in a strategically important location. In 1815 an eruption in Indonesia was responsible for the lack of a summer season in Europe and North America, and today the real prospect of a major earthquake occurring under the mega-city of Tokyo could precipitate global economic turmoil (McGuire, 2006). Awareness of extreme natural hazards and their consequences has only recently begun to move beyond scientific circles. As a result, the application of scientific understanding has been uneven. Science has an important role to play in the systematic identification of extreme hazards and areas at risk, though its ability to forecast and predict such extreme events is varied, as is summarised below. Earthquakes The complex processes involved and the chaotic behaviour seen for large earthquakes make prediction uncertain in our current state of knowledge, in both the short and the long term (Kanamori, 2006). Volcanoes Because not all sites of past eruptions have been identified, the frequency of large eruptions is known to be underestimated and, when that is coupled with the fact that not all sites have been identified, one could recur quite soon with little warning. As it stands, we do not have the science to predict the scale of an event from a monitored pattern of activity, and we have no monitored precedents of large volcanoes.

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Yellowstone National Park in the United States, which has been discovered to be the site of one of the largest supervolcanoes yet known, has been used as an example to summarise the current state of knowledge (Lowenstern et al., 2006). It has erupted on a 600,000-year cycle in the past, the last being 640,000 years ago. Tsunamis Predicting the occurrence of any tsunami is currently impossible, given the complexity of their causation, and there is no global detection and warning system yet in operation. Undetected, the Asian tsunami of 2004 brought devastation to an unprepared population in 11 countries, though the loss of life extended to the nationals of over 50 countries, whereas detection technology had already been deployed in the Pacific Ocean (Huppert and Sparkes, 2006). Extreme weather and climate change The path of a tropical storm can be predicted hours to days in advance. Long-term predictions of climate change are much more difficult. While there seems to be agreement that there is a real risk of a new colder period ultimately setting in, estimates of when this will be are uncertain, but recent work on Antarctic ice cores that draws on analogy with previous events suggests that the interglacial period might last 28,000 years (EPICA, 2004) without human-induced climate change. There is a further complication. Instead of a slow changeover between colder and warmer conditions, evidence from ice cores shows that the change can be very fast, taking as little as ten years, and that the pattern of changeovers has been chaotic (NRC, 2002, pp. 10–18). The implication of this is that abrupt climate change can occur and has occurred, even when conditions are changing gradually to that point. Asteroid impacts Our estimate of how often asteroid impacts occur is derived from locating evidence of past craters, and that could be a problem because craters may have weathered away or lie under the oceans, which could mean that serious impacts occur more frequently than so far supposed. Once an asteroid has been detected, its future path can be predicted accurately giving many years’ advance warning of a possible impact. Our knowledge of the impact risk posed by asteroids has increased rapidly since the inception of the Spaceguard survey by NASA, and an international Spaceguard effort is gradually evolving as governments come to recognise the reality of the threat (NASA, 2002).

Sustaining the natural environment The development of the engineered environment has only been possible because of the capacity of the co-existing Type 1 state to continue to provide a sustainable biosphere at a global scale. Concern for sustainable development arises from evidence that

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this may no longer be so, and a focus for that concern is the loss of biodiversity through extinction of species (UNEP, 1992). It is now widely thought that a sixth mass extinction event is under way. While the causes of past extinction events are still uncertain, the main cause of the present one is human activity, and the rate and scale of loss of biodiversity that is occurring is a serious threat to human well-being (MEA, 2005). The loss of species compromises the many services ecosystems provide, for example in purification of air and water, in soil fertility, in carbon sequestration, in crop pollination and in pest and pollution control, while increasing the risks of drought and floods and decreasing the chance of discovering new compounds of medicinal value (ibid., pp. 18–41). The loss of such environmental services would have substantial negative economic impacts with social and political consequences. Worse is that the effects seen so far may be underestimating the true scale of this extinction, because the extinction of one species can lead to subsequent secondary extinctions, and some species may only become extinct a long time after the initial event. Previous extinction events seem to have been initiated by loss of species at the base of the food chain but, in any case, current extinctions are being induced at different levels so that the knock-on effects are cascading both up and down ecological networks (Solé and Montoya, 2006). While it is understood that different extinction patterns will have different effects on ecosystem networks, how these different patterns relate to different perturbations is not understood, which is unfortunate, because there are several human activities that are directly contributing to loss of biodiversity (CBD, 2006, p. 33). Habitat loss Human use of land in terms of both built infrastructure, farming and of rivers for water storage and hydropower is responsible for the loss and isolation of natural habitats. Rather than just loss, habitat fragmentation is also very important, because larger habitats hold more species than smaller ones, and larger populations are less vulnerable than smaller ones (Solé and Montoya, 2006). In addition, the climate along the edge of a fragmented habitat is different from that of the interior so that small fragments are unfavourable to species that require an interior habitat (MEA, 2005, p. 53). Exploitation One form of human activity could be described as targeted hunting. It affects forestry through selective logging of tree species, marine environments through fishing and sport, hunting (usually large) mammals and birds, and the control of pests, which is a broad term for any species humans do not want (Memmott et al., 2006). Keystone species are being lost, as are mammals and birds that are highly mobile and may be responsible for long-distance seed dispersal (ibid.).

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Alien species Human activities are also leading to the invasion of native habitats, both terrestrial and marine, by alien species (CBD, 2006: Memmott et al., 2006). Sometimes this is deliberate, as in farming, landscaping or gardening – think of the proportion of plants now sold in garden centres that are alien. Alien plants both displace native plants and disconnect native ecological networks. Grey squirrels in the United Kingdom, rabbits in Australia and goats in the Galápagos Islands are a testament to what alien herbivores can do to the native environment. Human worldwide transport links are inadvertently responsible for spreading alien insects and pathogens, with insect parasitoids being of particular concern. Climate change That human activities are contributing to global warming is supported by a large body of scientific evidence (Stern, 2007, pp. 3–8). Ecosystems are vulnerable to changes in temperatures and rainfall, with species being unable to adapt, particularly if change is abrupt (NRC, 2002, pp. 16–17). Some species can change their ranges, including unwelcome pathogens, but some, such as polar species, will have nowhere to go. The fragmentation of habitats is also an impediment to migration. Overall, a significant number of species are predicted to be in danger of extinction as a result of climate change, with the effect on forests being of particular concern. Pollution Of major concern is the release of reactive nitrogen into the biosphere from the use of synthetic fertilisers in agriculture. While modern agriculture has produced great quantities of food, the scale of the nitrogen release is negatively affecting ecosystems far and wide (CBD, 2006, p. 34). Although these effects are serious enough in their own right, they are actually occurring together in a significant number of cases. Past mass extinction events seem to have been caused by factors acting together (Hallam, 2005, pp. 160–166). It is not known whether each has its own effect or whether they act together to produce an amplified impact (Memmott et al., 2006). In the face of this onslaught on the natural world, the obvious questions to ask are how much punishment nature can take, how much natural habitat we need and what we can do to improve things. The answer to the first question is that we do not really know. Certainly life has survived major extinctions, in the sense that ecological networks rebuilt themselves but, once gone, extinct species did not reappear. The answer to the second is almost the same but with the qualification that, in general, larger areas of natural habitat hold more species than smaller ones (Memmott et al., 2006). The answer to the third question is more complicated. One strategy would be to isolate the natural world entirely from human activity and access. Economic and social pressures mean that, in practice, this will only be acceptable as part of the answer. If we accept some degree of

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human activity, then we need to make conservation decisions that take into account how the stability of ecosystems is a matter of links between species. For example, the target of conservation could be a species of insect (Bascompte and Jordano, 2006). The insect turns out to be a specialist pollinator of a particular plant. This plant will need to be conserved as well, but the plant depends on a number of other insect pollinators to survive. These insects too will need to be conserved. And so on. Given that we do not know the answer to the first question, increasing the amount of natural habitat would also be a sensible precautionary strategy. Not surprisingly, this approach is being seen in many development plans which explicitly include green or conservation areas. But in what way is a green area a stable natural habitat? There is no general theory of how to reconstruct a natural habitat or how big it needs to be for the purposes of sustainability, but there are a few things we could try (Memmott et al., 2006). We might try a ‘nature knows best’ approach and set aside land adjacent to a natural area and hope nature will re-invade. There is empirical evidence to show that life may not be so accommodating and that restoration needs to be assisted by informed intervention, for example to rebuild plant pollinator webs. We can build wildlife or green corridors to counteract habitat fragmentation. Observation has shown they are of particular benefit to predators, but we know little about their effect on establishing links between species. As an added complication, nature conservation will have to take into account the needs of species displaced from their native habitats by global warming rather than simply providing fixed areas for the protection of current species, but little is known about how alien species fit into existing food webs. Because growing trees remove carbon from the atmosphere through photosynthesis, deforestation has an important bearing on global warming in particular. Planting new forests is one means to offset carbon emissions, but there are drawbacks. It takes a long time for a new tree to mature, and newly planted stands of trees are generally all the same age. Natural forests differ in having a complete life cycle from seedling through maturity to death, and a correspondingly more complex ecology (Smith and Voinov, 1996). The planting of new forests is not a substitute for existing forests, and the conservation of existing forests is important in its own right (CBD, 2006, pp. 23–24). It is unlikely that green areas will be isolated from human visitors. From international to local scales the idea of ecotourism is becoming established, providing both spectacle and education. On an international scale, with 100,000 visitors a year and a local population of 30,000 and still growing, how we manage the Galápagos Islands will determine their future, and the outcome will be a potent symbol for the rest of the world (CDF, 2006). On a local scale, a recent document published by the Scottish Executive states that ‘Young people benefit from regular opportunities to learn in a natural setting, to build up familiarity with a natural place close to home and to relate theory to reality on the ground’ (2006, p. 7). It would be ironic if the outcome of well-intentioned initiatives were to be irreversible damage to the very areas we wish to understand and conserve. Perhaps the lessons we should be learning are that there is considerable uncertainty between theory and practice and that natural habitats are vulnerable to human

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visitation. Because we were comforted by an illusion of remediation based on informed guesswork rather than exact science and were blissfully unaware of a process of ecological meltdown taking place around us at a rapid rate on a geological timescale but slow in terms of human memory, will future generations end up living an impoverished life in a degraded environment without the resources to do anything about it? Environmental degradation has played a significant part in the downfall of many past societies (Diamond, 2006), which in the case of Easter Island may have been very rapid (Hunt and Lipo, 2006).

