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Volume 12 ● Issue 1 Spring 2016
ISSN: 1548-7733
Journal Editor Maurie Cohen (New Jersey Institute of Technology)
Managing Editor Brie Betz (ProQuest)
Editorial Introduction to the special issue on social sustainability: integration, context, and
governance Nicole Peterson (The University of North Carolina at Charlotte, USA)………………………….3
Community Essays Toward a gender diverse workforce in the renewable energy transition Rebecca Pearl-Martinez (Tufts University, USA) & Jennie C. Stephens (University of Vermont,
USA)……………………………………………………………………………………………….8 Network priorities for social sustainability research and education: Memorandum of the
Integrated Network on Social Sustainability Research Group Rachelle Hollander (National Academy of Engineering, USA), Adjo Amekudzi-Kennedy
(Georgia Institute of Technology, USA), Sarah Bell (University College London, UK), Frazier
Benya (National Academy of Engineering, USA), Cliff Davidson (Syracuse University, USA),
Craig Farkos (American Society of Civil Engineering Task Committee on Sustainability, USA),
David Fasenfest (Wayne State University, USA), Regina Guyer (University of North Carolina
Charlotte, USA), Angelique Hjarding (University of North Carolina Charlotte, USA), Michael
Lizotte (University of North Carolina Charlotte, USA), Dianne Quigley (Brown University,
USA), Diana Watts (Trinity Washington University, USA), & Kate Whitefoot (Carnegie Mellon
University,
USA).…………………………………………………………………………………………...16 Articles Sustainable dissemination of earthquake resistant construction in the Peruvian Andes Malena Serrano (Pontifical Catholic University of Peru, Peru), Marcial Blondet (Pontifical
Catholic University of Peru, Peru), Álvaro Rubiños (Pontifical Catholic University of Peru,
Peru), and Elin Mattsson (Uppsala University, Sweden).……………………….……………...22
Social sustainability dimensions in the seismic risk reduction of public schools: a case study
of Lima, Peru Sandra Santa-Cruz (Pontifical Catholic University of Peru, Peru), Graciela Fernández de
Córdova (Pontifical Catholic University of Peru, Peru), Miryam Rivera-Holguin (Pontifical
Catholic University of Peru/National University of San Marcos, Peru), Marta Vilela (Pontifical
Catholic University of Peru, Peru), Victor Arana (Pontifical Catholic University of Peru, Peru),
and Juan Palomino (Pontifical Catholic University of Peru, Peru).……………………….……34
Achieving one-planet living through transitions in social practice: a case study of Dancing
Rabbit Ecovillage Robert Boyer (University of North Carolina at Charlotte, USA)………………………………..47
Managing the triple bottom line for sustainability: a case study of Argentine agribusinesses Poonam Arora (Manhattan College, USA), Nicole D. Peterson (University of North Carolina at
Charlotte, USA), Federico Bert (La Asociación Argentina de Consorcios Regionales de
Experimentación Agrícola (AACREA), Argentina), and Guillermo Podesta (University of
Miami, USA)……………………………………………………………………………………..60
The social lab classroom: wrestling with — and learning from — sustainability challenges Danielle Lake, Hannah Fernando, and Dana Eardley (Grand Valley State University, USA)…..76 Systems of access: A multidisciplinary strategy for assessing the social dimensions of
sustainability Christopher Wolsko (Oregon State University‒Cascades, USA), Elizabeth Marino (Oregon State
University‒Cascades, USA), Thomas Joseph Doherty(USA), Steve Fisher (USA), Amanda S.
Green (Davidson College, USA), Briana Goodwin (Oregon State University, USA), Ryan Reese
(Oregon State University‒Cascades, USA), and Andrea Wirth (University of Nevada‒Las Vegas,
USA)……………………………………………………………………………………………..88
Published online ● http://sspp.proquest.com ● ● email: [email protected]
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INTRODUCTION Introduction to the special issue on social sustainability: integration, context, and governance
Nicole Peterson Department of Anthropology, The University of North Carolina at Charlotte, 9201 University City Boulevard, Charlotte, NC 28223 USA (email: [email protected])
Since the late 1980s, the pursuit of sustainability
as a practical effort, rather than as a purely scientific
or descriptive concept, has recognized the importance
of balancing the competing priorities of
environmental protection, economic growth, and
social equity. We now know that we cannot make
meaningful progress resolving issues like climate
change and the degradation of global ecosystems
without also addressing associated economic and
social equity concerns. As part of this realization,
scholars and practitioners in diverse disciplines have
adopted a “triple-bottom line” or “three pillars”
approach as an expedient heuristic that understands
sustainability, or sustainable development, as
achieving some balance among environmental,
economic, and social equity priorities, all at once.
Over time, however, decision makers have earned
criticism for using this triad of objectives as a policy
inventory rather than a model for examining the
relationships and interdependencies among
environmental, economic, and social priorities in
diverse places (see, in particular, Boström, 2012).
Some scholars, coming to the issue from a range of
disciplines, have attempted to address the short-
comings of the three-pillar model by adding more
pillars (e.g., Godschalk, 2004; Bendell & Kearins,
2005; Inayatullah, 2005; Seghezzo, 2009). However,
the challenge remains that forcing complex and
unprecedented socio-environmental problems into
three, four, or seven distinct containers represents an
outdated, unduly modernist way of problem-solving
that tends to approach environmental, economic, and
social issues as independent, and consequently, their
solutions as separate (Vanclay, 2004; Milne & Gray,
2013).
New research and practice in sustainability
proposes an integrated concept whereby “social
issues” are indistinguishable and inseparable from
economic or environmental issues and vice versa.
These approaches are based in experiences with real
places and real people, pertaining to, as Krueger &
Agyeman (2005) contend, “actual existing sustain-
abilities.” The articles in this special issue extend the
effort to envision a deeply integrated approach to
sustainability by rooting their analyses in local places
and actual people, highlighting the importance of
grounded perspectives, collaborative processes, and
engaged governance that address multiple issues at
once and challenge the customary multi-pillar model.
While these are not new concerns in sustainability
circles (see Boström, 2012; Murphy, 2012), the
authors of the work presented here argue concretely
for the interconnections among these elements and
suggest specific ways that they can be better included
in sustainability efforts.
Together, these articles suggest that an integrated
approach to sustainability can be envisioned and
enacted through specific kinds of governance and
educational activities that encourage cooperative
processes and attention to local experiences. All of
the authors find separation of the economic, environ-
mental, and social dimensions of sustainability to be
superficial and impractical for communities that must
reconcile these objectives every day, and they prefer
instead to address overarching concerns in terms of
well-being, livability, security, equity, and
community engagement. For example, Malena
Serrano and her colleagues assess their experiences
sharing earthquake resistant building techniques in
Peru and argue that integrated sustainability
recognizes the need to incorporate local perspectives
and values into processes of technology transfer and
to account for the connections between degraded
environments and social inequalities. They
furthermore argue that construction techniques are
deeply connected to ideas of well-being and
acceptable living spaces.
The notion of well-being for effective
sustainability efforts is crucial for several other
authors. Sandra Santa Cruz et al. discuss the
importance of security and basic services through
their case study of earthquake-risk mitigation in
schools in Peru concluding that both social equity
and community are crucial to building sustainable
resilience to hazards; ensuring student physical,
psychological, and social well-being; and providing
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environmental and economic benefits. Rachelle
Hollander and colleagues stress the importance of
assimilating social elements like well-being into
engineering curricula, echoing Serrano et al.’s and
Santa Cruz et al.’s insistence that infrastructure
necessarily involves an integrated vision of
sustainability.
Other articles in this special issue argue that
integrated sustainability is crucial given the
importance of community-level coordination. Robert
Boyer’s research on an eco-village in the United
States highlights that collective environmental and
financial resource management requires
interpersonal-communication and conflict-resolution
skills unad-dressed by typical sustainability planning.
Contrib-utions by Poonam Arora and her coauthors
and Danielle Lake et al. also examine interactions
and interdependencies across environmental,
economic, and social concerns, showing that both
environmental education and agriculture blur
boundaries. Arora et al. find that Argentine
agribusiness owners think about risk and the water
table in relation to social responsibilities, rather than
concerns simply requiring economic calculation.
Lake and colleagues examine a course where students
use community engagement to think through wicked
problems in sustainability, highlighting the value of
multiple perspectives and local concerns for
associated efforts and education.
The final two articles in this collection examine
how integrated sustainability is enriched by consid-
ering issues like access and equity, which are
typically and problematically relegated to the
category of social sustainability. Drawing from
several short vignettes, including decisions about
renewable energy and open-access publishing,
Christopher Wolsko and his coauthors argue that
accessibility is a critical element of sustainability,
integrated across the three pillars. Rebecca Pearl-
Martinez and Jennie Stephens examine how gender
diversity is invaluable for sustainability efforts,
reviewing how women working in energy-related
fields might make that sector more competitive and
sustainable, as they have in other areas.
