what is sustainable development… and where is it going? contemporary art and sustainability...

What is sustainable development… and where is it going?

Contemporary Art and Sustainability Symposium CEU Budapest 30 March 2006

Diane Warburton, Shared Practice

A little background…

Shared Practice is a partnership founded to research and develop creative sustainable solutions.

Shared Practice is interdisciplinary, with a range of specialisms from design practice and education to community regeneration, planning, anthropology and music.

This presentation…

• What sustainable development is, and how the idea has developed over the years - with some thoughts on the tensions that have always existed even within the basic concept.

• Emerging themes of community participation and other different forms of politics around sustainable development (protest, consumerism, private sector initiatives).

• Where we are now - as sustainability campaigns are focusing as much on changing personal values, behaviour and lifestyles as on trying to change international policy.

Early environmentalism

“There was once a town in the heart of America where all life seemed to live in harmony with its surroundings. The town lay in the midst of a checkerboard of prosperous farms, with fields of grain and hillsides of orchards where, in spring, white clouds of bloom drifted above the green fields.

“In autumn, oak and maple and birch set up a blaze of colour that flamed and flickered across a backdrop of pines. The foxes barked in the hills and deer silently cross the fields, half hidden in the mists of the autumn mornings …”

Rachel Carson, Silent Spring, 1962


“Then a strange blight crept over the area and everything began to change. Some evil spell had settled on the community: mysterious maladies swept the flocks of chickens; the cattle and sheep sickened and died. Everywhere was a shadow of death.

“The farmers spoke of much illness among their families. … There was a strange stillness. The birds, for example - where had they gone? … The roadsides, once so attractive, were now lined with browned and withered vegetation as though swept by fire. These, too, were silent, deserted by all living things. Even the streams were now lifeless …”



“For the first time in the history of the world, every human being is now subjected to contact with dangerous chemicals, from the moment of conception until death. … Residues of these chemicals linger in soil to which they may have been applied a dozen years before.

“They have entered and lodged in the bodies of fish, birds, reptiles, and domestic and wild animals so universally that scientists carrying on animal experiments find it almost impossible to locate subjects free from such contamination …these chemicals are now stored in the bodies of the vast majority of human beings, regardless of age. They occur in mother's milk, and probably in the tissues of the unborn child. |All this has come about because of the sudden rise and prodigious growth of an industry for the production of man-made or synthetic chemicals with insecticidal properties.”


Environmental issues now

• Similarities: toxic chemicals, forests, wildlife, oceans pollution - all lower down the agenda

• Differences: climate change and global warming, waste and recycling, going green at home and work, anti-GM and pro-organic food, energy issues - especially anti-nuclear and pro-renewable sources of energy eg wind power, fuel poverty, sustainable consumption and production - all complex issues

One Planet Living to tackle sustainable consumption and production.

What is different about sustainable development?

• First, the concept of sustainable development is based on the idea that there is no such thing as a purely environmental problem. There are always political, social and economic implications as well.

• Second, sustainable development is based on the idea that development is essential, but that it must be a different 'quality' of development, organised differently, that takes environment into account - conserving or enhancing the environment is not the sole purpose.

What are the main events in sustainable development?1972 Club of Rome, Limits to Growth: population, food production, etc.

UN Conference on the Human Environment: 'rights' of humanity to a healthy and protective environment.

1980 Brandt Commission: North / South development.

World Conservation Strategy. The Strategy aimed to "match superficially conflicting goals of development and conservation - development to meet human needs and conservation of the resources to safeguard them for future generations.

1983-1987 World Commission on Environment and Development (known as the Brundtland Commission). "Humanity has the ability to make development sustainable - to ensure that it meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs”

1992 The United Nations Conference on Environment andDevelopment: Agenda 21 - the agenda for sustainable development for the 21st century.

What is Agenda 21?

“Humanity stands at a defining moment in history. We are confronted with a perpetuation of disparities between and within nations, a worsening of poverty, hunger, ill health and illiteracy, and the continuing deterioration of the ecosystems on which we depend for our well-being. However, integration of environment and development concerns and greater attention to them will lead to the fulfilment of basic needs, improved living standards for all, better protected and managed ecosystems and a safer more prosperous future. No one nation can achieve this on its own; but together we can - in a global partnership for sustainable development.”

Agenda 21, paragraph 1.1

The main themes of Agenda 21

• Combating poverty • Changing consumption patterns • Human health • Human settlements • Protection of the atmosphere • Deforestation • Desertification and drought • Sustainable agriculture • Biodiversity • Protecting oceans and freshwater • Toxic chemicals • Wastes, especially radioactive wastes

and also • Strengthening the role of 'major' groups (e.g. women, children

and trade unions) and

• means of implementation (e.g. technology transfer and education)

European Community

1992 5th European Environmental Action Programme: Towards Sustainability

1993 Maastricht Treaty: 'continuous expansion' was changed to 'sustainable and non-inflationary growth respecting the environment', and a Community objective was introduced "to promote economic and social progress that is balanced and sustainable”

1999 Treaty of Amsterdam signed, with a revised Article 2 that "seeks to promote throughout the Community a harmonious, balanced and sustainable development of economic activities”

2001 6th European Environmental Action Programme, called Environment 2010 - Our Future, Our Choice

Global business

1995 World Business Council for Sustainable Development formed

Insurance companies signed a ‘Statement of Environmental Commitment’

Global business

1995 World Business Council for Sustainable Development formed

Insurance companies signed a ‘Statement of Environmental Commitment’

National strategies and Local Agenda 21

1990s Most industrialised countries had national sustainable development strategies

1997 Estimated that 3,000 local governments in 64 countries had Local Agenda 21 activity

2000 Estimated that 98% of UK local governments had completed a Local Agenda 21 strategy

United Nations

2000 United Nations summit agreed the Millennium Development Goals: the aim was "to free our fellow men, women and children from the abject and dehumanising conditions of abject poverty”

2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg.