Sustaining the engineered environment Current scientific knowledge of how the complex systems of the natural and engineered environments work and interact is limited, although fundamental to sustainability. A challenge ‘is to better understand the interactions and feedbacks between the natural and human-dominated systems’ (NRC, 2002, p. 149). On the one hand, the engineered environment has been created to insulate humans from the vagaries of the natural environment. On the other, the only known evidence of a life-supporting sustainable environment is that of a Type 1 state, so that understanding how it succeeds in this forms the only certain baseline against which sustainability can be measured. Put together, this suggests that the disequilibrium of the engineered environment with the Type 1 state could be described as the ways it has disconnected from the natural world. Each disconnection would then represent a facet of this disequilibrium that requires resources to maintain it. We can explore this by looking at health, food, water and energy, fundamental requirements of a sustainable engineered environment.

Health Health is an area where we have attempted to disconnect from the role pathogens play in regulating populations in a Type 1 state. Although medical science has made great strides, to the benefit of human health, pathogens still pose a significant threat. In the latter half of the last century the widespread use of antibiotics was accompanied by a belief that many bacterial infections that had plagued humans through the ages were now a thing of the past. In retrospect, the widespread use of antibiotics can be seen as a form of artificial selection for resistant traits in bacterial populations, and now there are a number of pathogens that have resistance to several antibiotics (WHO, 2002). The resurgence of tuberculosis and malaria is a current cause for concern, malaria being one of a number of diseases that global warming will encourage to spread (NRC, 2002, pp. 146–148). Viruses continue to pose a threat to health because they can mutate, which is how common cold and flu viruses keep ahead of our immune systems and vaccines. Could a really nasty disease, which was highly infectious and to which we have no immunity, appear and cause a pandemic? Unfortunately, this is not so unlikely. It has happened many times in the past, with the influenza pandemic of 1918 being one of the worst in recent times, causing the deaths of as many as 50 million people.

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Today, the World Health Organization believes that the combination of large urban populations and global transport links has made another influenza pandemic likely (WHO, 2005). It also believes that the rate of infection will be too fast for vaccination to be effective, because it takes months from the detection of the virus to vaccine manufacture, and that even then there will only be sufficient doses for a fraction of the population, as will also be the case for antiviral drugs. In deciding the best strategies for mitigating the effects of an infectious disease, we need to understand how it spreads over social networks, and social networks are small-world networks (Buchanan, 2002, pp. 170–183). An outcome of one modelling study was that early detection and the targeted treatment of those infected is an effective strategy (Eubank et al., 2004). This strategy, plus closing places or cancelling events where people would meet in large numbers, has been supported for influenza in particular by later studies, but many uncertainties remain (Enserink, 2005). The economic and social impacts of a pandemic could be on a scale that is difficult for most people to comprehend: hospitals and clinics overwhelmed, schools closed, essential services and businesses inoperative due to illness and absenteeism, public transport stopped. Whatever people might wish to believe, our engineered environment remains disturbingly vulnerable to pathogens.

Food With regard to food, farming has provided the means to support the rapid increase in population since the last ice age receded. As people formed settlements, they cleared land for farming and began the process of fragmentation and disconnection of the natural environment. Just ploughing land disconnects the natural process of carbon storage in the soil, releasing it into the atmosphere as the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (Stern, 2007, p. 197). Otherwise, the traditional mixed farming of animals and crops had a limited effect on wildlife, although by accident rather than design. Since the Second World War, intensive farming based on synthetic fertilisers, pesticides and growth-boosting drugs has increased both yields and the area of land under cultivation to the extent that, if aquaculture is included, cultivated systems now cover about a quarter of the Earth’s surface (MEA, 2005, p. 8). The beneficial outcome has been that food production has kept pace with the demands of a growing, increasingly urbanised population. Synthetic fertiliser has disconnected human crop yields from natural constraints on nutrient levels but raised concerns over pollution, and while intensive farming methods help reduce the area of land that would be otherwise required, their further expansion will disconnect more ecosystems and are predicted to be the major cause of biodiversity loss for the foreseeable future (CBD, 2006, p. 6). Ultimately, there is a finite amount of land suitable for intensive cultivation. There has also been a substantial reduction in the genetic diversity of domesticated plants and animals, disconnecting them from the genetic diversity that bestows resilience and adaptability on wild populations (CBD, 2006, p. 27). The control of pests and predation ensures that the abundances and densities of farmed species are disconnected from natural population control mechanisms while simultaneously disconnecting natural food chains.

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Nevertheless, the sustainable intensification of agriculture is seen as the likely way forward, because not only do we have the science and technology to do better, but also because much of the problem lies in poor management practices rather than being inherent in the form of agriculture (MEA, 2005, pp. 11–13). This view is supported by a science-based critical assessment of a wide range of issues pertinent to sustainable agriculture, including the need to understand how the stability of the complicated food production and supply network is affected by its structure (Trewavas, 2004). As was recognised over a hundred years ago (Wells, 1901, pp. 35–65), the fact that people are governed by a 24-hour day and need to sleep places a practical limit on the daily distance travelled to and from a place of work. For a long time, limited to foot and animal power, farming was a largely local endeavour, particularly for fresh food. Although the travel cost associated with the food supply network must have been close to unity, there was a corresponding vulnerability to crop failure, because agriculture is the sector most vulnerable to weather and climate (NRC, 2002, pp. 141–142). In such times, and even today, foraging could provide a cushion, but this is rapidly diminishing through the overexploitation and shrinkage of natural ecosystems. With the advent of refrigeration technology and modern transportation systems, the human food web has a global reach even for fresh food with the beneficial effect of disconnecting populations from the effects of local weather on harvest yields. In developed countries this has also resulted in a choice of food largely unlimited by season or distance. But the disconnection of food from weather, seasonal variation and geographic source comes at a price. Obviously, energy has to be used for transport and refrigeration, and this has raised the question as to whether local food production is a more environmentally friendly option (Pretty et al., 2005). The question of local versus distant food production is not straightforward. A crop grown under favourable climatic conditions and transported to the point of use could be a more environmentally friendly option than attempting to grow the crop under less favourable local conditions. Nor is environment the only consideration. Stability and security of supply are also essential, and these aspects have been enhanced by the global movement of food. On the other hand, the disruption of food supply links by natural or human means represents a vulnerability. In other words, sustainability requires any urban population to understand and take full account of the implications of its food web being a complex network.

Water The availability of water for crop irrigation is an important consideration, and human disconnection of natural water systems has had many negative effects (MEA, 2005, p. 34). Less obvious is that when animals are reared on forage grown and irrigated elsewhere, the local link between eating and defecation that recycles nutrients in ecosystems is disconnected (Limburg et al., 2002). Now include the human food chain as well and the scale of the disconnection becomes apparent, where time and effort have to be spent on both irrigating and fertilising soil at one end and on treating and disposing of unwanted sewage from urban populations at the other.

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In addition to irrigation and waste removal, water is also needed for drinking. Although access to water resources varies considerably with location, unlike the case for food and energy there is no human global distribution network in a physical sense. A virtual international trade in water exists in the sense that food consumed in a location remote from its production has required somebody else to use their water in raising crops and livestock. Physical networks for water supply and waste water removal tend to be regional affairs, as, for example, in Scotland. Although Scotland and England share a border, there is no connection between the Scottish and English networks. Since 2002, Scottish Water has had sole responsibility for the 50,000 kilometres each of water mains and sewers that serve 5 million Scottish customers, most of whom are located in an area known as the Central Belt. When we look at the water supply network it is apparent that the Central Belt supply is dependent on two large water treatment plants. Similarly, the safe disposal of waste water is dependent on three large treatment plants. It seems that we are dealing with hub-like networks with the obvious associated vulnerabilities. Just the loss of one water or waste-water treatment plant would cause difficulties, because of lack of capacity elsewhere to absorb the increased loads. As a further twist, one of the large waste-water treatment plants also supplies fuel in the form of dried waste pellets to one of Scotland’s large power stations, so forming a link with the energy supply network.

Energy Energy is one thing that underpins the whole of our disconnection from the Type 1 state. We use energy to disconnect lighting from the day–night cycle, to disconnect the internal environments of our buildings from the vagaries of the external climate and to disconnect from the limits of human and animal muscle power by substituting engine power. The sustainability of the engineered environment as now developed is fundamentally dependent on access to energy in controlled amounts and with a consistency quite different from that of a natural environment. In the developed world, coal and oil have largely fuelled the relentlessly increasing demand for energy since the industrial revolution. Although these fossil fuels are classed as non-renewable, there are sufficient reserves to meet demand for decades to come, and they will continue to play a significant role in meeting energy needs for the foreseeable future (Stern, 2007, pp. 211–212). Since energy plays such a fundamental role in the engineered environment, the vulnerability and security of fuel supply networks is an important issue. One form of vulnerability arises from the unequal geographical distribution of fossil fuels, which means many supply networks may extend far beyond local control. For example, Europe imports substantial amounts of gas over a 4,000-mile (6,400-kilometre) pipeline from Russia. At the beginning of January 2006, as a result of a dispute Russia cut the gas supply to Ukraine which also had the effect of reducing the supply of gas into the European Union. In an analysis of the security of European and UK gas supplies, the significance of this event was described in terms of its bringing in a new age – the age of energy insecurity (BBC, 2006). Vulnerability also arises from the fact