Throughout the sustainability field, many authors
find that social sustainability, as well as sustainability
more broadly, remains amorphous, lacking a clear
and consistent definition (Dempsey et al. 2009;
Vallance et al. 2011; Boström, 2012; Murphy, 2012;
Missimer et al. 2016a . Others argue that broad
definitions allow for greater attention to local needs,
values, and concerns (Weingaertner & Moberg, 2014;
see also Sen, 2004). In the articles here, the authors’
ideas about social aspects of sustainability draw on
the specifics of each case study, though also
reflecting concepts developed by other researchers
(e.g., Murphy, 2012; Missimer et al. 2016b). Based
on their analyses, the articles in this special issue
consistently assert that equity and access to resources
and governance processes are critically important for
sustainability. Contributors whose work focuses on
structures like homes and schools shed light on how
sustainable infrastructure supports (or could support)
well-being, livability, security, accessibility, oppor-
tunities, and basic services (Serrano et al.; Santa Cruz
et al.; Hollander et al.). Other authors address
sustainability as an outcome of collective resource
management that includes considering both resource
availability and social relationships (Arora et al.;
Boyer). Finally, a third set of authors finds that
sustainability is deeply enmeshed with issues of
access to governance, education, resources, and
opportunities (Lake et al.; Pearl-Martinez &
Stephens; Wolsko et al.). While the articles discuss
sustainability in slightly different ways, all address
the challenges of diverse populations with varied
perspectives, values, and opportunities. There are
also important themes—for example, well-being,
security, communication, and conflict resolution—
that remain important variables for sustainability
efforts more broadly. The special issue as a whole
moreover emphasizes that an integrated view of
sustainability is inextricably linked to local concerns
and contexts, which define processes, perspectives,
and even possibilities for sustainability.
Drawing more deeply on the importance of local
context and meanings, virtually all of the authors
argue that sustainability can be defined by the
integration of diverse perspectives through new
forms of community engagement. The two articles
focused on earthquake preparedness in Peru advocate
for participatory planning exercises to help identify
community needs and relationships that can affect the
success of risk-mitigation strategies. At a minimum,
involving the local community can build trust and
interpersonal connections to overcome reluctance to
adopting new techniques. Boyer demonstrates the
value of community decision-making and
participatory self-governance. Hollander and her co-
authors similarly advocate for citizen science as an
inclusive and socially aware approach to
sustainability research, and Pearl-Martinez &
Stephens argue that including a variety of
perspectives is needed for a successful energy
transition.
A multi-perspective approach particularly makes
sense if we are to take seriously the idea that context
strongly influences sustainability goals and that
standard models of individual behavior cannot easily
account for the complexities of meanings, skills, and
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relationships (a point separately made in the
contributions by Arora et al., Boyer, and Pearl-
Martinez & Stephens). In examining the value of
community engagement for sustainability education,
Lake and her colleagues succinctly describe the value
of engaging local actors: “inherently context-
dependent and emergent SS [sustainability science]
requires broad social inclusion, demanding we
continuously uncover and weigh the merit of our own
and others’ assumptions, values, and goals.” The
course described in Lake et al. models this approach
through student projects that build skills for engaging
diverse groups. The authors write that
“[p]articipatory skills and virtues (like team building,
active listening, collaboration, and integration) must
be fostered in order to empower more effective and
just coaction on wicked problems. In fact, we suggest
a failure to foster these skills and virtues is at the core
of many current social struggles.” In sum, the articles
presented in this special issue collectively argue that
integrated sustainability must be locally engaged and
engaging.
Finally, Wolsko et al. push for a transformation
in how we think about engagement. The examples in
their article coalesce around a concept of “access”
(building on Amartya Sen’s work on this topic) and
push for a form of engagement that recognizes the
multi-scalar nature of sustainability, relations of
power, and inequalities. The authors find that
sustainability is inhibited by both access, often
understood as an individual attribute, and
vulnerability at larger scales. This is particularly
evident in their decision-making case study where
power relations and legitimacy claims determine
access to decisions. Through their analysis, access
becomes a way to consider sustainability as a process
that engages with diverse ideas and activities. Yet
access also signals the potential for lack of access,
often tied to inequalities in resources, education, or
political connections. This shift in frame encourages
a focus on identifying and removing barriers to
access, and similarly raises the issue of how to ensure
this process through governance strategies.
The authors assembled in this special issue thus
largely agree on a vision of sustainability that is
integrated and engaged with diverse participants and
their local perspectives and practices. These elements
push us toward a process-focused idea of
sustainability, in that how we engage with a system
of relations (involving sustainability ideas, practices,
activities, and outcomes) depends not just on the
identification of these elements, but how they are
arranged and how they can mutually influence one
another. The students at the center of the contribution
by Lake et al. go beyond identifying environmental
“wicked problems” to comprehending how they are
understood, how they affect different people, and
how they are tied up in decisions and institutions.
Arora et al.’s study of Argentine agribusinesses also
suggests that the processes underlying decisions are
not just the result of considering risks and outcomes,
but are engendered by goals tied to relationships with
family and farmers alike. How these interpersonal
connections are built is key. It needs to be done
through trust (Serrano et al.), cooperation, and
empathy (Boyer), cultivation of which can improve
through practice (Lake et al.; Boyer). Yet, as
Hollander and her colleagues warn, process can be
harder to operationalize as a gauge of success than
outcomes, which can be counted and assessed. They
suggest that interdisciplinary approaches can help,
and the variety of strategies in this special issue
suggests specific ways that process can be appraised:
through commitments (Serrano et al.), access
(Wolsko et al.), reflection (Lake et al.), and inclusion
(Pearl-Martinez & Stephens).
This introduction builds on previous work on
social sustainability, particularly the special issue of
Sustainability: Science, Practice, & Policy edited by
Magnus Bostöm in 2012, which articulated many of
the challenges to addressing social aspects of
sustainable development. In his introduction,
Boström outlined the challenge of defining and
operationalizing social sustainability. He argued that
sustainable development, including ideas of social
sustainability, is best understood as a frame that can
be used to communicate, make decisions, and
evaluate progress. This frame can be dynamic over
time and place and encompass a variety of elements
such as well-being, governance, and equity. This
special issue uses case studies, examples, and
overviews to further refine Boström’s sustainability
framework.
Part of any organizational scheme is the
underlying model of how parts of a frame intersect
and interact. In advocating for integration, context
spec-ificity, and governance issues, these articles
suggest that important hallmarks identified in
previous work on social sustainability emerge from
considering local governance and community
engagement. This collection also highlights that truly
integrated sustainability is not just an issue to address
through governance and decision-making;
sustainability underlies and makes governance
possible. In this way, the framework moves beyond
environmental, eco-nomic, and social issues to
realize that good governance is sustainability and
vice versa. Yet, overlaying sustainability with
governance potentially clouds both of these pursuits.
Are these ideas too broad and abstract? The cases
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here, in their specific details, suggest not. Integrating
governance into sustainability reveals how
sustainability can be achieved. It requires recognizing
and responding to local contexts and concerns and
can only be achieved through local governance
mechanisms. Within these cases, we see concern for
well-being, access, and inclusion as ways to
implement sustainability. But how these concerns are
defined and negotiated depends on local per-
spectives and governance structures that can engage
with concerns and help break down barriers
(Shiroyama et al. 2012; Magee et al. 2013; Mutisya
& Yarime, 2014; Donevska, 2015; Milan, 2015).
The contributions here suggest that sustainability
efforts can encourage good governance by making it
part of the model and framework, and thus process
and practice. They suggest that important
characteristics of governance processes might include
an integrated vision of sustainability (rather than
separate spheres), attention to local contexts and
ideas, assurance of access to necessary resources, and
engagement of citizens in decision-making. The
concept of sustainability as governance can also open
the possibility of stronger joint efforts with
governments and social movements to work toward a
shared objective of good governance. Broadening
sus-tainability in this way thus encourages specific
governance processes while creating the possibility
for broader coalitions. The holistic view explored in
this special issue is the next logical step in furthering
the conversation for sustainable development. We
suggest that social implications and social issues are
the cornerstone for such a discussion, and an
integrated approach is necessary if true progress is to
be made.
Acknowledgements
This material is based upon work supported by the
National Science Foundation under Grant Number
1231382. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or
recommendations expressed in this material are those
of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the
views of the National Science Foundation. The
author would also like to thank the members of the
Integrated Network for Social Sustainability for their
help in thinking through social sustainability,
particularly the leadership team of Brett Tempest,
Helene Hilger, Robert Boyer, Thomas Gentry,
and Jennifer Munroe.
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policy analysis. Sustainability: Science, Practice, &
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COMMUNITY ESSAY
Toward a gender diverse workforce in the renewable energy transition
Rebecca Pearl-Martinez
1 & Jennie C. Stephens
2
1 Renewable Equity Project, Center for International Environment and Resource Policy, Fletcher School, Tufts University, 160 Packard Avenue, Medford, MA 02155 USA (email: [email protected]) 2 Energy-Climate Transitions Research Team, Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources, College of Engineering and Mathematical Sciences, University of Vermont, 81 Carrigan Drive, Burlington, VT 05405 USA (email: [email protected])
Authors’ Personal Statement
We explore gender diversity in the energy workforce and highlight the value of systematic assessment of women’s participation in the move toward sustainable renewable-energy systems. A gender imbalance in the energy sector workforce is apparent in countries throughout the world, yet women’s participation in, and contributions to, the energy industry have not been systematically characterized. As the energy sector transitions from fossil-fuel dominated systems toward more efficient, sustainable renewable-based systems, new opportunities for a more inclusive energy workforce are emerging. We are concerned, however, that if the energy industry does not prioritize gender diversity now, the renewable energy transition could perpetuate and deepen, rather than reduce, gender inequality. Although research demonstrates that diversity enhances innovation and creativity, there is minimal attention to considering and promoting diversity within the energy workforce. In this Community Essay we explore how greater consideration of the role of gender and the value of diversity in energy could provide multiple social benefits, including promoting more sustainable practices, accelerating innovation, enhancing women’s opportunities, and empowering communities to engage in energy-system change.