2005 UN Decade of Education for Sustainable Development

Social Environmental

Economic

SD

What are the key themes to sustainable development today?

• Meeting human needs

• Equity

• Environmental constraints / limits

• Futurity

• Democracy

• Local to global

Diverse views emerging

• New capitalismJonathan Porritt: radical change to the existing model of capitalism

• Too late James Lovelock: hot world

• Alternative lifestyles Others: innovative practical experiments in sustainable living

The importance of participation

“A political system that secures effective citizen participation in decision making”

“The law alone cannot enforce the common interest. It principally needs community knowledge and support, which entails greater public participation in the decisions which affect the environment. This is best secured by decentralising the management of resources upon which local communities depend, and giving these communities an effective say over the use of the resources. It will also require promoting citizens' initiatives, empowering people's organisations, and strengthening local democracy”

Brundtland Commission

The importance of participation

“The broadest public participation ... should also be encouraged” Agenda 21, 1.3

“Focus on the empowerment of local and community groups through the principle of delegating authority, accountability and resources” Agenda 21, 3.5

“Governments, in co-operation with appropriate international and non-governmental organisations, should support a community-driven approach to sustainability” Agenda 21, 3.7

“The public must be informed about the issue and means for protecting the environment and, crucially, involved in the process” EC 5th Environmental Action Programme

What are the new campaign styles?

• Consumer power (eg GM)

• Collective community action (eg housing improvement)

• Mass protests (eg Seattle and Genoa)

What are the new campaign styles?

• Consumer power (eg GM)

• Collective community action (eg housing improvement)

• Mass protests (eg Seattle and Genoa)

What are the questions raised?

• How much do successful mass campaigns like these reflect shifts in attitudes by governments and the public, rather than change people's minds?

• How much are these environmental organisations simply mobilising existing concerns, rather than offering new ideas and challenges to the current state of unsustainability?

• How far can international environmental and other organisations go before they are no longer acceptable to governments and how much can they work with governments before they lose their independence?

Where is sustainable development now?

• The international policy rhetoric is good, and the battle of principle has largely been won

• Business developing new initiatives to behave more sustainability • The World Business Council for Sustainable Development,

Cement Sustainability Initiative • Arups, new sustainable city in China• Sustainable design of new products

• Development and environmental organisations being members of international institutions

• Anti-globalisation movements and protests

New sustainability initiatives

• Projects that create economic development through practical improvements to degraded landscapes

• Projects to insulate people's homes to reduce energy consumption and tackle fuel poverty

• Housing developments that aim for zero carbon emissions during construction as well as when the houses are lived in

• New farming methods that support local economies by sharing labour and skills and resources

• New technologies that enable the sharing of design and technological innovation

• Community-run projects to generate energy from renewable sources

What does sustainability look like?

Sustainability is not easy to recognise, partly because it will not stand still.

New approaches to thinking about sustainability start with that sense of constant change, and are based on new forms of learning that can change people's attitudes and behaviours.

No solution that can simply be taken off the shelf will always be the right answer. So the focus has to be on helping people find new ways of adapting constantly.

The environmental movement is now thinking about how people behave, why they behave in the ways they do, and how to change that – to tackle unsustainable local production and consumption.

Working with people

Behaviour change alone is not enough. The focus now is on working with groups of people to explore how they can develop more sustainable lifestyles.

The aim is to find out how values can be shifted, so that permanent attitude and behaviour change results.

This is all very new and experimental...working with local people to define their own sustainable lifestyle, rather than imposing a model designed somewhere else.

New sustainability thinking

Sustainability thinking so far has focused mainly around the intellectual and the political - the spiritual and aesthetic has been largely ignored: it needs to reach people's hearts as well as their minds.


Sustainability thinking so far has focused mainly around the intellectual and the political - the spiritual and aesthetic has been largely ignored: it needs to reach people's hearts as well as their minds. The questions now are:

• How to link the great potential in people's real experiences - the 'authenticity' of real life - with the global challenges that face everyone?




• How can creative thinking contribute to the picture of what sustainability might look like?





• How to make the connections between global environmental problems, and people's own wellbeing and happiness?






• How to help people connect what they know is right, with doing the right thing?






• How to help people connect what they know is right, with doing the right thing?

• What can really reach people's hearts so that they begin to make the sorts of changes that will begin to move towards a sustainable world?

March 2006

Diane Warburton

Shared Practice LLP Brighton UK BN1 3PH

+44 (0)1273 774557 www.sharedpractice.org.uk [email protected]

what is sustainable development… and where is it going? contemporary art and sustainability...

Documents

silent spring

toxic chemicals

synthetic chemicals

dangerous chemicals

lifeless rachel carson

autumn mornings rachel

community regeneration

design practice