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that, in general, supply networks are hub centred. Power stations, natural gas terminals and oil refineries can all be classed as ‘critical infrastructure’, a description used by the UK Home Office when it confirmed the deployment of armed military police to guard several such facilities in January 2007 as a security measure. Yet another form of vulnerability was demonstrated in 1996 when the shorting of a major power line in the North American state of Oregon set in train a cascading series of failures from overload that resulted in a loss of power to 11 states in the United States and two provinces in Canada (Barabási, 2003, p. 119). However, our vulnerability to global warming and its link to the use of fossil fuels is an issue likely to be familiar to most people – and this is while most of the world’s population have yet to achieve the standard of living of people in the developed world. A recent review has extensively examined the subject of climate change as a result of greenhouse gas emissions (Stern, 2007). Irrespective of the methodologies used and conclusions reached, it can be taken as representing in microcosm the issues facing sustainable development as a whole. For one thing, the review shows the nearbewildering complexity and interconnectedness of the issues raised by global warming. For another, it also acknowledges that global warming predictions are hedged with uncertainty. While science may underpin the individual processes involved, constructing a model of the highly complex climate system is a daunting task (NRC, 2002, pp. 159–161; Stern, 2007, pp. 9–10). Much the same remarks that were made about ecosystem and food web modelling apply to climate models. In the current state of knowledge, both require greater computer power to run convincingly detailed models. On the bright side, science does lay the foundation for many technologies that could contribute to the mitigation of global warming. There is unlikely to be a single technological solution, given the range of activities involved, so a mix of technologies will be needed. Nuclear power, wind power, solar power, wave power and biofuels are all on the agenda as alternative sources to fossil fuels but are not necessarily environmentally neutral. The solving of one problem by displacing it into another is a distinct possibility in the absence of truly joined-up thinking. For example, take the case of biofuels, which have the potential to make a significant contribution in the transportation sector. Biofuel crop cultivation requires land that may compete with that needed for food production or that may encourage the clearing of rainforest or other wild areas, and in terms of reducing greenhouse gas emissions the potential contribution of a biofuel varies with the means of production even to the point of becoming negative (Hunt and Flavin, 2006). In some cases, biofuel crops are likely to be produced by intensive farming methods (Trewavas, 2004). The uneven development of the mix of technologies needed is a current problem. If this looks rather like a trial-and-error process, there is a good reason, as we shall see later. But does it stop there? Archaeological evidence shows that populations have tended to overshoot their current resource capacity and then compensate by using resources requiring more effort to exploit, a movement towards a decreasing rate of return (Shennan, 2002, pp. 113, 138–176). We may hold the fort for some time, but future energy demands are likely to dwarf those of today, just as ours dwarf those of the past. A vision of the future was put forward by the Russian astronomer

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Nikolai Kardashev in 1964 in the context of detecting extraterrestrial civilisations. This led him to a classification of civilisations in terms of their energy use in accordance with the laws of physics and thermodynamics (Kaku, 1997, pp. 17–18). For those interested in learning more, search for ‘Kardeshev Civilizations’ on the Web. The first stage would mean harnessing all planetary energy systems, including that of the Earth’s core, and implies, among other things, global cooperation, sophisticated planetary communication systems and climate control. Although we are not at this stage, the seeds of all these advances are already apparent today and being reinforced by the requirements for sustainable development.

Cultural inheritance Our technological, social and economic systems are part of a cultural inheritance on a scale that differentiates us from other species. In particular, as our technology has become increasingly complex and capable, it has increasingly provided us with the means to disconnect the engineered environment from the natural environment of a Type 1 state. What we can imagine is the first step to making things come true, and what we think and do is influenced by cultural information. But cultural information is built on past experience. Now we can see why it is not surprising to find evidence of trial and error in the solutions being proposed for global warming. It is an example of climate change unprecedented in our cultural inheritance. Again, the whole of human civilisation has grown in a period of rather benign environmental conditions and, unlike our distant ancestors, we have no experience of major catastrophic events. In fact, the same applies to many of the challenges of sustainability in general, where we have no history of social learning. There is also another drawback to social learning. Shared ideas are not necessarily appropriate to survival, though they play an important part in determining behaviour. Serious consequences have followed for societies both past and present when shared ideas are inappropriate to the reality of their environment (Diamond, 2006). Today, the disconnection between social/economic decision making and scientific knowledge about our environment is explicitly recognised as a barrier to sustainability in many areas such as biodiversity (MEA, 2005), abrupt climate change (NRC, 2002), global warming (Stern, 2007), farming practices (Trewavas, 2004) or extreme natural hazards (Huppert and Sparkes, 2006). Much of what we already know remains to be disseminated and applied, and where there are holes in our knowledge, science can tell us where we should be investing in research. At the heart of the matter is the fact that our big brain not only makes the engineered environment possible but also offers us the means to understand how to remedy its problems of sustainability. How the human brain does what it does is still one of our greatest mysteries, but we now know that this most complex of systems is itself connected according to a form of small-world architecture (Buchanan, 2002, pp. 119, 125). Another thing we are reasonably certain about is that the constraint placed on us by a 24-hour daily cycle of wakefulness and sleep, as expressed by H. G. Wells, was an apposite observation. We now know that our bodies are

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externally synchronised to the day–night cycle and that this directly affects how well we perform at different times of the day (Strogatz, 2004, pp. 70–100). Yet the engineered environment increasingly requires activity to be maintained around the clock, which means more people working shifts at odds with their biological clock. Among other things, this has detrimental effects on health and accident rates. Compromised alertness and competency does not sound like a recipe for success in an increasingly complex world where a mistake could have very serious consequences. To add to the mystery, what goes on in our heads may be changing. Very recently it has been discovered that a variant of the gene ASPM, which is involved in brain size, appeared in the human population about 6,000 years ago just about the time cities and writing began to develop (Mekel-Bobrov et al., 2005). The variant has spread very rapidly such that, at present, about half the human population has at least one copy of it. It appears we are still the subjects of natural selection.

Accounting for value Sustainable development has largely been interpreted as including growth, and that has largely been in terms of economic growth as measured in financial terms. As the engineered environment has grown, the question of what to value and how to value it has become urgent. Extreme natural hazards and the threats they pose to populations, built infrastructure and economic activity are one area of concern. In the past, natural disasters have been treated reactively in terms of providing emergency relief, but the dramatic increase in the extent of the loss burden seen over the past few decades means this approach is no longer tenable and needs to switch to the identification and management of the risks (Smolka, 2006). Exactly how the costs of the necessary loss prevention measures and future disasters will be met has yet to be resolved. In addition, we do not have the necessary knowledge to evaluate the risks presented by infrequent extreme hazards to an acceptable level of certainty. The preservation of essential services provided by ecosystems also raises the question of how to account for their value. This is not just a resource issue but involves avoiding the catastrophic loss of ecosystems and the life support they provide. That makes it all the more urgent for us to develop our understanding of ecosystems as complex systems. Only then can we develop appropriate indicators that go beyond those of standard economic theory (Limburg et al., 2002). In the particular context of climate change, a number of suggestions have been made as to how economic modelling could be improved to properly inform policy and action (Stern, 2007, pp. 25–45). These suggestions include taking ethical considerations, uncertainty and the extinction of species into account, all issues that have implications for sustainable development as a whole.

The future: designed or emergent? While predicting the future is always fraught with uncertainty, identifying the technologies that are going to play a key role in getting us there is less so, at least in the

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near future. On the basis of current science, one informed commentator has identified these technologies as in the fields of computing, biomolecular engineering and applications of quantum theory (Kaku, 1997, pp. 7–9). The first is already all-pervasive in our daily lives, and the results of the second are appearing as applications in medicine and agriculture. The most obvious current application of the third is in lasers and the conversion of sunlight into electricity by solar cells. These technologies are already part of our cultural inheritance. On another front, sustainable development is becoming a shared idea in which the question of how we can advance towards global sustainability without encountering environmental catastrophe is a central issue. The Stern Review (2007) not only represents the issues facing the whole of sustainable development in microcosm but offers a solution. In the context of climate change it states that ‘Stabilisation – at whatever level – requires that annual emissions be brought down to the level that balances the Earth’s natural capacity to remove greenhouse gases from the atmosphere’ (ibid., p. 218). In other words, the disconnection of the scale of greenhouse gas production of the engineered environment from that manageable by the Type 1 state has to be nullified. We can generalise this to mean that we should identify all the disconnections and, where necessary, nullify their disequilibrium with the Type 1 state. However, that might be easier said than done. In analogy to ant society, our complex engineered environment is made up of myriads of individuals going about their business unaware of much outside their immediate sphere of interactions. No single organisation, and certainly no individual person, understands the totality of our world. If sustainability is to be achieved through lots of piecemeal local actions, then the outcome will probably be emergent rather than designed. There are difficulties with this. Everyone would have to be given the right signals for the wanted global outcome to emerge, but we are bombarded with signals of all kinds, many of them conflicting. Unlike ants, we have big brains that are influenced by ideas and can interpret signals in our own ways. Again, everything really is connected so that a piecemeal approach may miss something important. To draw an analogy with medicine, we can keep treating individual symptoms but the patient might still die of the disease. A piecemeal approach also runs the real danger of stultifying progress. Sustainable development at a global level does not preclude locally unsustainable innovation or practices. It is a matter of balance. Even so, would coming back into balance with the natural world guarantee sustainable development? No, because our globalised engineered environment makes us more vulnerable than at any previous time to extreme natural hazards, and it is only a matter of when, not if, one occurs. At worst this could take the form of a serious extinction event such as abrupt climate change, a supervolcano eruption or an asteroid strike. We might be able to deal with the first and possibly the second if we reach the level of technological development envisaged by Kardeshev as the first stage on his scale of civilisation, but we would need space travel to combat the third (Morrison, 2006). Which brings us to the big question, what is it that we are actually constructing? If we take the development of cities as a model, it seems that, whatever it is, it will be a mix of emergent and designed outcomes (Johnson, 2002, pp. 87–100). There is

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certainly no shortage of speculation – the role of computers, the Internet and artificial intelligence being current favourites. However, one theme that emerges in the development of the engineered environment is that we have been steadily disconnecting ourselves from the limitations of a Type 1 state from when we as a species first settled down. Technological progress and disconnection seem to go hand in hand. There is a logical outcome to this process of disconnection: a Type 3 state. If successfully completed, there would be no need for any other environment than an engineered one. While this could lead to a completely artificial, but sustainable, environment for people on Earth, it is the exploration of space that is likely to accelerate the development of the necessary technologies. While the development of space travel sufficient to deal with the threat of an impending asteroid strike is a necessary insurance against catastrophe, the ability to establish ourselves beyond the Earth would be an even better insurance against all the inevitable extinction threats of the future. In a broader sense, the resources that lie beyond the Earth are virtually limitless, though beyond our present technology to access. So far human presence in space has been limited by the need to maintain a supply link with the Earth and has gone no further than the Moon, though unmanned probes have travelled to and observed the farther reaches of the solar system. The International Space Station has provided a platform for experiments on the means for longer stays in space close to the Earth, but this may be about to change. Plans are being laid in both Europe and the United States for further human exploration of space. The European Space Agency (ESA) has announced its ExoMars project with the ultimate aim of sending humans to the Red Planet, with the Moon as a stepping stone (ESA, 2006). Similarly, in response to the US vision for space exploration announced by President George W. Bush in 2004, the US Space Agency (NASA, 2006) has proposed a return to the Moon to investigate the possibility of a lunar base which could act as a precursor to manned flights to Mars. Back on Earth, the Mars Society carries out mission simulations at its Mars Arctic Research Station. In all cases, human exploration of the kind envisaged will involve a need to ‘live off the land’. This means the development of technologies to locally produce electricity for power, fuel for engines, materials for shelter, air to breathe, water to drink and food to eat where, perhaps, the ultimate technology would be to bypass plants altogether and derive our sustenance directly from the Type 0 state. Such technologies and the scientific knowledge they would bring are the route to building independent engineered environments on other bodies of the solar system beyond Earth. Whether they would be sustainable raises economic and social questions but, as was said earlier, what we can imagine is the first step to making things come true.