Keywords: women; gender; energy; renewables; sustainability; transitions; fossil fuels
Introduction
Contemporary energy systems are in transition
from predominantly fossil fuel-based infrastructures
to more sustainable renewables-based systems. As
this process continues, it is critical to consider that
throughout the world women are less involved in the
energy workforce and in energy-decision making
than men. A gender imbalance within the energy
sector is apparent to many observers, yet the role of
women in the energy workforce is not being
systematically characterized. Diversity and inclusion
are critical in the renewable energy transition. If
intentional consideration of gender diversity is not
prioritized, the changes have potential to perpetuate
and deepen, rather than reduce, gender inequality.
Greater understanding of the gender gap in energy-
related industries, as well as more widespread
acknowledgement of the positive potential of gender
diversity in this sector, would likely promote more
sustainable energy practices, accelerate energy
innovation, expand opportunities for women, and
encourage greater social engagement in energy-
system change.
In this Community Essay, we review what is
known about the level and nature of women’s
participation in the energy workforce and highlight
knowledge gaps. We also describe a broad range of
potential benefits of gender diversity and conclude by
highlighting the value of inclusivity and call for
systematic data collection on and analysis of the
energy workforce to support efforts to reduce the
gender gap.
Gender diversity refers to the representation of
women and men in a specific organization, sector, or
community (Herring, 2009). While assessments of
gender diversity, or gender balance, are designed to
consider both women and men, we concentrate here
on the role of women in the energy workforce and the
potential for women’s advancement despite persistent
inequalities. Gender inequalities are apparent in many
major business sectors, but industry analysis suggests
that they are particularly acute within the energy
sector (Ernst & Young, 2015; Herring, 2009; PWC,
2015).
Knowledge Gaps on Women’s Participation in the
Energy Workforce
Limited information about the level and nature of
women’s employment in the energy workforce
presents a challenge to exploring the relationship
between gender diversity in relevant industries
involved in the renewable energy transition (Baruah,
2015). One recent assessment of gender-workforce
imbalances suggests a larger gap in the energy sector
than other major industries (Ernst & Young, 2015).
Within energy organizations, gender diversity is
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found to be most advanced in consumer services and
consumer goods, while power and utility entities are
less gender diverse, and infrastructure entities lag the
farthest (Ernst & Young, 2015). The energy industry
has the lowest representation of women on boards of
directors in the United States and a 2012 study of
Russell 3000 companies headquartered in the United
States found that 61% of energy companies in the
country have no female representation on their board
of directors (GMI Ratings, 2012). Only 20% of oil
and gas extraction employees were women in the
United States in 2013. The corresponding rate was
27% in Canada in 2006 while women’s employment
in coal mining was about 9% in the United States in
2013 and 12% in Canada in 2006 (Catalyst, 2012).
Women’s employment rates in wind, solar,
wave, and other renewable energies are generally
estimated to be slightly higher than in the fossil and
nuclear industries. A recent study prepared for the
International Renewable Energy Association
(IRENA) reported 33% female employment in the
renewable workforce worldwide (Lallement, 2013).
For industrialized countries, female employment in
this sector is estimated to be 20–25%, mostly in
administrative and public relations positions
(IRENA, 2013). In the United States, women’s
employment in solar jobs rose from 18.7% to 21.6%
between 2013 and 2014 (IRENA, 2015). Among 22
wind-industry companies in the country surveyed in
2011, women made up 25% of the workforce and
11% of senior management (WoWE, 2011).
Similarly in the European Union, women make up
22% of the wind-industry workforce (Blanco and
Rodrigues, 2009).
Despite a robust literature on gender and
environmental issues (e.g., Leduc, 2010; McCright,
2010; Kennedy & Dzialo, 2015; Leach, 2015),
gender-related information and research in the energy
sector is more limited. This phenomenon has been
attributed to low awareness of the significance of
gender in energy planning and energy-system
development (Clancy, 2009). To date, research on
gender and energy has focused primarily on gendered
uses of energy, particularly household-energy use in
deve-loping countries (Räty & Carlsson-Kanyama,
2010), rather than women’s jobs and decision making
within the energy industry. Under the umbrella of
renewable energy, preliminary research is emerging
on gender in the context of the renewable energy
workforce (Baruah, 2015). In addition, several earlier
studies called for more attention to gender in all
aspects of energy policy (Farhar, 1998; Parikh, 1995)
and recent studies in Europe have addressed energy-
consumption patterns and the different ways in which
men and women use energy (Carlsson-Kanyama &
Lindén, 2007; Räty & Carlsson-Kanyama, 2010).
Comprehensive gender-disaggregated data is not
currently available for the energy sector as a whole or
for subsectors, including oil and gas, nuclear, and
renewables. When gender is excluded as a data point
in the collection of information about an industry,
sector analysis can be incomplete or misleading and
sector-specific initiatives are unlikely to integrate
consideration of gender (Doss & Kieran, 2014).
Without gender-disaggregated data on employment,
the prevalent and accepted practice of justifying the
hiring of certain types of employees with claims of
“cultural fit” can be perpetuated and often-
unacknowledged gender bias can limit opportunities
for women (Rivera, 2015). In our data-driven society,
we know that what is measured is more likely to be
addressed (Moser, 2007)—in other words what has
not been counted, does not count. Data collection on
the complicated and diffuse energy industry is
already a challenge for many countries (Adib, 2014),
so adding another metric may be perceived as an
additional burden. Although the Bureau of Labor
Statistics (BLS) started to collect data on green jobs
in the United States starting in the 2010 fiscal year,
major budget cuts in 2013 halted systematic assembly
of employment data by industry and occupation for
businesses that produce green goods and services
(BLS, 2013). Thus there is limited current infor-
mation about the growing renewable energy industry
in the country, let alone data on gender in its
constituent sectors.
Several major new initiatives to collect gender-
related data signal how data monitoring is surfacing
as an important tool to achieve gender equality.
Data2X, a global project chaired by the World Bank
and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation,
intends to spark a gender-data revolution and to close
gender gaps through data collection in the categories
of health, education, economic opportunities,
political participation, and human security (Data2X,
2015). Similarly, the United Nations Evidence and
Data for Gender Equality (EDGE) initiative seeks to
“accelerate existing efforts to generate comparable
gender indicators on health, education, employment,
entrepreneurship and asset ownership” (UNSD,
2015). These initiatives, however, are limited to
traditional issues that have typically been associated
as priorities for women—for example health and
education—and do not address the energy sector.
While information on the participation of both
men and women is not generally included in
employment data, governments, non-governmental
organizations (NGOs) and the private sector are
increasingly recognizing gender as an important
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factor in the energy sector, particularly in developing
countries (ESMAP, 2011). Several initiatives are
geared toward development of gender-responsive
energy policies in African and Asian countries,
including the collection of sex-disaggregated national
statistics related to energy access (ENERGIA, 2015).
Several government and NGO efforts are also
working to improve household-cooking technology to
reduce life-threatening health impacts that fall
particularly on women and children in developing
countries (ESMAP, 2011; GACC, 2015). These
endeavors recognize that women’s needs are often
neglected in the design of energy-delivery systems,
putting a greater burden on their lives and continuing
a cycle of poverty. To more fully understand the
global implications of the different levels of
participation in the energy transition by women and
men, governments, NGOs, and the private sector
need to expand their attention to gender beyond the
household level to consider the full energy-value
chain and to prioritize research and information in the
energy-sector workforce globally (Pearl-Martinez,
2014). Given that developed and developing
countries share a low level of women’s workforce
participation throughout the energy sector, we believe
that research about women in the energy workforce
would be beneficial in multiple ways in developed
and developing counties alike.
The Benefits of Gender Diversity
The benefits of greater gender diversity in the
energy workforce span multiple levels, including
opportunities for women themselves, advantages for
energy organizations, and improvements in the
overall energy system. These enhancements can be
categorized in terms of their environmental,
economic, and cultural aspects.
Recent research documenting environmental
gains associated with women’s leadership suggests
potential environmental benefits to gender diversity.
Companies with more women on their board of
directors are more likely to proactively invest in
renewable energy and to reduce carbon emissions
throughout their value chain (CRB, 2012). Potential
environmental gains have also emerged in the
governmental context, as countries with higher
female parliamentary representation are more likely
to cut carbon-dioxide emissions and set aside
protected land areas (UNDP, 2011). Environmental
sociologists have also revealed clear gender
differences in engagement in environmental issues; in
industrialized countries, women are more likely than
men to express environmental concern, support
environmental protection, and enact pro-
environmental behaviors (Kennedy & Dzialo, 2015;
McCright & Xiao, 2014).
Awareness of the economic benefit of women’s
advancement is gaining ground in the private sector.
Gender diversity is now recognized as a force for
economic growth and is considered “smart eco-
nomics” (World Bank, 2012; WEF, 2014). It is now
acknowledged that a country’s national compet-
itiveness correlates strongly with various metrics of
gender equality (World Bank, 2012). In an analysis
of the Japanese economy, closing the gender gap in
employment and focusing on gender diversity was
identified as an avenue for companies and the
country itself to significantly boost the economy
(Matsui et al 2014). The literature linking women’s
leadership roles and corporate performance suggests
financial, institutional, and environmental gains
through closing gender gaps. Fortune 500 companies
in the United States with the highest representation of
women on their boards (19 to 44% women) were
found to enjoy 16% higher net income as a
percentage of revenue than companies with no such
representation (Catalyst, 2007). Beyond the bottom
line, the value to enterprises of investing in women
also includes enhanced recruitment and retention as
well as the creation of a more welcoming and
inclusive work environment. Analysis of enterprise
value of investing in women has demonstrated
increased innovation through gender-diverse teams
and revenue growth through the leveraging of
women’s relationships to attract new business
(Pellegrion et al., 2011).
