The Science of

Sustainability

NEW SCIENCE, OLD CONCERNS

outline

The Mystery of

Easter

Island Sum up

Indicators

& calculations

Branches:

Economy

Industry

Food system

Definitions, jargon

& Concepts

Easter Island

• Brundtland commission (UNED, 1983): [sustainable development… as meeting] “the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.“

• Officially introduced as a new science at the World Congress "Challenges of a Changing Earth 2001" in Amsterdam by the International Council for Science.

• Its an interdisciplinary science of natural sciences, economy, engineering, humanities, ethics and more.

• It aims at providing ways to reduce human impact and align it with the Earth’s biocapacity.

definition

“Sustainability is the capacity of any system or process to maintain itself indefinitely. Sustainable development thus is the development of a human, social and economic system able to maintain itself indefinitely in harmony with the biophysical systems of the planet.….its core objective…..to provide to everybody everywhere and at any time the opportunity to lead a dignified life in his or her respective society….This demand for a high quality of life…include[s] a descend standard of living, social cohesion, full participation, and a healthy environment. “

sustainability indicators, A scientific assessment, Scope 67, edited by Tomas Hak,

Bedrich Moldan and Arthur Lyon Dahl, 2007

Institutional Sustainability

Cultural Sustainability

diagram

So why do we need to think about sustainability at all?

a detectable effect on ecological systems on a global scale (e.g. climate change, biodiversity)

Population growth Energy Consumption (peak oil) Poverty, hunger and malnutrition Above all, these problems are inter related and require a

new holistic approach beyond conventional disciplines

Sustainable jargon

• Non fiscal capital, ecosystem services, ecosystem valuation, externalities, carrying capacity (biocapacity), overshoot, weak and hard sustainability

Environmental Kuznets curves:

History of concerns

Malthus (1798) "The power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man. Population, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio. Subsistence increases only in an arithmetical ratio...“ ,Malthus T.R. 1798. An essay on the principle of population.

Tragedy of the Commons – Hardin (1962)

Limits to Growth (1972) – World3 dynamic system model

Vitousek et al. (1986) humanity’s appropriation of the biosphere

Rees and Wackernagel (1994)

Ecosystem Millennium report (2005)

International Assessment of Agricultural Knowledge, Science and Technology for Development (2008)

Planetary boundaries (2009)

Ecological Economics

• Dynamics and co-evolution between the human economy and natural systems.

• Develop sustainable economic systems

• Open vs. Closed systems, subsets and wholes. Learning from natural ecosystems.

• substitutability

• Well-being and growth.

• dematerialization, degrowth

Industry and design

Industrial ecology – designing sustainable industrial systems

Life Cycle Analysis, Material flow Analysis and Net Energy Analysis

• Linear design and thought – cradle to grave vs. c2c

Green revolution

1940’s-1960s project that involved the development and distribution of high yield varieties of cereal grains, expansion of irrigation infrastructure, and distribution of hybridized seeds, fertilizers and pesticides to farmers in developing countries.

Pros

• Increased Caloric consumption. The developing world consumes 25% more calories today than before the Revolution

• Between 1950-1984 world grain output rose 250%.

• Only with these techniques was it possible to feed our growing population

Cons

• Decreased food security. Farming was shifted from subsistence-based to production for export

• Farming became heavily dependant on fossil fuels. It takes more energy to produce each calorie.

• Disturbed ancient farming techniques that were often more sustainable.

• Old knowledge was lost • Reduced biological

diversity

“If they lived just one month amid the misery of the developing world, as I have for fifty years, they'd

be crying out for tractors and fertilizer and irrigation canals and be outraged that fashionable elitists

back home were trying to deny them these things.” –Norman Bourlaug

Food for thought

Population has doubled in the last 50 years. ~ 9 billion by 2050. Increase in population and food consumption per capita doubling (or

even tripling) of food demand by 2050. ~1 billion people are hungry, >1 billion over fed, overweight. Arable land increase 1.2->1.5 billion ha from 1950-1999; Grain production

has doubled. Doubling of food production either doubling of land or double in yield ~1/3 of the world's cropland abandoned during the past 40 years due to

erosion. More lost to urbanization, desertification, and salinization; irrigation doubled; global fertilization increased by 500%

USA food system [global]: 50% of total land [40%], 80% of fresh water [70%], and 17% of fossil fuel [30%].

Global food allocation: 62% food, 35% animal feed,3% bioenergy seed and other industrial products.

Can humanity achieve sustainable food production systems at the

beginning of the 21st century? Considering the environmental, social and economical implications how

do biofuels score? And how can we measure such a score?

Sustainability indicators

Qualitative tools to assess sustainability

There exist many indicators, ecological, economical, social or a combination of them.

For example: the ecological footprint

- It transforms human impact into 5 land types

- aggregates it into global hectares.

The Gross national happiness (GNH) going beyond GDP

- conceptualized by the king of Bhutan

- quality of life and social progress

Sum up

A biomimcry concept (A cycle, cyclic, stable over time) implement in human systems

Contains dimensions of environment, economy, and social aspects with an ethical component.

Holistic - transects all human disciplines

Aligning human impact with Earth’s carrying capacity while providing a descend well being to everyone.

More info

Please visit our website for more info and summaries: http://openwetware.org/wiki/Sustainability

http://www.weizmann.ac.il/plants/Milo/index.php?page_name=energyANDsustainability