References Barabási, A-L. 2003. Linked: The New Science of Networks. New York: Plume. Bascompte, J. and Jordano, P. 2006. ‘The structure of plant–animal mutualistic networks’. In Pascual, M. and Dunne, J. A. (eds) Ecological Networks: Linking Structure to Dynamics in Food Webs. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 143–159.

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BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) 2006. The High Price of Gas. [online] http://news. bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/panorama/6113218.stm. Buchanan, M. 2002. Small World: Uncovering Nature’s Hidden Networks. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. CBD (Convention on Biological Diversity) 2006. Global Biodiversity Outlook 2. [online] http://www.biodiv.org/GBO2. CDF (Charles Darwin Foundation) 2006. Strategic Plan 2006–2016. [online] http://www. darwinfoundation.org/. Diamond, J. 2006. Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive. London: Penguin Books. Enserink, M. 2005. ‘Drugs, quarantine might stop a pandemic before it starts’. Science, 309: 807–871. EPICA (European Project for Ice Coring in Antarctica) community members. 2004. ‘Eight glacial cycles from an Antarctic ice core’. Nature, 429: 623–628. ESA (European Space Agency) 2006. Aurora Exploration Programme. [online] http://www. esa.int/SPECIALS/Aurora/SEM1NVZKQAD_0.html. Eubank, S., Guclu, H., Kumar, V. S. A., Marathe, M. V., Srinavasan, A., Toroczkai, Z. and Wang, N. 2004. ‘Modelling disease outbreaks in realistic urban social networks’. Nature, 429: 180–184. Hallam, A. 2005. Catastrophes and Lesser Calamities: The Causes of Mass Extinctions. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hunt, S. and Flavin, C. 2006. ‘Biofuels: a booming industry worldwide’. Future Fuels supplement to Energy World, September: 1–4. Hunt, T. L. and Lipo, C. P. 2006. ‘Late colonisation of Easter Island’. Science, 311: 1603– 1606. Huppert, H. E., and Sparkes, R. S. J. 2006. ‘Extreme natural hazards: population growth, globalization and environmental change’. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. A, 364: 1875–1888. Johnson, S. 2002. Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities and Software. London: Penguin Books. Kaku, M. 1997. Visions. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kanamori, H. 2006. ‘Lessons from the 2004 Sumatra–Andaman earthquake’. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. A, 364: 1927–1925. Limburg, E. K., O’Neill, R. V., Costanza, R. and Farber, S. 2002. ‘Complex systems and valuation’. Ecological Economics, 41: 409–420. Lowenstern, J. A., Smith, R. B. and Hill, D. P. 2006. ‘Monitoring super-volcanoes: geophysical and geochemical signals at Yellowstone and other large caldera systems’. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. A, 364: 2055–2072. McGuire, W. J. 2006. ‘Global risk from extreme geophysical events: threat identification and assessment’. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. A, 364: 1889–1909. MEA (Millennium Ecosystem Assessment) 2005. Ecosystems and Human Well-being: Biodiversity Synthesis. Washington, DC: World Resources Institute. Mekel-Bobrov, N., Gilbert, S. L., Evans, P. D., Vallender, E. J., Anderson, J. R., Hudson, R. R., Tishkoff, S. A. and Lahn, B. T. 2005. ‘Ongoing adaptive evolution of ASPM, a brain size determinant in Homo sapiens’. Science, 309: 1720–1722. Memmott, J., Alonso, D., Berlow, E. L., Dobson, A., Dunne, J. A., Solé, R. V. and Weitz, J. 2006. ‘Biodiversity loss and ecological network structure’. In Pascual, M. and Dunne, J. A. (eds) Ecological Networks: Linking Structure to Dynamics in Food Webs. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 325–347. Morrison, D. 2006. ‘Asteroid and comet impacts: the ultimate environmental catastrophe’. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society. A, 364: 2041–2054.

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NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) 2002. Near Earth Object Program. [online] http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news126.html. NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) 2006. Moon, Mars and Beyond. [online] http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/exploration/mmb/index.html. NRC (National Research Council) 2002. Abrupt Climate Change: Inevitable Surprises. Washington, DC: National Academy Press. Pretty, J. N., Ball, A. S., Lang, T. and Morison, J. I. L. 2005. ‘Farm costs and food miles: An assessment of the full cost of the UK weekly food basket’. Food Policy, 30: 1–19. Scottish Executive 2006. Learning for Our Future: Scotland’s First Action Plan for the UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development. Edinburgh: Scottish Executive. Shennan, S. 2002. Genes, Memes and Human History. London: Thames & Hudson. Smith, C. L. and Voinov, A. A. 1996. ‘Resource management: can it sustain Pacific Northwest fishery and forest systems?’ Ecosystem Health, 2: 145–158. Smolka, A. 2006. ‘Natural disasters and the challenge of extreme events risk management from an insurance perspective’. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A, 364: 2147–2165. Solé, R.V. and Montoya, J. M. 2006. ‘Ecological network meltdown from habitat loss and fragmentation’. In Pascual, M. and Dunne, J. A. (eds) Ecological Networks: Linking Structure to Dynamics in Food Webs. New York: Oxford University Press. Stern, N. 2007. The Economics of Climate Change: The Stern Review. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Strogatz, S. H. 2004. Sync: The Emerging Science of Spontaneous Order. London: Penguin Books. Trewavas, A. 2004. ‘A critical assessment of organic farming-and-food assertions with particular respect to the UK and the potential environmental benefits of no-till agriculture’. Crop Protection, 23: 757–781. UNEP (United Nations Environment Programme) 1992. Convention on Biological Diversity. [online] http://www.biodiv.org/convention/default.shtml. Wells, H. G. 1901. Anticipations of the Reaction of Mechanical and Scientific Progress upon Human Life and Thought. London: Chapman & Hall. WHO (World Health Organization) 2002. Antimicrobial Resistance. Fact sheet 194. [online] http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs194/en/. WHO (World Health Organization) 2005. Epidemic and Pandemic Alert and Response. [online] http://www.who.int/csr/disease/influenza/pandemic/en/.

Chapter 9

Availability and choice of options

Introduction It has become clear that sustainability will only be achievable if people live within the natural renewing capacity of their local and global hinterland and if damage to the environment is repaired or, better still, prevented. As today’s city of the developed world draws resources from a hinterland that spans the entire globe, achieving sustainability is no longer a limited local issue but has a global dimension.

Available options As there is more than one type of sustainability, cities, in their attempt to achieve sustainability, have four broad options: ●

●

●

●

to return to a lifeless state or, at least, one which cannot support human life (Type 0 state); to return to the ‘wilderness’ as an integrated part of a self-regulating ecosystem (Type 1 state); to live within the limits of a naturally renewing biosphere either through low environmental impact or substantial environmental remediation (Type 2 state); to engineer artificial biospheres that can sustain themselves independently of the Earth’s biosphere and, preferably, support human life (Type 3 state).

Although the investigation of early cities has illustrated that cities have, in the past, collapsed to a Type 0 state, it is safe to assume that, irrespective of political persuasion few, if any, would knowingly pursue the first two options, as the first would mean the end of humankind and the second the abolition of the city and other forms of urban development. Accordingly, there are only two realistic options, which are underpinned by different principles and different outcomes: to go for the Type 2 state – with medium to high risk but also medium to large reward, depending on the balance between biospheric and anthropocentric requirements; or to go for the Type 3 state – an independent engineered biosphere that has its own self-sustainability problems, specifically due to the potential, if not likelihood, of technological failure.

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The issue of fall-back positions Since the transition of one type of sustainability option to another is possible not only in the direction of evolution from Type 0 up to Type 3 state but also in the direction of collapse from Type 3 down to Type 0 state, then for each option but the Type 0 state there are one or a number of positions of lower state sustainability that might be considered the fall-back positions – from Type 3 to 2 or 1, and from Type 2 to 1. Given the possibility that the collapse of a state of sustainability (other than Type 0) can occur at any time now or in the future, as it did in the past owing to management failure, it would be prudent to maintain in various separated locations on the globe true wilderness areas of Type 1 in as natural a state as possible to act as a precaution against falling below the minimum sustainable level of natural capital and to offer the opportunity of regrowth and recovery in the case of catastrophic failure of the Type 2 and 3 states. An illustrative example of a division of objectives on sustainable development was widely reported in the media during the meeting in July 2005 in Scotland of the leaders of the G8 countries on the subject of global warming. On the one hand, those wishing to support the Kyoto principles by cutting greenhouse gas emissions, and thereby implicitly accepting the consequences for economic growth, can be identified as pursuing the Type 2 state objectives. On the other hand, the United States took the position that a realistic approach to sustainable development involves accepting continued economic growth as axiomatic and explicitly accepts that this requires the development of advances in technology. This position can be identified as much closer to the boundary between the Type 2 and 3 states. It becomes even more obvious with the publicly declared policy of the present US administration to resume manned, not simply robotic, space exploration. What these options mean regarding sustainability of the city and city region will be discussed next.