Cultural benefits related to interactions, com-
munication, and decision making represent another
category of potential gain. Research suggests that
women’s participation in groups can lead to more
effective and inclusive outcomes. In one study led by
the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Carnegie
Mellon University, and Union College documenting
collective intelligence among groups of people who
cooperate, researchers found that the tendency to
collaborate effectively is linked to the number of
women involved. This was attributed to women’s
strength at reading nonverbal cues and encouraging
greater participation of their peers (Woolley et al.,
2010).
Within diversity research, the study of gender
gaps and inequalities establishes a rich literature on a
breadth of negative social impacts of homogenous
and gender-segregated groups, communities, and
organizations (Seguino, 2000). The growing literature
in gender-policy studies also demonstrates that a lack
of gender parity in institutional positions can lead to
harmful social impacts (Cornwall & Goetz, 2005;
Goetz, 2005, 2007; Enloe, 2013). Scholars of peace
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studies and of the militarization of society have
highlighted women’s limited role in many critical
political and military decisions (Enloe, 2013). Other
research demonstrates that having more women
involved in decision making increases governmental
transparency, and greater engagement of women
enhances the likelihood that issues related to gender
equity are integrated into decision making (CAWP,
1991; Carroll, 2001).
At the larger energy-system scale, an additional
social benefit of advancing women in the energy
sector is the potential for greater social engagement
in energy-system change. When more women work
in and contribute to the energy sector, social
awareness about energy and energy decisions will
broaden. As distributed and decentralized renewable
energy options expand, individuals, households, and
com-munities throughout the world have new ways to
participate in energy decisions and energy-system
change (Rifkin, 2011). Energy access plays an
increasingly critical role in human livelihood, so
diversification and distribution of those who control
energy-system change is increasingly important. The
term “energy democratization” has emerged to repre-
sent new opportunities for more distributed
ownership and engagement in energy (Sweeney,
2012; Farrell, 2014). More intentional engagement
and inclusion of women throughout the energy sector
has huge potential to change community awareness
and participation in energy-related issues and
decisions.
In addition to gender-specific matters, the
general value of equality is important (Wilkinson &
Pickett, 2009) and researchers, politicians, and the
public increasingly recognize the social dangers of
growing inequality (Stiglitz, 2013). Decades of
research on diversity in groups, firms, schools, and
society demonstrates that diversity strengthens
organizations, communities, and entire sectors (Page,
2008). Although studies consistently show that more
diverse groups outperform homogenous groups
(Hong and Page, 2004), a lack of diversity in many
organizations persists due to a confluence of social,
economic, and cultural factors including uneven
access to education and training as well as conscious
and unconscious bias and assumptions (Fine and
Handelsman, 2012).
Job Areas with Strong Potential for Gender
Diversification
To facilitate the multiple potential benefits of
greater gender diversification in the energy work-
force, it is worth considering specific types of jobs.
Three key job areas in the energy sector appear to
have particularly strong potential for increased
gender diversification: 1) engineers and technicians;
2) construction, installation, and manufacturing jobs;
and 3) public- and private-sector leadership. These
three areas move beyond the more typical
participation of women in administrative and public-
relations roles within the energy sector.
Engineers and Technicians
Although women make up half of the workforce
in the United States, as of 2009 they held less than
one quarter of jobs in science, technology,
engineering, and mathematics (STEM) (U.S.
Department of Commerce, 2009). Some of this
gender gap can be attributed to a low share of women
in STEM academic studies; however, other factors
contribute across educational and professional arenas.
While half of American women who complete under-
graduate training report being interested in STEM-
related careers, 50% of those women depart
employment or further training within the first decade
after graduation. Girls and boys express the same
level of interest in STEM careers and achieve an
equal level of success through secondary education,
but a major factor for girls and women is the lack of
visible role models and mentorship, leading to a
culture of isolation in tertiary education and entry-
level positions (GSRI, 2012). A study by the
American Association of University Women also
found institutional culture to be a major factor in
attaining gender diversity and recommends the
cultivation of girls’ achievement and interest in these
fields, the creation of college environ-ments that
support women, and the establishment of avenues to
counteract bias (Hill et al. 2010).
Construction, Installation, and Manufacturing Jobs
Construction, installation, manufacturing, and
other trades involved in building, operating, and
maintaining energy infrastructure make up a
significant portion of energy-industry jobs. In the
solar sector in the United States, women account for
about 37,500 workers, or 21.6% of the workforce,
although only 17.7% are employed in solar
installation (The Solar Foundation, 2014). In all
energy fields, cultural views often impede women
from “blue collar” jobs, as employment in heavy
machinery and infrastructure is perceived as male
activities. For example, female construction workers
in India have been considered unfit to advance their
masonry skills, although their capabilities and desire
to progress are equal to their male counterparts
(Barnabas et al. 2009). Several countries are opening
doors for women in these fields, recognizing the
benefits of gender diversity. For example, companies
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in Chile, Ghana, and Papua New Guinea note that
machinery is better maintained and operating costs
are lower when women run heavy mining equipment.
In addition, some countries have launched women’s
technical training programs geared toward infra-
structure projects. For example in Brazil, one third of
all households are headed by women and the rate of
female unemployment is almost double that of men.
The government developed a program to help women
enter better paying infrastructure jobs, resulting in an
increase in female employment in hydropower
projects in the State of Rondonia to 20 percent
(World Bank, 2009). Similarly, companies and
industry associations focusing on solar technologies
are working to attract more women to installer jobs.
In 2014, one of the largest solar companies,
SunEdison, initiated programming to improve gender
diversity, including having senior executives mentor
high-potential women in the company, and
organizing a speaker series, peer-support meetings,
and trainings on unconscious bias (Barron, 2014).
Public and Private Sector Leadership
In the public sector, there are few female energy
ministers worldwide. In Europe, women hold around
2% of senior decision-making positions across the
environment, transport, and energy industries, with a
higher level of women’s participation in envi-
ronmental fields (EIGE, 2012). The gender
imbalance is similar in the private sector. In the
United Kingdom, only 5% of executive board seats in
the top 100 domestically headquartered energy firms
are held by women. One concrete indication of
systematic gender-based discrimination is the
disparity in compensation between female and male
executives. Men often receive higher bonuses than
women, and their compensation is generally more
sensitive to performance compared to female
executives (Kulich et al., 2011). Besides equalizing
compensation levels, company leadership can build a
solid pipeline toward gender diversity by demanding
diverse shortlists for hiring, reporting on gender
diversity, and setting and communicating targets
(PWC, 2015).
Diversity Contributing to Societal Transformation
The energy transition from predominantly fossil
fuel-based infrastructures to more sustainable
renewables-based systems is being driven by multiple
factors, one of them being increased social awareness
of the harmful societal and environmental implica-
tions of fossil-fuel reliance and the more sustainable
future of renewable energy (Brown et al., 2015;
IPCC, 2014; Strunz, 2014). Beyond technical
changes, the energy transition involves complex
social dynamics that researchers have only begun to
explore (Berkhout et al., 2012; Fri & Savitz, 2014),
of which diversity and inclusion are clearly critical
issues that have as yet received scant attention.
During this transition, there is a need to integrate
social logics from diverse stakeholders whose
priorities are influenced by multiple challenges,
including growing urgency about the risks of climate
change and other types of environmental degradation,
geopolitical insecurity, and economic instability.
Among those stakeholders actively involved in the
energy-system transition, gender is one critical factor
influencing framings and articulations of appropriate
responses to climate-energy challenges (WEDO,
2008; Alston, 2011; Nagel, 2015). While some
proponents advocate minimal change and a minor
shift in the mix of fossil fuels, others are actively
working toward a radical transition to a completely
carbon-free renewable energy system (Jacobson &
Delucchi, 2009; Jacobson et al., 2013; Lovins, 2014).
The interplay of these different visions influences the
legitimacy of the emerging energy system and
represents a diversity of opinions regarding
opportunities and challenges for energy-system
change (Stephens et al., 2015). Different actors
involved in the energy-system transition provide
multiple perspectives, priorities, and types of
influence on the transformational pathway. The
incorporation of new voices, particularly women’s
voices, with more female representation in these
critical decisions, will influence future trajectories.
Increased attention to energy-system change has
been coupled with recent calls from multiple scholars
for more social science in the study of energy
(Webler & Tuler, 2010; Sovacool, 2014; Stirling,
2014). Many energy scholars are recognizing the
utility of broadening energy research to integrate
critical social and cultural dimensions of energy-
system change. (Fri & Savitz, 2014). Within this
movement toward enhancing social perspectives on
energy, there has been only limited acknowledgement
of the need for more studies of gender and identity
(Ryan, 2014).
Opportunities for women to expand their role in
this industry include, but are not limited to, science
and engineering as well as installation and
operations, management, sales, communication, and
finance. The Department of Labor in the United
States has advocated for women to pursue
employment in the green-energy sector as a
nontraditional job opportunity that could lead to
greater wage equality (U. S. Department of Labor,
2010). Potential exists for advancement throughout
the sector, including women’s roles as engineers and
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technicians, as construction and manufacturing
workers, and as leaders in both the public and private
spheres.
Social awareness of, and concern about,
women’s issues and connections among climate
change, human well-being, and sustainable energy
systems is growing among scholars and practitioners
throughout the world (Alston, 2011; Leduc, 2010;
WEF, 2014). As social responses to these challenges
expand, paying attention to women’s interests and
needs and recognizing new opportunities for women
in energy would simultaneously provide economic,
environmental, and technological benefits while
encouraging energy-sector innovation. As energy
systems transition away from centralized, corporate-
controlled, fossil fuel-based systems, new
opportunities are emerging for women to contribute
to the development of a more creative, innovative,
and dynamic community-oriented energy industry
that is more responsive to social and cultural change.