Pursuing the available choices The overall constraint that limits the achievability of the above options is the finite size of the global biologically productive area. There are considerable differences in the figures that are given for this area: the WWF (2004) estimates it to be the equivalent of 1.8 global hectares per capita; with a global population of 6.3 billion in 2004, this adds up to 113.4 million square kilometres, and this land is said to accommodate also all non-human species – that is, the figure includes all remaining natural land (ibid.). Chambers et al. suggest that various estimates come up with a figure for the total area of bioproductive land of somewhere between 87 and 103 million square kilometres globally (2000, p. 37). They also give the percentages of land use of the total global land area, estimated to be 150 million square kilometres. The total land area has the following land-use specifications (Table 9.1): approximately one-third of the global land area is unsuitable for settlement or cultivation; one-third is the totally managed land for agriculture and farming; another third is what remains as natural land.

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Table 9.1 Land categories/uses of global land area (ibid., p. 36)

Land category/use

Sub-category

Other land (unsuitable for settlement or cultivation)

Wetlands, ice, rocks, desert, tundra, lakes and rivers

Built land Totally managed land Remaining natural land

Arable land Permanent pasture Tropical, temperate and boreal forests Lightly wooded areas (with as little as 10% tree cover)

Total land

Million km2

%

Accum. %

47

31

3 15 34 34

2 10 23 23

33

17

11

34

150

100

100

33

Source: Chambers et al. (2000, p. 36)

The global bioproductive land is, according to this land-use categorisation, the managed agricultural and farming land of 49 million square kilometres, basically used for food production, plus the remaining natural land of 51 million square kilometres, providing wood and biodiversity but also acting as carbon sink and oxygen producer, adding up to a total of 100 million square kilometres or 10 billion hectares, a figure quite close to the top figure of Chambers et al., which additionally includes the built land. With a global population in 2000 of 6.12 billion, the equal share of this land would have been 1.63 hectares per capita, lower than the 1.92 hectares estimated by the Scottish Executive (2003, p. 196). UN population estimates of 2007 suggest a global population of 6.54 billion which brings the average share down to 1.53 hectares per capita. In 2050 the UN estimates that the global population will have reached 9.19 billion (UN Press Release POP/952, 2007). This figure does not reflect that in the intervening 50 or so years about 550 to 750 million hectares of forest land will be converted into agricultural land if current trends persist (Chambers et al., 2000, p. 41) and that there is erosion of bioproductive land as well. When the global population reaches 9.19 billion in 2050, the equal share in bioproductive land will be reduced to 1.09 global hectares per capita. The actual global ecological footprint in 2004 was estimated to be 2.2 hectares per capita (Global Footprint Network, 2004), which indicates that in 2004 humankind consumed 22 per cent above the Earth’s regenerative capacity. In 2050, humankind will consume at a level of 100 per cent above the Earth’s regenerative capacity – that is, we are getting close to requiring two Earths. The way to avoid this scenario is by reducing humanity’s ecological footprint, which can be achieved by lowering the world population, reducing consumption per capita and implementing more resource-efficient technologies for providing goods and services (ibid.). These figures will be used to assess what chances there are of achieving Type 2 state of sustainability. As was previously noted, the two options for choice are to achieve a Type 2 or Type 3 state of sustainability. The first option would require living within the limits of a naturally renewing capacity of the biosphere (Type 2 state), either through low environmental impact (the low- to medium-risk scenario) or substantial environmental

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remediation (the medium- to high-risk scenario). The potential for achieving the lowto medium-risk state of sustainability would be relatively high as long as the size of the city’s population remained within the carrying capacity of its hinterland. The risk of losing the balance between city and hinterland would be relatively small provided that population size were kept within the carrying capacity of the hinterland; the reward for achieving sustainability would, however, also be relatively small, as the city–hinterland system would rely largely on its local rather than global resources. The potential for achieving the medium- to high-risk state of sustainability would be relatively high as long as the impact of consumption levels of the city on its hinterland were to be continuously monitored and any harm to the environment either prevented or remediated.

Achieving the low- to medium-risk scenario Assuming that the figure of the global bioproductive area of 100 million square kilometres is reasonably accurate, with a current estimated global population of 6.54 billion (UN Population Division, 2006) the available share of the area would be 1.63 hectares per capita. The global population is expected to rise to 9.2 billion by 2050 (ibid.); the average settlement area per capita would then be reduced to 1.53 hectares. It is obvious that an equal ecological footprint of, say, 4 hectares per capita, close to that of Scottish cities, is globally completely unthinkable, as even today it would require almost two and a half times the available global bioproductive area. It is more than likely that during the next 50 years the arable and pasture areas will increase significantly as a result of the reduction of forest and woodland areas, although this will have an as yet unforeseeable impact on the biodiversity of the global ecosystems (Chambers et al., 2000, pp. 36–37). This will not increase the overall global bioproductive area, but more of the Earth’s surface will be used to produce food. It is unlikely that a reduction of the global population will be achievable. The reduction of cities’ ecological footprint is therefore an absolute necessity, as is the reduction of resource wastage in the production and consumption processes. The next questions that need to be answered are: how much bioproductive land is required per capita for complete self-sufficiency of a symbiotic city–hinterland system in terms of natural resources, food, energy and the absorption of pollution in carbon sinks? Would it be possible to achieve the low- to medium-risk state of sustainability within the land resources locally or nationally available? And what would the land-use pattern of such a symbiotic city–hinterland system have to be? The investigation of the required land size and land-use pattern of a symbiotic city–hinterland system is based on land-use data from the Netherlands, where normally reliable statistical data are readily available. The results of relatively straightforward calculations are as follows: ●

●

The land area of the Netherlands is said to be 41,526 square kilometres and its estimated 2004 population is slightly over 16.3 million (Amsterdam Info). According to the current land-use profile of the Netherlands, 66.6 per cent of the total land is countryside (agricultural areas, greenhouses, dry and wet areas

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and forests), 33.4 per cent is built area (including areas for living, working, recreation and sports, infrastructure) (MVRDV, 1999, p. 66); the land share per capita, around 0.25 hectare, is rather small (similar to that in England, according to 2001 data). The additional countryside area required to achieve complete self-sufficiency in the provision of food, materials and energy (the latter produced in windmill farms) and the complete absorption of all carbon emissions (in CO2 forests) is estimated to be at least around 1.20 hectares per capita (with agriculture excluding meat production and poplar CO2 forests), more likely around 1.90 hectares per capita (with agriculture including meat production and mixed CO2 forests), which increases the total land requirement for self-sufficiency to at best 1.45, at worst 2.15 hectares per capita (ibid., pp. 102, 117, 141). The median figure of 1.80 hectares per capita between minimum and maximum is quite close to the current average Earth share of resources, estimated to be 1.92 hectares per person (Scottish Executive, 2003, p. 196). For waste management no additional area is included here, assuming that waste production will be largely reduced through more efficient production technologies and consumption, and assuming that all waste is recycled; there is also no additional area included for water treatment, which in the ecological footprints of Scottish cities is only 0.01 hectare per capita; however, for global self-sufficiency both assumptions of waste recycling and a relatively small area needed for water treatment are too optimistic, in view of considerable variations in national and regional conditions. The total land area required for self-sufficiency of the Netherlands would be at least around 236,350 square kilometres, more likely 350,450 square kilometres – that is, roughly six to eight times the available land area of the Netherlands; with the total land area of the country a constant, the return to a low- to medium-risk Type 2 state of sustainability is not achievable.

Although these figures need to be treated with caution, this example shows to what degree a developed country like the Netherlands (equally so England) is dependent on land areas outside its own boundaries. Should the required 1.45–2.15 hectares of bioproductive land per capita represent reasonably accurately the amount of land needed to establish self-sufficiency and a balance between city and hinterland, then it also shows how extravagantly and seemingly unnecessarily large the ecological footprint of the Scottish cities discussed earlier actually is; there surely must be a rather high level of wastage of resources in both production and consumption. This scenario can now be tested as to whether it could be established on a global scale. With a global population of 6.54 billion and an ecological footprint per capita of between 1.45 and 2.15 hectares required for self-sufficiency, the total global bioproductive area required would be around 95 to 140 million square kilometres. As the globally available bioproductive area has been assessed to be around 100 million square kilometres, the self-sufficiency scenario would be just about possible with the lower ecological footprint per capita, but the carrying capacity of planet Earth has

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been surpassed with the higher footprint, for which the shortfall is 40 Million square kilometres. The question is, however, whether the developed countries could achieve a rather drastic reduction of their footprint from around 5.5 hectares to 1.45 hectares per capita. The same ecological footprint figures can also be used to calculate the carrying capacity of planet Earth: with between 1.45 and 2.15 hectares bioproductive area required per capita and a constant global settlement area of around 100 million square kilometres, the maximum global population is roughly 6.90 billion for the lower footprint figure and only 4.65 billion for the higher footprint. The latter (more pessimistic) figure gets rather close to a statement by the executive director of the UN Population Fund that ‘many environmentalists think [that the carrying capacity of the Earth] is four billion, maximum’ (see Motavalli 1999, quoted by Chambers et al., 2000, p. 47). It is clear that a return to a low- to medium-risk Type 2 stage of sustainability is only just about possible for our current global population level but impossible for the population of 9.19 billion expected in about 50 years’ time. This outcome of the investigation may indicate that globally this low- to medium-risk scenario of self-sufficiency is difficult if not already impossible to establish, but this does not completely rule out the attempt to re-establish a low Type 2 state sustainability. If no longer possible as a global solution, it may well be viable as one of the scenarios pursued by different cities and countries with a share of settlement area per capita equal to or larger than the (more pessimistic) figure of 2.15 hectares per capita, for instance South Africa, the United States and generally also South American countries such as Brazil or Chile (compare data from Citypopulation.de). It has, however, become abundantly clear that a low-risk option is not really successfully achieving a low- to medium-risk Type 2 state of sustainability on its own; for the more densely populated countries in Europe, India and the Far East a much more technology-based approach seems to be inevitable in the attempt to establish a medium- to higher-risk Type 2 or even Type 3 state of sustainability, and this will be investigated next.