However, without gender data characterizing ongoing
developments, efforts to broaden the industry through
diversity and inclusion will be more difficult to
justify and support.
Conclusion
Deeper and more intentional consideration of
women’s participation and contribution to the rapidly
changing energy industry would be valuable for
multiple reasons. Systematic collection and distri-
bution of data on gender in the energy work-force
will encourage greater awareness about gender
equity, support opportunities for women’s
advancement, and highlight the multiple benefits of
hiring and advancing more women. Applying a
gender lens to research on energy-system change and
energy transitions will encourage positive change in
multiple ways including harnessing new
opportunities for a more inclusive and innovative
energy industry.
The following hypothesis emerges from this
initial exploration of the social-change potential of
greater gender diversity in energy. Enhanced gender
diversity among those involved in shaping energy
systems will accelerate both social and technical
change in the energy-system transition. We propose
that increasing gender diversity in energy-decision
making will distribute political power and influence
to encourage a more sustainable society. More
research is needed to further explore this hypothesis
and our proposition.
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COMMUNITY ESSAY
Network priorities for social sustainability research and education: Memorandum of the Integrated Network on Social Sustainability Research Group Rachelle Hollander
1, Adjo Amekudzi-Kennedy
2, Sarah Bell
3, Frazier Benya
1, Cliff Davidson
4, Craig Farkos
5,
David Fasenfest6, Regina Guyer
7, Angelique Hjarding
8, Michael Lizotte
8, Dianne Quigley
9, Diana Watts
10, &
Kate Whitefoot11
1 Center for Engineering Ethics and Society, National Academy of Engineering, 500 Fifth Street, NW, Washington, DC 20001 USA
(email: [email protected]; [email protected]) 2
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, 709 Atlantic Drive, Atlanta, GA 30332 USA (email: [email protected])
3 Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University College London, Chadwick 117, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT,
UK (email: [email protected]) 4 Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY 13244 USA (email: [email protected])
5 American Society of Civil Engineering Task Committee on Sustainability, 9105 Aspenshire Court, Raleigh, NC 27613 USA (email:
[email protected]) 6 Sociology Department, Wayne State University, Detroit, MI 48202 USA (email: [email protected])
7 Energy and Environmental Assistance Office, University of North Carolina Charlotte, EPIC 1150, Charlotte, NC 28223 USA (email:
Sustainability Office, University of North Carolina Charlotte, 9201 University City Boulevard, Charlotte, NC 28223 USA (email: [email protected]; [email protected])
9 Northeast Ethics Education Partnership, Brown University, PO Box 1943, 135 Angell Street, Providence, RI 20017 USA (email:
Department of Business, Trinity Washington University, 125 Michigan Avenue, NE, Washington, DC 20017 USA (email: [email protected])
11 Departments of Mechanical Engineering and Engineering and Public Policy, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh PA 15213
USA (email: [email protected])
Authors’ Personal Statement: The Integrated Network for Social Sustainability (INSS) is a research-coordination network supported by the National Science Foundation that is currently in its third year of activities. Individual and institutional members, representing a wide range of fields and interests, are devoted to addressing social sustainability as an important, understudied issue under the broader rubric of sustainability and sustainable development. The INSS has developed a number of affinity groups and a set of activities to facilitate its development. An annual conference draws members together to review and report on their efforts. At the first conference, a group interested in developing a research agenda formed. This Community Essay shares its members’ perspectives about priorities for future research and education on social sustainability, highlighting efforts for greater inclusion of marginalized populations in research.
Background
The notion of “sustainability” includes environ-
mental, economic, and social aspects. Social sustain-
ability in particular is a quality of society that
promotes enduring conditions for human welfare,
especially for vulnerable persons or groups.1 Much
research on and planning for social sustainability
goes by other names. For instance, work on issues of
environmental or social justice, examining how the
lives and status of susceptible or marginalized
1 See https://clas-pages.uncc.edu/inss/what-is-social-sustainability
for some definitions. Normativity in a definition does not preclude
scientific status—consider “positive” economics and the model of the so-called “rational actor.”
populations can be improved, is a research topic for
the Integrated Network on Social Sustainability
(INSS) (Boström, 2012). Research and innovation to
overcome food insecurity is another example of a
social justice issue. Scholars of food systems have
also identified community innovations that meet
requirements for sustainability, although these inter-
ventions have limited applicability given the needs
and circumstances of human populations around the
globe (Marsden, 2013; Hankins & Grasseni, 2014;
Arora et al. 2015). Cities with transportation plans
that facilitate the access of low-income groups to
amenities, education, and jobs provide yet another
example of attention to social-justice concerns
(Fischer & Amekudzi, 2011).
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For INSS, this work qualifies as social
sustainability research, as does that from numerous
social groups that approach the topic with different
priorities based on the specific needs and concerns of
their constituencies. A recent publication of the
National Association for the Advancement of
Colored People (NAACP) examines the need for
socio-technical systems that are inclusive of
vulnerable and marginalized people to achieve
community resilience. The report develops a list of
measures of vulnerability, adaptation, and resilience
in the face of climate change. Patterson (2015)
explains that on a local governmental level, “The aim
is for city planners, community organizations, elected
officials, and others to consider these equity-based
indicators of resilience as they design adaptation
plans.” Among businesses, corporate social
responsibility is a rubric with which firms approach
social sustainability. The NAACP and business
organizations have developed various measures to
evaluate whether projects meet social sustainability
goals and how these initiatives achieve them.2
The concerns of engineering organizations for
sustainable development have influenced their
attention to sustainability directives in their codes of
practice. For example, in 1993 the American Society
of Civil Engineers (ASCE) issued a policy on
sustainability and then in 1996 amended its first Code
of Ethics Canon to include sustainability as follows:3
Engineers shall hold paramount the safety,
health and welfare of the public and shall
strive to comply with the principles of
sustainable development in the performance
of their professional duties.
The INSS focus on social aspects of
sustainability includes a commitment to inclusion and
diversity in research, education, and practice.
Including a broad spectrum of disciplines and
practitioners will require frameworks and
methodologies that align diverse, practice-specific
lexicons for social sustainability. Developing these
approaches is a key challenge for social sustainability
2 The INSS has created a bibliography of assessment tools that can
be accessed at https://clas-pages.uncc.edu/inss-projects/wiki/pro jects/assessment-tools. INSS member Frazier Benya posted a blog
on the site about assessment tools that do or can include social
sustainability on the Network. It is available at https://clas-pages.uncc.edu/inss/blog/2013/10/04/measuring-social-
sustainability. 3 ASCE Policy Statement 418 available at http://www.asce.org/issues-and-advocacy/public-policy/policy-
statement-418---the-role-of-the-civil-engineer-in-sustainable-
development/ and ASCE Code of Ethics at http://www.asce. org/code_of_ethics.
researchers if they are to coalesce into a coherent
field.
Engineering for Sustainability
Engineers interested in sustainable development
should be able to take social sustainability into
account in their projects. However, their efforts are
often frustrated by the imprecision of the concept, the
differences in priorities of project stakeholders, and
the lack of appropriate training. For instance, training
pays little attention to the influence of engineering
and technology on social systems or how those
systems interrelate with other sustainability goals
(Jones et al. 2015). Differences in priorities raise
conflicts over project goals; again, engineers are
poorly prepared to cope with such differences.
Furthermore, they often lack training and experience
to recognize that process rather than outcome
measures may be needed to move projects in positive
directions. This section highlights the need for
engineers to engage with social sustainability through
interdisciplinary research and practice.
Many colleges and universities have recognized
the need to incorporate sustainability content in
engineering education since the late 1980s. However,
most of these efforts have been confined to
departments of civil and environmental engineering
instead of all engineering disciplines, with little
systematic integration across institutions (Davidson
& Heller, 2014). As professional engineering bodies
have begun to emphasize the role of engineering in
addressing twenty-first century challenges, engi-
neering education has sought to raise the importance
of sustainable development in curricula (Byrne et al.
2010).
Especially in developing communities, technical
engineering solutions can fail to meet full design
expectations because of inaccurate or incomplete
assessment of the social aspects of a project rather
than poor technical design.4 Not least for this reason,
engineering training and practical engineering
experience needs to include increased exposure to the
complex relationships between the technical
components and the social and economic circum-
stances that give rise to them.
Both individual and group behaviors have
consequences that make a difference to engineering
and policy-making outcomes. Besides problems from
disregard for social behavior, failures may arise from
4 See, for example, http://cspo.org/research/adaptive-pathways-to-
climate-change/for a demonstration of the need to incorporate local
perspectives and priorities into project planning and implementation.
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lack of flexibility as new information becomes
available, or when there is no exit strategy for when
problems arise. History has shown that many projects
do not account for uncertainty in the planning process
or the need to monitor and maintain performance,
resulting in multiple unintended consequences.
Engineering disasters, such as the Hyatt Regency
bridge collapse and the Deepwater Horizon oil spill,
are two spectacular examples. Considering the best
ways to move from prototypes to real-world
applications, and examining why previous projects
failed, enhance chances of success. National
assessments of infrastructure can help make the case
for expanding the problem space in engineering to
include social sustainability?5
A more systemic case for emphasizing social
sustainability in planning can be made by examining
the Interstate highway system in the United States.
Built in the 1960s, it contributed to expeditious
movement of goods and ease of access throughout
the country. However, the system also contributed to
the decay of urban downtown areas, creating physical
and psychological barriers between rich and poor
neighborhoods. The highways also led to sprawling
suburbs and limited options for walking, bicycling,
and public transit. However, these problems should
be put into the wider context in which redlining,
restrictive and poor zoning, and discriminatory
housing policies also contributed to socially adverse
outcomes. More than fifty years later, Americans still
struggle with these problems which hamper efforts
across the country to move toward sustainable urban
lifestyles (TRB, 1997, 2014).
Because of their behavioral and social aspects,
only an integrated approach to engineering for
sustainability can address the problems identified
above. However, the challenges facing
interdisciplinary and policy-relevant academic
research also include complexities of funding
structures, institutional requirements, and data
integration. Some funding sources do not support
broad participation—by social scientists, community
members or non-academic practitioners—in research
projects. Where such participation might be allowed,
reward structures for faculty vary greatly within and
among institutions and from one discipline to
another, making it difficult to collaborate on research
or teaching. Universities are often
compartmentalized, and cooperation involving
different colleges and departments, or with potential
community partners, may be difficult to arrange.
5 See ASCE http://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/grades which
provides the backdrop for discussion of social sustainability and infrastructure needs for the United States.
Research centers and other institutions may be
valuable resources on campuses or in cities, but their
funding is often precarious, relying on short duration
individual project grants from governmental bodies
or foundations. Finally, differences in acceptable
data, particularly between the social and natural
sciences, can make effective collaboration difficult.
Success may require a broader vision and specific
means for showing the connections among various
types of data. For example, understanding poverty
requires both qualitative and quantitative data, and
research that gives both big-data overviews and
nuanced descriptions can be valuable for creating
deeper perspectives. Without interdiscipl-inary and
cross-institutional participation, as well as long-term
support, these conditions are unlikely to be met.
The relevance of interdisciplinary efforts to
resolve social problems is becoming more apparent to
many policy makers, scientists, and engineers who
are looking for ways to encourage research and
education at the interfaces of different disciplines.
For example, a recent issue of Nature devotes a
special section to the range of challenges researchers
face in developing successful interdisciplinary
research and interventions (Brown et al. 2015). An
article in this issue lists principles for
interdisciplinary success, with the need for
institutional support, as one of the keys (Brown et al.
2015). Another report issued last year by the
publisher Elsevier (2015) examined the status of
sustainability science globally and indicated that
while the field is highly collaborative it lags
somewhat on measures of interdisciplinarity. The
report indicates that an increasing portion—almost a
third—of sustainability research in the United States
involves international collaboration. Increasing
interdiscipl-inary effort about sustainability may,
then, deserve particular attention in the country.
Engineering for sustainability requires broadening the
problem space in both education and practice, with
attention to the need for interdisciplinarity as well as
global collaboration.
Research Needs Identified in the Literature
Besides discussion of case studies and theoretical
approaches to sustainability, we found several
research strategies related to social sustainability in
the literature. This work can be summarized as
follows. First, a new model of prosperity must
consider economic development in the context of
respect for planetary boundaries and human equity
(Bailey, 2011; Ramaswami et al. 2012; Raworth,
2012). In particular, human well-being and other
expressions of social welfare over the long term
should drive definitions of sustainability. Besides
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recognizing the influence of technological trajectories
and phenomena of globalization, the new model will
also need to address interactions among science,
engineering, and policy and the attachment that
people have to ecological, aesthetic, and religious
spaces such as waterways and wilderness (Mallik,
2014). Understanding how these spaces are perceived
and used is critical to achieving sustainable outcomes
from innovation and globalization. Case studies such
as Mallik’s about river use in India provide a useful
resource for identifying and testing certain principles
of social sustainability, and cross-case analysis can
be an instructive way to isolate generalizable factors,
such as those concerning religious priorities that can
promote, or alternatively undermine, aspects of social
sustainability (Khan & VanWynsberghe, 2008).
Second, research on sustainable cities indicates
the need for a framework involving attention to
social, ecological, and infrastructure components, and
their interactions. The phrase “sustainable
development” can help define such a framework
(Bourgeois, 2014). New educational paradigms must
allow development and testing of a variety of
approaches, including interdisciplinary and cross-
cultural learning, and the consideration of
distributional, procedural, professional, and cross-
cultural ethics (Ramaswami et al. 2014). Additionally, rebuilding and retrofitting
American cities to become more sustainable requires
integrating contributions from public and private
organizations, including those from federal, state, and
local governments. It also requires “connections
across social-ecological systems and governance
linkages…for successful management of connected
systems” (NRC, 2013). DC Solar United
Neighborhoods is an example of these connections
working to provide solar power to low-income
communities in Washington, DC.
Finally, the role of “science” in sustainability
needs elucidation. One view conceives of sustain-
ability as requiring communities at various levels to
envision their future well-being and to draw from
sustainability science to make such visions viable. In
this regard, sustainability science and engineering
should include the brokering or negotiation of
knowledge and pathways to achieve change and
enable development of capable social institutions
(Miller et al. 2014; Schindler & Hilborn, 2015).
Next Steps for Research and Education
Members of the INSS Research Group have a
variety of research interests. Many focus on work that
addresses inclusivity or improving the status of less
well-off members of society, and on developing
perspectives focused on rebuilding infrastructure and
undertaking other technical projects. Active members
in the northwest, central, southwest, mid-Atlantic,
and southern United States and the UK are
undertaking research addressing local and global
issues for social sustainability. The group has
identified needs for interdisciplinary research and
shared methodologies and for composite metrics to
evaluate projects in terms of their social
sustainability. Research is also needed on improved
ways to address social sustainability in formal
engineering curricula and in informal education, for
instance regarding how organizations like Engineers
Without Borders address social sustain-ability in their
instructional activities and field projects. Attention is
also needed regarding the treatment of social
sustainability in textbooks for use in engineering
classrooms.
We have identified several research questions
and areas of exploration as high priority in social
sustainability.
1. How can research help the many social welfare
organizations in the United States to support
social justice and improved conditions for the
urban poor? Are results generalizable to social
welfare activities outside the country—and vice
versa?
2. How can long-term research on the impact of
economic drivers on environmental sustainability
be extended to explore how they can be
harnessed to advance social sustainability?
3. What factors influence how professional
organizations view or promote social
sustainability? What incentives can encourage
professional organizations to engage with their
members in the pursuit of social sustainability?
4. What kinds of interdisciplinary research—for
instance, research on sustainable cities or on
human interaction with new technologies—
address issues of social sustainability? How can
this effort be strengthened?
5. Which kinds of social sustainability
improvements are likely to occur “from the
ground up,” on a case-by-case basis, and which
can occur from the top down? How can the
phenomenon of “citizen science” play a role in
improving communication between elites and
ordinary citizens?
6. How can developments in our understanding of
social movements, human nature and
psychology, persuasion and marketing, and the
drivers of business enterprises, inform social
sustainability innovation and progress? Can
social norms evolve to promote socially
sustainable systems?
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7. Given that it is difficult for individuals to learn
about the intimate relationship between their
well-being and the state of the planet’s
ecosystems, can we identify the attitudes and
behaviors necessary to accelerate progress
toward socially sustainable systems? What
learning and persuasion principles work and are
appropriate for attitude and behavior change?
8. Do criteria for social sustainability vary across
regions and areas, given social, economic, and
political differences? What kinds of
conversations need to occur between those living
in wealthy regions and those living in poor
regions to move toward social sustainability in
both?
9. What educational courses, workshops, and
materials provide high-quality introductions to
social sustainability?
10. What examples of successful courses in science
and engineering address social sustainability?
What can be done to enhance the adoption of
social sustainability material in appropriate
courses?
Summary and Conclusion
Of the three components of sustainability, social
sustainability is the least studied. Established to make
progress in this domain, the INSS Research Group is
exploring current knowledge as well as critical
questions that merit research priority. Historical
lessons from less-than-optimal, or even satisfactory,
outcomes demonstrate well the need to consider
social sustainability in major public infrastructure
projects and complex technological systems.
Achieving sustainability will require interdisciplinary
studies in which technical personnel and social
scientists work together. Long-term research is
critically important on issues like ensuring fairness
during the redesign of cities and striving for inclusion
in access to information on critical social equity
issues, partic-ularly those related to the natural
environment. Also needed is research on effective
and responsible ways to achieve individual and
institutional change in coming periods of climate,
ecosystem, and societal transition.
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ARTICLE
Sustainable dissemination of earthquake resistant construction in the Peruvian Andes Malena Serrano1, Marcial Blondet1, Álvaro Rubiños1, and Elin Mattsson2 1 Department of Civil Engineering, Pontifical Catholic University of Peru, Avenida Universitaria Cdra, 18 S/N, San Miguel, Lima–32, Peru (email: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]) 2 Uppsala Universitet, P.O. Box 256, SE-751 05 Uppsala, Sweden (email: [email protected])
Abstract
This article describes the challenges and initial accomplishments of a project developed by the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru (PUCP) to disseminate technology and to train low-income families in the Andes Mountain region to build earthquake-resistant homes made of adobe bricks. The initiative has focused on improving the livability of households through affordable seismic reinforcement of traditional construction processes to enhance the social sustainability of housing in the area. We selected the rural Andean community of Pullo as a case study because of its preponderance of non-reinforced adobe construction and poverty. The research team developed tools and methodologies for technology transfer, worked with local residents to raise awareness of the high seismic vulnerability of adobe dwellings, and introduced the concept of seismic reinforcement. This article explores the barriers to disseminating earthquake-resistant technology in the study area and presents adaptive measures to overcome these challenges. Initial results demonstrate the positive impact of educational workshops to raise seismic awareness and to introduce earthquake-resistant construction among rural dwellers. The project is deemed to have wider applicability to other communities in seismic areas with similar housing, social, and economic conditions. Keywords: adobe; housing; safe construction; technology transfer
Introduction
Researchers at the Pontifical Catholic University
of Peru (PUCP) and other institutions have been
working to improve the structural safety of earthen
houses located in seismic areas of Peru for the last four
decades (Vargas et al. 2005; Blondet & Aguilar,
2007). Research has resulted in development of
reinforcement techniques for reconstruction and
training programs by nongovernmental organizations
(NGOs) following major earthquakes (Blondet et al.