Pursuing a medium- or high-risk scenario It seems that living within the natural renewing capacity of the biosphere is no longer an option that is achievable globally. To establish an equitable access to resources, the same maximum ecological footprint for all global inhabitants would not change this by much. To achieve a medium- to high-risk Type 2 state of sustainability requires more resources and energy than can be provided locally under current conditions. As supply from a bigger hinterland than that available per capita is today and in the near future not an option, it becomes necessary to increase the bioproductive capacity of the available land, either by using more efficient production technologies or by substituting the shortfalls of the natural biosphere by engineering artificial biospheres, or, more likely, a combination of both. The most obvious, but also highly risky way, of increasing the global settlement area is by transforming the remaining natural areas into pasture and arable land. This

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scenario has to take into account that the survival of the global ecosystems depends on the availability of some biodiversity without our being sure of what kind and level of biodiversity are needed to sustain the local to global ecosystems. Another way of generating more bioproductive land is to engineer artificial biospheres as poignantly illustrated by MVRDV (1999, pp. 106–115). Images come to mind of utopian concepts of the 1960s to increase the settlement area in order to accommodate an expected population explosion – for example, proposals by Kenso Tange to expand the city of Tokyo into the Harbour, projects by Buckminster Fuller for underwater islands, designs for a city in the air by Isozaki, Archigram’s Walking Cities meeting in the Sahara. It is more than theoretically possible to generate artificial biospheres; attempts are already being made, and one example that comes to mind is the Eden Project in the United Kingdom. However, the construction of such artificial gardens, forests, pasture, etc. requires huge energy and material resources, and there are doubts whether the required energy could be provided using clean, renewable sources through a massive investment into already available technologies or whether reliance on nuclear energy is inevitable; some European countries are currently considering, if not seriously promoting, the nuclear option. The fact that helium-3 can be harvested on the Moon might make the fusion reactor operational earlier than thought, maybe in 20 or so years. Then there would be energy in abundance, and artificial biospheres would become more viable. In addition to the expansion of the biosphere, the most effective way of increasing the production capacity of the biosphere is through technological advances which would double wealth and halve resource use, as suggested by von Weizsäcker et al. (1998). The question that remains unanswered is what the trade-offs of such advanced technology are in socio-economic and environmental terms. And there is the nagging thought that no technology is entirely fail-safe.

How about achieving a Type 3 state of sustainability? The detection of helium-3 deposits on the Moon has rekindled serious interest in manned space travel in the United States, and equally so in China, Japan and Europe. There is talk about a manned Moon station in the near future, probably to start harvesting helium-3. Once fusion reactors are operational, manned longer-distance space travel will be possible, and with it the exploration of the solar system for more resources. This necessitates the construction of space stations and spaceships that provide humans with all they need to carry out their missions in search of resources needed by humankind. The clear understanding that as a result of the global population growth and rising resource consumption levels we are unlikely to achieve a Type 2 state of sustainability on Earth without additional food and energy resources is driving efforts for the improvement of existing and the development of new technologies that allow us access to resources away from Mother Earth. The construction of a Type 3 state of sustainability seems therefore to be inevitable.

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The elements of strategy for sustainability Up to this point in our investigations of the search for sustainable development, the assumption was of a steady state of environmental conditions. The fact that for the past 6,000 years humankind has been living in a fairly benign environment (NRC, 2002, pp. 10–14) has caused us to think that this is a normal condition that will continue indefinitely. Only very recently have there been unmistakably clear signs that the environment is changing. We understand now that the frequency of extreme environmental events such as storms and hurricanes is increasing and that since 1960 the number of tropical cyclones classified as categories 4 and 5 has doubled (Huppert and Sparks, 2006, p. 1878). This increase is driven by a concentration of population and values in urban areas, the development of highly exposed coastal and valley regions, the complexity of modern societies and technologies and probably, also by the beginning consequences of global warming. This process will continue unless remedial action will be taken. (Smolka, 2006, p. 2147)

We have witnessed the South Asian tsunami in 2004, with around 230,000 deaths. We have seen that even the most powerful nation on Earth has found it difficult to cope with the consequences of Hurricane Katrina, which affected the coast of Mississippi, devastated New Orleans and impacted the global oil market in 2005. As a result of population growth and concentration, humankind is becoming ever more susceptible to natural disasters (Huppert and Sparkes, 2006, p. 1875). It is not astonishing, therefore, that insurance companies call for ‘full transparency as regards covered and non-covered risks and to define in a systematic manner the limits of insurability for super-disasters’ (Smolka, 2006, p. 2147). The question arises as to what impact such natural disasters and environmental changes have, or ought to have, on the placement and planning of the urban environment and how wisely or unwisely we are actually developing villages into mega-cities. Tehran – once a small provincial town, built on an active fault system with associated water springs and four times destroyed by earthquakes – has been allowed to grow into a mega-city with a population of 12 million. Its buildings are not constructed to survive earthquakes; they are similar to those in Iranian cities that were destroyed by earthquakes, with high mortality rates (60 to 80 per cent of inhabitants being killed; Jackson, 2004). A serious earthquake in today’s Tehran might therefore cause not only the destruction of the city’s urban fabric but potentially several million deaths. Where is the concern for urban sustainability in this striking example of a small town being allowed to develop into a mega-city despite its well-known vulnerability to earthquakes? Tokyo, also located on a fault line, is in a similar situation. A serious earthquake would not only cause massive destruction and a huge death toll but would most likely also affect the global economy rather seriously. A further example of a city located on a fault line is San Francisco, which was almost completely destroyed in 1906 by an earthquake. Where is the concern for sustainability in rebuilding this city

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in the same place? Many of the world’s largest cities are located on coastlines and river floodplains. Climate change may be affecting the vulnerability of coastal areas owing to sea-level rise (Huppert and Sparks, 2006, p. 1878). What will happen to these cities when the sea level rises by half a metre or a metre at the end of this century? Where would displaced people go? The city’s water supply and sewerage systems would become partly or entirely dysfunctional, and public transport networks might become so seriously disconnected that they too might cease to operate. These are only a few of the serious sustainability issues which indicate that urban development in many of the global regions has generated serious risks for cities to become unsustainable by placing their development too close to active fault systems or volcanoes, coastlines or river floodplains. The South Asian tsunami and Hurricane Katrina have taught us a lesson, but we have also seen how little we are prepared for such hazards. ‘Recent events show that nations and the international community are not well prepared for rare extreme cases. The national and international mechanisms to deal with these problems have evidently not been working adequately’ (Huppert and Sparks, 2006, p. 1884). These are issues of sustainability over and above those of maintaining a viable biosphere and living within the natural renewing capacity of the global biological capacity, both of which are utterly dependent on the reduction of the global population or the increase of natural capital by engineering artificial biospheres. We hope we have painted a realistic picture of the vulnerability of the human–environment system and the complexity of sustainability. We hope also to have shown that putting a windmill into our back garden is not generating, and not really contributing much to, sustainable development at all. What we believe to be the key elements of sustainable development and a sustainable human–environment symbiosis can now be summarised: ●

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It would be prudent to maintain true wilderness areas of Type 1 in as natural a state as possible (that is, fully functioning ecosystems subject to natural not human controls) in various separated locations on the globe. These would act as a precaution against falling below the minimum sustainable level of natural capital and offer the opportunity of regrowth and recovery in the event of catastrophic failure of the Type 2 and 3 states. The calculation of globally available settlement area needs to become reliable and needs to be accompanied by an assessment of risk from severe to extreme natural hazards. For example, the risks from earthquakes, volcanic eruptions or inundation pose unpalatable consequences for a significant number of densely populated areas and major cities today. To be sustainable, there has to be a balance between the advantages of settlement and the likely burden of loss when, not if, the hazard occurs. It is essential that the impact of consumption levels of the city on its hinterland be continuously monitored and any harm to the environment either prevented or remediated. Note that prevention and remediation imply having the resources available to carry out the necessary tasks.

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The achievement of a balance between city and hinterland is almost certainly no longer possible as a global solution, particularly without raising the question of population control. It may well be viable as one of the scenarios pursued by different cities and countries with a share of bioproductive area per capita equal to or larger than 1.45 (or better, 2.15) hectares, provided that population size is kept within the carrying capacity of the hinterland. For more densely populated areas, the potential for achieving a medium- to high-risk Type 2 state of sustainability would be relatively high, although it would require more resources and energy than can be provided locally under current conditions. As supply from a bigger hinterland than that available per capita today and in the near future is not an option, it becomes necessary to increase the bioproductive capacity of the available land either by using more efficient production technologies or by substituting the shortfalls of the natural biosphere by engineering or, more likely, a combination of both. It seems that living within the natural renewing capacity of the biosphere will soon no longer be a realistic global option, but beyond the globe, our hinterland today, there is only outer space. While the technology of space travel is essential for preventing an otherwise inevitable devastating asteroid or comet impact, in combination with life-supporting artificial biospheres, it also offers access to further resources and, one day perhaps, the means for expansion. There is a lack of fundamental scientific understanding at complex system level in many areas important to achieving sustainability, as described in previous chapters. It is axiomatic that understanding is essential to making informed decisions, so research effort needs to be targeted at these vital areas. Uncertainty should certainly not preclude the taking of precautionary measures, but the effectiveness of such measures depends on an assessment of possible outcomes with probabilities derived using available scientific knowledge. There is inadequate dissemination through education and technology even of what we already know. The human and financial resources to carry this out are actually lacking in many places. Unless the situation is rectified, people will not have the tools to achieve sustainable development in practice. In addition, the preferences and attitudes that come with cultural inheritance will need to be changed in many instances. There is a lack of strong international guidance and governance and lack of coordination at local and regional level. In view of past disappointment with the UN’s top-down governance systems, and indeed with US national policy on climate change and its attitude to the Kyoto Protocol, there is a need to consider additional bottom-up approaches and investigate what individual cities and unilateral actions by ‘city-states’ can do, and to demonstrate the implementations to national and international organisations and governments. We need to achieve an appropriate balance between the two approaches which necessarily co-exist in large-scale societies as, for instance, in the European Union and the United States (Diamond, 2006). That balance will depend on local and regional environmental, social and economic conditions.