2008a; Macabuag & Quiun, 2010). Unfortunately,
efforts to encourage the uptake of these technologies
in local communities have largely failed. People
continue to build in the traditional way and not one
person in the rural Peruvian Andes has independently
built his or her house using the proposed
reinforcement techniques (Macabuag & Quiun, 2010;
Blondet & Rubinos, 2014). In an attempt to solve this
problem, PUCP has developed a new training program
in earthquake-resistant adobe construction that
incorporates a previous educational campaign to
increase acceptance among dwellers. This article
examines the value and success of this project for
disseminating new building technologies.
The research reported here contributes to
literature on sustainability education and the social
aspects of housing in the Peruvian Andes. The
intention is not to assess the sustainability of a single
reinforcement technology, but rather to investigate the
effectiveness of the technology after educating the
population about the importance of seismic
reinforcement. In particular, we address the challenges
of taking technology from the academic world, where
it is conceived in a theoretical way, and implementing
it in rural towns, where reality is much more complex
and variable. The study area is located in the Peruvian
Andes and we focus in particular here on work carried
out in the rural community of Pullo, which has been
selected because of its high seismic exposure, both in
terms of infrastructure and social vulnerability, and the
danger signaled by recent seismic events.
This article begins with background on the
initiative and the proposed technology, including the
technology-transfer tools relevant to the project. We
then identify the major challenges of technology
transfer that the research group encountered, focusing
on issues, pertinent in the rural town, of trust, literacy,
cultural differences, lack of permanent personnel, and
transportation. The article also highlights the adaptive
measures taken to overcome those challenges, such as
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audiovisual resources, creative advertising methods,
and special private transportation for the equipment.
Next, it describes the familiarizing educational
experience and concludes with a brief discussion about
the proposed technology, the technology-transfer
experience, and the initiative’s success.
Background
To provide a more complete picture of the work
presented in this article and how it contributes to
sustainable implementation of earthquake-resistant
housing in rural Andean communities, we describe
some of the background context. This section also
discusses the relationship between social sustainability
and housing to provide a deeper understanding of the
importance of communicating about earthquake-
resistant construction. We then present the PUCP
initiative as an example of the human development-
capability approach, which provides an opportunity to
apply innovative technology-transfer tools and to
critically assess their effectiveness for future projects.
Finally, it describes the seismicity of the study area
and develops an overall characterization of its housing
conditions to create a more detailed depiction of the
Andean area of Peru.
Social Sustainability and Housing
Sustainable development of a community is based
on achieving balanced economic growth, environ-
mental protection, and social progress (McKenzie,
2004; Adams, 2006). Development should provide an
acceptable quality of life, both for individuals and
communities, and maintain healthy financial markets
while preserving natural resources by assuring that
depletion does not occur more rapidly than
replenishment (Fisher & Amekudzi, 2011). Balancing
these objectives means that the various sustainability
dimensions are not isolated, but that an integrated view
is maintained. For example, social and environmental
aspects of sustainability are interwoven because
degraded natural resources can compound social
inequity and segregation, conflicts, instability, and
dissension (Chiu, 2003).
Social sustainability is essential for sustainable
development, although there is no consensus on how
to incorporate it in practice (Cuthill, 2010; Casula
Vifell & Soneryd, 2012). Sustainable communities are
places where people want to live and work, now and
in the future (ODPM, 2006), and socially sustainable
communities need to guarantee access to basic needs
while featuring equitable outcomes, diversity,
connectivity, and democratic governance to provide a
high quality of life (WACOSS, 2002). However,
despite the importance of social sustainability, the
economic and environmental dimensions are
prioritized in planning housing and communities
(Woodcraft, 2011) and this neglect of social
sustainability is paramount in the case of housing
(Dempsey et al. 2011).
The social sustainability of housing can be
assessed quantifying the livability of households
(internal housing conditions and external residential
quality) while also considering equity in housing
distribution and consumption (Chiu, 2003). In
addition, one of the predominant physical factors
needed for a community to achieve urban social
sustainability is decent housing (Dempsey et al. 2011),
which provides shelter, basic to community well-being
(Magis & Shinn, 2009). However, beyond shelter,
housing should also promote social integration and
safeguard the environment to preserve the ability of
future generations to meet their needs (Murphy, 2012).
Furthermore, housing only promotes well-being if
planners understand what people need from the places
in which they live and work (Woodcraft, 2011).
Therefore, to achieve social sustainability at the
community scale, housing should promote well-being
and not only meet basic needs. This objective can be
achieved by improving the livability of structures,
where livability is understood to create conditions for
healthy, safe, affordable, and secure households within
a neighborhood with access to utilities, transport,
healthcare, and education (Mitlin & Satterthwaite,
1996). This article concentrates on how to implement
safe and affordable housing as a first step to improving
the livability of households and thus securing social
sustainability in rural communities of the Peruvian
Andes.
The PUCP Training Project
The technology-transfer initiative described in
this article is part of a larger PUCP training project that
aims to provide sustainable earthquake-resistant
housing for Andean communities. The effort is based
on experiences from a small-scale reconstruction
program developed by PUCP and CARE-Peru (a
nongovernmental organization (NGO) specializing in
development) after the Pisco earthquake of August
2007 (Blondet et al. 2008a). The project is
interdisciplinary, bringing together partners from
engineering, psychology, anthropology, history, and
communications with the goal of achieving acceptance
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of seismic reinforcement among homeowners and
residents in Andean communities.
The central idea of the initiative is that people
should not be mere recipients of external aid, but
become agents of their own development by acquiring
the skills to live the life they want (Sen, 2000). In this
project, this means that people living in adobe
dwellings should learn how to build earthquake-
resistant houses by themselves. Therefore, the
program consists of training community members in
the construction of safer adobe houses using a simple
low-cost reinforcement technique. The expectation is
that the acquired skills will allow community members
to continue improving their housing conditions once
the project is over, thus enhancing their quality of life
in an ongoing and sustainable way. There is the
additional prospect that trained community members
could use their acquired skills to earn income as
technicians on construction projects.
The PUCP training initiative is divided into three
phases to increase acceptance of one seismic
reinforcement technique, ease the technology-transfer
process, and create a platform where trained people
can work on similar projects:
Phase One: Familiarizing educational workshops
that include field demonstrations using a portable
shaking table and scaled models. The main
objectives are to educate community members
about the high seismic vulnerability of their
dwellings and to show the value of building
earthquake-resistant adobe houses.
Phase Two: Training workshops that consist of
teaching community members how to build an
improved earthquake-resistant adobe house using
a simple low-cost reinforcement technique
through an illustrated construction manual. The
main objectives are to train community members
through practical skills and to provide a reference
document for future construction. The developed
skills (capacities) are applied in the construction
or reinforcement of a community building with
the collaboration of all inhabitants.
Phase Three: Assessment based on identifying
improvements for future training programs. The
project’s success is evaluated by the application
of the technique beyond the structures built during
the training (e.g., the number of independently
built or reinforced houses). Another potential
outcome to assess is the extent to which local
governments have developed similar training
programs.
The Andean Community of Pullo
Pullo is a small rural community located in the
Ayacucho region of the Peruvian Andes (Figures 1 &
2). Earthquakes are relatively common in this area
because it sits near the boundary between the Nazca
and South American tectonic plates. In August 2014,
an earthquake registering 6.6 on the Richter scale
injured around 100 people, adversely affected 55
houses, and rendered 30 of these structures
uninhabitable (INDECI, 2014). After this event,
Cáritas, a local NGO, asked the Academic Direction
of Social Responsibility of the PUCP (DARS-PUCP)
for relief aid. As a first response, an interdisciplinary
team traveled to the community and assessed the post-
earthquake situation, in terms of both structural
damage and psychological effects. The team also
identified community leaders (e.g., local and church
authorities and the Commoners’ Association) who
might serve as potential collaborators for organizing
and advertising future projects (Cribilleros et al.
2014).
Figure 1 Geographic location of the Andean community of Pullo.
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Figure 2 Main square of Pullo.
Despite the region’s seismicity, almost 80% of
houses in the area are made of traditional adobe
(sundried mud bricks) and built without technical
assistance or seismic reinforcement techniques.
Dwellers know that non-reinforced adobe houses have
very poor seismic performance (Figure 3). However,
sadly, more than 30% of the rural population lacks
access to industrialized materials and more than 60%
live in poverty or extreme poverty without access to
utilities like water and electricity (INEI, 2007).
Therefore, adobe is the only affordable and available
housing for many families. Furthermore, lack of
awareness of construction techniques prevents
homeowners from investing additional time and
money on seismic reinforcement or repair of existing
damage (Blondet et al. 2008b; Macabuag & Quiun,
2010). As a consequence, observed damage
corresponds to lack of seismic-resistant building
techniques during construction (absence of collar
beams and presence of excessive thickness of mortar
joints) and insufficient maintenance over the years
(Cribilleros et al. 2014).