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References Amsterdam Info. [online] http://www.amsterdam.info/netherlands/population/. Chambers, N., Simmons, C. and Wackernagel, M. 2000. Sharing Nature’s Interest: Ecological Footprints as an Indicator of Sustainability. London: Earthscan. Citypopulation.de, The Major Cities and Agglomerations of the World – Overview. [online] http://www.citypopulation.de/cities.html. Diamond, J. 2006. Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive. London: Penguin Books. Global Footprint Network 2004. The Living Planet Report 2004. Switzerland: Ropress. [online] http://www.footprintnetwork.org/gfn_sub.php?content=1pr2004. Huppert, H. E. and Sparks, R. S. J. 2006. ‘Extreme natural hazards: population growth, globalization and environmental change’. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A, 364, 1875–1888. Jackson, D. D. 2004. ‘Earthquake prediction and forecasting’. In Forecasting, Prediction and Risk Assessment. AGU Geophysical Monograph State of the Planet, vol. 150, IUGG Monograph, vol. 19, pp. 335–348. Motavalli, J. 1999. ‘Conversations with Dr Nafis Sadik: the UN’s prescription for family planning’. Environmental Magazine, July/August, 10 (4): 10–13. MVRDV 1999. Metacity Datatown. Rotterdam: 010 Publishers. National Research Council (NRC) 2002. Abrupt Climate Change: Inevitable Surprises. Washington, DC: National Academy Press. Scottish Executive 2003. Review of Scotland’s Cities: The Analysis. [online] http://www. scotland.gov.uk/library5/society/rsca-00.asp, and published: rsca.pdf. Smolka, A. 2006. ‘Natural disasters and the challenge of extreme events: risk management from an insurance perspective’. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A, 364: 2147–2165. UN Population Division 2006. World Population Prospect: The 2006 Revision. [online] http://esa.un.org/unpp. UN Press Release POP/952, 13 March 2007. [online] http://www.un.org/News/ Press/docs//2007/pop952.doc.htm. von Weizsäcker, E. U., Lovins, A. B. and Lovins, L. H. 1998. Factor Four: Doubling Wealth – Halving Resource Use. London: Earthscan. WWF (World Wildlife Fund) 2004. ‘The Living Planet Report 2004’, section ‘Humanity’s Footprint’ [online] www.panda.org/news_facts/publications/living_planet_report/ index.cfm.

Index

n = endnote; t = table/diagram Aalborg Declaration (1994) 48 Abercrombie, 93n Aberdeen 88–9, 88tt Africa: attention to needs of 17, 20; employment levels 20–1; health problems 19–20; poverty levels 19, 29 Agenda 21 12–15, 16, 18, 25, 27, 28, 49, 50; calls for implementation 25–6; and cities 34–5; limitations 38, 40, 41; local impact/versions 30, 34–5, 46; method of operation 13 agriculture: early developments 74, 80, 81, 82, 98, 101, 112, 115; intensive methods 101–2, 104 aid, levels of 17, 20–1 AIDS 17, 20 Alaric the Goth 85 Alexander, Christopher 42 ants 73; analogy with human society 107 Archigram 6, 117 artificial selection 74, 76, 81 ASPM gene 106 asteroid impacts 66–7, 68–9, 95, 96, 107–8, 120 Athens 83, 84 Australia, destruction of native environment 98 Babylon: destruction 79, 81, 85; relationship with hinterland 84–5; size/population 82, 84 Bascompte, Jordi 72, 99 beetles 73 biodiversity 9, 14, 26, 28, 34, 37–8, 56–7; erosion of 101 biofuels 70, 72, 87, 89, 97, 104, 113–14, 117 Biological Diversity, Convention on 12 bioproductivity, limits on 112–14, 120 biospheres, artificial 92, 116–17 Black Death 93n

brain size (human), genetic developments 106 Brazil 17, 76, 116 Bristol 84 Brundtland, Gro Harlem 10 Brundtland Commission/Report 3, 10–12, 21–2, 25, 31n, 34, 49; national/regional impact 40, 46, 48 Buchanan, Mark 71, 101, 117 Bush, George W. 108 ‘butterfly effect’ 62, 73, 76, 76n Canada see Greater Vancouver Regional District capital, global flow 56–7 carbon emissions see CO2; ozone layer Central Asia, environmental indicators 13–15, 27–8 Chambers, Nicky 112–13 children: education 19; mortality 19 Chile 116 China: environmental record 30n; new towns 48; space programme 117 cities 34–5, 40–6, 81–92; density 89, 91–2; design 42–3; destruction/failure 79–81, 111; diffusion 84, 93n; distances between 84; early 81–6, 111; ecological footprint analysis 52, 87–90, 88tt; environmental development projects 44–5, 47–54; governance 52; green areas, preservation of 51; as imperial centre 84–6; independent/semi-independent 82, 83–4; modern 86–92; (need for) unilateral action 120; overexploitation of resources 79–81, 85–6, 87–9, 90, 104; planning 42–3, 44–5; population levels 82, 83–5; population structure 91; proportion of global population 20, 31n; relationship with hinterland 79–81, 82–6, 87–90, 92, 93n, 114–15, 119–20; security 52–3; services/opportunities 45; social conditions 53–4; structure 41–2, 51; sustainability viii, 35, 42–3, 83, 111–20;

Index

vulnerable locations 118–19; see also slums; urbanisation citiesPLUS 50–1 climate change: causes/risk levels 26, 96–8, 104; environmental impact 98; nonhuman-induced 68, 96; (problems of) prediction 96; (proposed) means to combat 104, 106, 107; UN Framework Convention on (UNFCCC) 12, 16–17, 37 CO2 emissions 16–17, 25–6; measures to restrict 16–17, 29, 37–8, 115 Cold War 10 Cologne 83–4 Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) 20 community, role in sustainable development 23t complex systems 62–5, 106; dynamics 5, 62; modularity 65; structure 64t, 70–1, 73–4 Conservative Party (UK) 10 consumption: accountability for 56–7; invisible 56; levels 56; role in economic performance 56 Council of Europe 36, 38 Cullan, Gordon 42 cultural inheritance 75, 105–6 daily cycle, importance to human behaviour/society 102, 105–6 debt relief 20 developed countries: dependence on extraterritorial land 86–7, 115; food supply 102; international obligations 15, 31n; invisibility of consumption 56; moral outlook 55; (perceived) lack of moral obligation 55–6, 58; reluctance to share assets 15, 29; as source of pollution 20; urban systems 86–92 developing countries 15; degree of growth 11; equal access (requirement of) 11, 90; variation in development levels 21; view of poverty 21 development: international projects 17; partnerships 20–1 Diamond, Jared 61 disease 19–20, 100–1; impact on urban populations 86, 93n; moves to reduce 17; relationship with population growth 100 DNA 70 Downie, D.L. 10 drinking water, levels of availability 20, 27–8, 103 Dundee 88–9, 88tt dynamics 62

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Earth Summit I see Rio Summit Earth Summit II (Rio Summit +5, New York, 1997) 15–16, 22, 25 Earth Summit III on Sustainable Development (Johannesburg, 2002) 18–21; shortcomings 22–3 earthquakes 67, 95, 118–19 Earthwatch 9 Easter Island 79–80, 93n ecological footprint analysis (EFA) 30n, 87–90, 88tt, 115; advantages/criticisms 89–90; defintiion/methodology 87; failure to apply 46; global 113, 114; role in urban development plans 52 economy: global 56–7, 86–7; role in sustainable development 23t; urban 45 ecotourism 99 Eden Project 117 Edgerton, David 6 Edinburgh 88–9, 88tt education: levels 19; shortcomings 120 elderly people, proportion of population 91 emergence viii, 62, 107–8 energy 103–5; crisis (1970s) 10; efficiency, moves towards 20, 38; need for new forms 88–9; use levels 20 England: population/urban development 83–4 environment: degradation 79–81; engineered (vs. natural ) 74–5, 100, 105, 107; human impact on 7, 74–5, 79–81, 90, 97–100; means of sustaining 100–5; protection 23t; urban, plans for improvement 44–5; see also resources; sustainability Europe (mainland): founding of cities 83; urban village/quarter projects 48; waste disposal/recycling 44 European Commission 36–7 European Space Agency (ESA) 108 European Union 4, 34–8; Emissions Trading Scheme 37–8; environmental measures 34–5, 37–8; gas supply 103; legislative power/measures 36, 37, 41; (limitations of) environmental policy 38, 90, 120; objectives 35–6 extinctions 20, 81, 96–7; mass 72, 97, 98; secondary 72–3 extreme weather conditions 68, 96; see also climate change fault lines, cities constructed on 118–19 ‘Fertile Crescent’ 82, 85 food webs 70–3; and extinctions 72–3, 97; (measurement of) efficiency 71

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forestry: history of management 3; overexploitation/destruction 20, 97, 99, 113; (problems of) re-establishment 99 fossil fuels: (over)use of 88–9, 103; (vulnerability of) supply networks 103–4 France: population 83 Fraser Basin Council (FBC) 52 Fuller, Buckminster 117 G8 group 112 Galapagos Islands: destruction of native environment 98; as ecotourist destination 99 gas (natural), supplies/use 6 Germany: population/urban development 83–4; tax system 30 Gilman, Robert 57 Girardet, Herbert 85–6 Glasgow 88–9, 88tt, 93n Global Environmental Monitoring System (GEMS) 9 globalisation 57 governments: environmental obligations 15, 29–30; ignoring of warnings 5–6 gravity 65 Greater Vancouver Regional District (GRDV), development frameworks 50–4, 92; key components 51–2 Greece (Ancient), city states 82; see also Athens Green Paper on the Urban Environment (EU) 34–5 grey squirrel 98 gross domestic product (GDP), as measure of economic performance 56 ‘ground state’ see sustainability: type 0 states growth: conditions for sustainability 30n; (projected) limits 5; role in sustainable development 106; see also population habitats: loss/destruction 20, 97, 98–100; (problems of) conservation 99 Hartig, Georg Ludwig 3 health, relationship with sustainability 100–1; see also disease history: role in urban planning 40 HIV see AIDS housing 40; costs 53, 91; need/plans for increases 44, 91–2 Howard, Ebenezer 93n Huppert, H.E. 95 Hurricane Katrina 118, 119

ice ages 68, 96 indicators: air 14; biodiversity 14, 28; definition/types 13–15; economic 14; land 14; social 13; vagueness of definition/interpretation 27–8; water 14, 27–8 Indonesia 95 inequality: among urban population 54; between developing nations 21; in global economy 57 influenza, pandemics 100–1 insects 73–4, 99 Intergovernmental Oceanographic Commission of UNESCO 24 International Atomic Energy Agency 24 International Maritime Organization 24 International Monetary Fund (IMF) 18, 57 International Referral System (IRS) 9 International Register of Potentially Toxic Chemicals (IRPTC) 9 Internet 62, 63 irrigation 102–3 Isozaki, Arata 117 Jacobs, Jane 42 Japan 117 Johannesburg Summit see Earth Summit III Jordano, Pedro 72 Kahn, Herman 6 Kardashev, Nikolai 104–5, 107 Krakatoa, Mt 73 Kyoto Protocol 16–17, 22, 25, 26, 37, 50; (non)-ratification 17, 29, 112, 120 land, availability/use 112–14, 113t, 119; in the Nertherlands 114–15 Levy, M.A. 10 life: human, evolution/role in life systems 74–6; non-human, systems based on 69–70; origins 72; (sustainability of) absence 66–9 The Limits to Growth: a Report for the Club of Rome’s Project on the Predicament of Mankind (1972) 4–6, 21, 56, 89; critical/governmental responses 5–6, 30n; impact on UN agenda 7, 8–9 Limits to Growth: The Thirty-Year Update (2004) 6 Livable Region Strategic Plan 50–1 London: Millennium Village project 47; plans for development 93n; population 84 Lynch, Kevin 42

Index

Maastricht Treaty (1992) 35–6 Machu Picchu 79 malaria 17, 20, 86, 100 Mars (planet) 108 Mee, Laurence 10, 24 memes 75 Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) 17–18, 22, 27; (lack of) progress towards 18–21, 55 Millennium Goals Report (2006) 21 Millennium Research Project (MRP) 18 Millennium Summit/Declaration (New York, 2000) 17–18 Millennium Village/Community programme (UK) 45, 46, 47–50; flaws/limitations 49, 50; objectives 48–9 modules, definition/role in complex systems 65 Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer (1987) 9–10, 37 Morrison, David 68 Mumford, Lewis 85 National Round Table on the Environment and Economy (NRTEE) 52 natural disasters: (difficulty of) prediction 95–6; human vulnerability to 106, 107, 118–19; urban impact 52–3, 79, 86, 95 natural selection 69–70, 74, 81, 106 natural world: (projected) disconnection from human interference 98–9, 105 (see also environment); (projected) transformation for human use 116–17 Nebuchadnezzar 79, 85 Netherlands, sustainability survey 114–15 networks 62–4; hub-like 63, 103–4; measurement 63; static/dynamic 62, 63; structure 62–4, 64t, 70–1; transport efficiency 64; types 72 Neumann, John von 70, 75–6 New York Summits see Earth Summit II; Millennium Summit New Zealand, prehistory 81 Newman, Oscar 42 Newton, Isaac 65 Nile, changes of course 80 nitrogen, release into biosphere 98–9 non-linear behaviour 62, 73 North American Space Agency (NASA) 108 oil, supplies/use 6 Our Towns and Cities: the Future (UK Government White Paper, 2000) 43–6 ozone layer, degree of success 9, 20

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parasites 71 Piramesse (Egypt) 80 Planning for Long-Term Urban Sustainability 50–1 pollution 98–100; atmospheric 16–17, 25–6, 37–8; degree of reduction 20; impact on population/environment 30n; marine 8; means to combat 16–17, 26; scientific uncertainty over 26; urban 44, 89, 90, 98 Pompeii, destruction of 67, 79 population, global 112–13, 114; maximum 116 population growth 5; constraints on 82; global (projected) 113, 114; plans for 11, 12, 31n; problems posed by 8; urban 31n, 82; see also cities poverty: moves to reduce 17, 18–19, 20; (perceived) moral dimension 55; urban 54 Prescott, John 42, 47 Priene (Asia Minor) 83 Principles for Sustainable Management of Forests 3 prosperity, creation of 45 Rameses II 80 Rand Corporation 6 recession (1970s) 10 recycling 23t, 35, 37, 44, 115 Rees, William, Prof. 30n Report on Impact Assessment of the Commission of the European Communities 36 resources (non-renewable): consumption levels 87; finite nature 112–14; invisibility of consumption 56; need to conserve 8–9, 51; research based on limits of 5, 30n; uneven access/distribution 7–8 retail outlets 40 Rio Declaration on Environment and Development 12, 24 Rio Summit (Earth Summit I/United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED), 1992) 12–15, 21–2, 34–5; national/regional impact 40 Rome, Club of 4–5, 89 Rome (Ancient) 81, 82; relationship with hinterland 84–6, 92 Russia, gas pipeline 103 San Francisco, location/vulnerability 118–19 science: ‘hard’ 61–2; lack of understanding 26, 57–8, 75, 105, 120; positive contributions to modern life 100, 104; and prediction of natural disasters 95–6;

126

Index

role in sustainability issues 23t, 61–2; success in modern world 65 Scotland: cities’ ecological footprint 88–9, 88tt, 114, 115; ecotourism 99; new town plans 93n; water supply 103 seas: pollution 8 selection, natural/artificial see artificial selection; natural selection Self, Stephen 67 self-reproduction, trivial/non-trivial 69–70 shift work, problems of 106 ‘Short Cycles City’ 35, 51 sleep, need for 102, 105–6 slums 20 solar system 65, 68–9 South Africa 116 space (outer), possibility of colonisation 92, 108, 117, 120 Sparks, R.S.J. 95, 118–19 species: alien, introduction of 98; extinctions 20, 72, 97; food web links 72–3, 97; protection 57–8 states (of sustainability) see under sustainability Stern Review (2007) 107 Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment (1972) 7–10, 11, 12, 17, 25, 49; findings/recommendations 7–9, 21–2; moves to implementation 9–10; national/regional impact 46 Sumatra 67 sustainability: complexity of issues viii–ix, 55, 61, 66, 74–5, 106, 107; defined viii, 11, 31n, 35; economic 11; of engineered environment 74–5; environmental 11; global viii, 50; history 3–4; indicators 13; low- to medium-risk scenario 114–16; means of achieving 100–5, 113–20; medium- to high-risk scenario 116–17, 119; multidisciplinarity viii–ix, 11, 61–2, 107; social 11; type 0 state 66–9, 72, 74, 76t, 79–81, 108, 111–12; type 1 state 66, 69–74, 74–5, 76t, 81, 96, 100, 108, 111–12, 119; type 2 state 66, 74–5, 76t, 81–92, 111–12, 113–17, 119–20; type 3 state 66, 75–6, 76t, 92, 108, 111–12, 113–14, 117, 119; types of 66–76, 76t, 111 (see also type 0/1/2/3 states above); see also cities sustainable development: as aim of projects 48–50; defined 3–4, 66, 106; future directions 106–8, 118–20; history of notion 3–4; key components 11, 21–2, 23t, 48–9, 51–2; legal framework 11–12;

obstacles to 4, 58; UN initiatives for 12–30 Sustainable Region Initiative 50–1 Sustainable Systems Design International Competition (2001-3) 50 system dynamics 5, 62, 73 systems see complex systems Tange, kenso 117 Tanis (Egypt) 80 ‘targeted hunting’ 97 taxation 15, 30 technology, application to sustainable development 106–8 Tehran 118 termites 73–4 Toba, Mt 67 Tokyo 95; location 118; plans for expansion 117 topological distance, as network measure 63–4, 71 toxic waste, disposal of 8 transnational companies 56–7 transport 40, 43; consumption of resources 88; and distances between cities 84, 93n; and food supply networks 102; increase in speed/efficiency 84, 86–7, 102 tsunamis 67, 96, 118, 119 Ukraine 103 unemployment 20–1 United Kingdom 40–6; Department of Communities and Local Government (DCLG) 48; destruction of native environment 98; ecological footprint analysis 87–9; exploitation of colonies 86; immigration 91; limitations of environmental policy 46, 49, 50; Office of the Deputy Prime Minister 48, 49; Planning Policy Guidance notes 40–2; Strategy for Sustainable Development 40, 41; urban design policy 42–3; Urban Task Force report 42–3, 44, 46, 47; see also Millennium Village/Community programme United Nations viii, 4, 7–30; Administrative Committee on Coordination (ACC) 24; Compliance Committee 25; Environment Programme (UNEP) 9–10, 24; environmental initiatives 7–21, 34–5, 57; Food and Agricultural Organization 24; General Assembly meetings/special sessions 10–11, 13, 15–16, 21; General Assembly resolutions 9, 15, 17–18; Industrial Development

Index

Organization 24; (lack of) legislative powers 25; (lack of) monitoring/coordination capacity 25–6; overlap of interests 24–5; Population Fund 116; problems/limitations of environmental approach 24–30, 38, 90, 120; success/failure of programmes 21–4; vagueness of programmes 27–8; see also names of UN conferences/initiatives United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) see Earth Summit I United States: ecological footprint 116; environmental approach 120; nonratification of international agreements 17, 29, 112, 120; space programme 108, 112, 117; vulnerability of power supply 104; waste disposal/recycling 44 Ur (Mesopotamia) 82; destruction 79, 81 ‘urban village’ schemes 45; see also Millennium Village/Community programme urbanisation 31n Uzbekistan 27–8 Vancouver, social conditions in 53–4; see also Greater Vancouver Vesuvius, Mt 67, 79 viruses 100 volcanic eruptions 67, 79, 95–6

127

Wackernagel, Mathias, Dr 30n Wallich, Henry 5 war, destruction of cities in 79 waste (domestic): disposal 44, 115; production 88, 90; see also toxic waste water 102–3; disconnection of natural systems 102; loss of supply 80; see also drinking water; seas weapons of mass destruction: calls for abolition 8, 10 Weizsäcker, Ernst Ulrich von 117 Wells, H.G., Anticipations 84, 86, 93n, 102, 105 ‘wilderness areas’, (need for) maintenance 119; see also sustainability: type 1 states women: deaths in childbirth 20 Working Group on Urban Design for Sustainability (EU) 35 World Bank 18 World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED) see Brundtland Commission World Conservation Union 48 World Health Organization 24, 101 World Meteorological Organization 24 World Trade Organization (WTO) 29, 57 World Water Forum 50 World Wide Web 63 Yellowstone National Park (US) 96 York 84 youth: unemployment 20–1