Technology
Adobe buildings are cheap to build and have good
thermal properties, but they are also highly vulnerable
to earthquakes (Blondet & Rubiños, 2014). Therefore,
several reinforcement techniques have been developed
to strengthen adobe dwellings against seismic events
over the years (Zegarra et al. 1997; Minke, 2001; Iyer,
2002; El Gadawy et al. 2004; San Bartolomé et al.
2004; Blondet et al. 2006; Turer et al. 2007; Smith &
Redman, 2009). However, the availability of technical
solutions is not sufficient because this knowledge is
mainly limited to academics (Blondet & Rubiños,
2014). Entire communities continue to build houses
with the traditional non-reinforced adobe-construction
technique, leaving them exposed to extremely high
seismic risk (Blondet & Aguilar, 2007). Therefore, the
first step toward sustainable earthquake-resistant
housing is reducing the communication gap between
academia and earthquake-prone communities. The
next section briefly presents one simple, low-cost, and
highly available seismic reinforcement, the nylon-rope
mesh, and the communication strategies and edu-
cational tools we developed to disseminate this
technology in the Peruvian Andes.
Figure 3 Inhabited damaged adobe house.
Nylon Rope-Mesh Reinforcement
The nylon-rope mesh is a recent reinforcement
technique developed by PUCP (Blondet et al. 2013).
In 2013, a pilot project demonstrated that a previously
damaged full-scale adobe model could be repaired via
mud injection combined with an external mesh made
with nylon strings (Figure 4). The reinforcement
procedure consisted of covering the walls with a mesh
made of horizontal and vertical ropes tightened by
turnbuckles; later, the meshes on both faces of each
wall were joined together by thinner ropes (crossties).
During a sequence of unidirectional earthquake
motions of increasing intensity, the structural behavior
of the repaired and reinforced model was considered
excellent. The external reinforcements worked to
maintain structural integrity and stability and pre-
vented the partial collapse of wall portions that had
separated during the shaking (Blondet et al. 2014).
The PUCP training project selected the nylon-
rope mesh due to its great potential as a sustainable-
reinforcement technique for low-cost earthen dwell-
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Figure 4 Full-scale adobe model reinforced with nylon rope mesh.
-ings in seismic areas (Blondet et al. 2013, 2014). The
reinforcement procedure is considered simple enough
to be learned without any previous technical
knowledge in construction. It does not require extra
machinery, and it produces no additional pollution
compared to non-reinforced adobe construction.
Additionally, nylon ropes are widely available at local
stores, while most natural reinforcement materials are
not easily obtained in large quantities in the Peruvian
Andes. Furthermore, the nylon-mesh technique costs
US$120 at most for reinforcing a typical single-floor
two-room adobe house, which is less than other
industrialized reinforcements (Blondet & Aguilar,
2007; Blondet et al. 2008a).
Portable Shaking Table Demonstrations
The portable shaking table is a tool developed to
raise awareness of the high seismic vulnerability of
non-reinforced adobe dwellings and to build
confidence in reinforced adobe construction among
rural communities (Blondet & Rubiños, 2014). During
demonstration sessions, two reduced-scale adobe
models can be tested simultaneously, with the
differences in their seismic performance easily
observed (Figure 5). The non-reinforced adobe model
collapses just like traditional Andean adobe houses
during an earthquake, but the reinforced model does
not collapse even though it can suffer moderate or
severe damage. Disregarding the magnitude of the
damage, the nylon-thread mesh prevents the collapse
of the reinforced model as the nylon-rope mesh did on
the test program, thus showing the effectiveness of the
nylon-rope mesh to protect the inhabitants of adobe
houses from earthquakes.
Figure 5 Differences in seismic performance of reduced-scale adobe models.
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Figure 6 Illustrations from the construction manual.
The Construction Manual
The construction manual is a technical document
that describes in detail how to reinforce an adobe
house with nylon ropes. Each step of the construction
process is described with familiar, simple language
and clearly illustrated with easy-to-follow drawings
(Figure 6). Furthermore, the manual presents three
types of houses that differ in the number of rooms and
shows their construction plans in detail. This
educational tool is mainly directed to masons and
residents of rural areas where informal construction
with adobe is prevalent and technical assistance is not
easily available.
Dissemination Challenges and Adaptive Measures
The reinforcement systems that the PUCP project
team has studied have proven that adobe construction
can be earthquake resistant. Indeed, the application of
technical solutions would provide enough structural
safety to prevent collapse of earthen buildings, thus
protecting human life and building social sustain-
ability into their construction design (Blondet et al.
2008b). However, despite the benefits of safer
affordable housing, disseminating earthquake-
resistant technology faces a number of impediments
among dwellers, as discussed below.
Trust
Many adobe dwellers resist changing their
building techniques because they dislike external
interference in their traditional practices (Blondet,
2011). More important, many rural projects by the
government were forced upon residents without their
consent in the past, contributing to rejection of
external interference in general (García, 2008).
Additionally, while assessing the post-earthquake
situation in Pullo, informal conversations showed us
that the idea of earthquake-resistant housing raised
suspicion and skepticism among residents. They
considered adobe dwellings extremely vulnerable to
earthquakes and only aspired to own masonry
structures considered to be “noble” and “resistant” but
unaffordable at the same time (Blondet et al. 2008b;
Cribilleros et al. 2014). Therefore, the first challenge
we found to disseminate earthquake-resistant
technology was building trust in the research group
and the proposed technology.
We employed two different strategies that
attempted to overcome this challenge. First, we
presented ourselves to community leaders and
carefully explained the motivation for the project and
what we hoped to achieve in the community. This
allowed us to establish relationships and to build trust
with the research group and regarding the project, so
that community leaders later helped engage the
population (Pérez-Salinas et al. 2014). Second, during
work sessions, we included selected motivational and
laboratory test videos from previous projects that
showed the effectiveness of seismic reinforcement in
addition to the live portable shaking-table demon-
stration.
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Literacy
Another challenge we encountered while
assessing earthquake preparedness in Pullo was lack
of literacy. Most community members only have an
elementary school-level education and close to 15% of
the population is not able to read (INEI, 2007),
requiring explanations using simple language. More
importantly, a high illiteracy rate required us to
consider inclusiveness in the training program since
lack of skills could lead to social exclusion, lack of
access, and conflicts (Khan et al. 2015). To overcome
this barrier, we planned the educational familiarizing
and training phases of the project around audiovisual
resources, oral explanations, live demonstrations and
exercises, and step-by-step illustrated printed mat-
erials.
Cultural Differences
One obstacle during training-session planning
was finding dates and schedules that respected the
cultural expectations in the Pullo community. A
culture is a set of acquired forms and ways to
understand the world, to think, to speak, to express
oneself, to perceive, to act, to socialize, to feel, and to
value oneself as an individual and part of a group
(Heise et al. 1994). Peruvian rural villages have
different traditions and festivities from each another
and from the country’s urban areas. For instance, Pullo
has a flag-raising ceremony on Sundays, which also
serves as an open space to bring up community issues.
In addition, Andean communities have subsistence
economies based on agricultural activity and residents
prioritize certain times of day to farm and take care of
cattle.
In this context, we used several strategies to find
appropriate meeting times and places. In particular, we
considered the different civil and religious traditions
and festivities to respect community beliefs. Special
events, such as the chacco de vicuña (a traditional
Andean wool-shearing process), were avoided in
planning activities, as were agricultural working
hours. As a result, two-hour Saturday afternoon and
two-hour Sunday morning sessions were validated
with community members and main leaders.
Additionally, we followed traditional protocol by
asking local authorities to welcome participants at the
beginning of each session.
Lack of Personnel in the Study Area
Perhaps the biggest challenge that we encountered
during this initiative was the lack of university
representatives in the study area. Institutions
organizing educational workshops would benefit from
local familiarity and the ability to assemble 80 to 150
people (InWent & Mesopartner, 2005). Lack of such
an institution made it difficult to coordinate and
advertise educational and training sessions when other
communication was limited.
The project team implemented several strategies
to overcome this problem, such as conducting personal
and group interviews with community leaders to enroll
their help with advertising; greeting participants upon
arrival and departure using a megaphone; placing
posters with simple, familiar, and inviting language in
strategic places such as the main square and local
stores; making regular telephone and cellular calls to
remind community leaders of upcoming sessions; and
finally, using some specific field trips for promoting
the events. However, these adaptive measures had to
be continuously assessed to improve less successful
components.
Transportation
Transportation was a logistics challenge on our
first trip to the Pullo community because of the
number of different legs required to reach the village.
The trip entails a seven-hour bus ride from Lima to
Nazca, a two-hour minivan ride from Nazca to Acari,
and a four- to six-hour truck ride from Acari to Pullo.
The duration of the truck part of the trip depends on
the different routes, including dirt roads frequently
closed due to mudslides during the rainy season. More
importantly, transportation became a bigger dilemma
while transporting the portable shaking table, which
was too big and heavy to take in the bus or the
minivan. We had to hire special private transportation
for the first trip, and on following journeys a truck
replaced the minivan.
The difficulty reaching Pullo also highlights the
need for this project. External aid from the
government, NGOs, and other institutions is minimal
due to Pullo’s remoteness, and so its inhabitants must
rely on their own wherewithal in the face of
earthquake emergencies (Cribilleros et al. 2014).
However, knowledge of the attendant risks, and ability
to anticipate and reduce potential consequences of a
disaster (resilience), could increase the speed of
recovery after an emergency (Fitzgerald & Fitzgerald,
2005).
Familiarizing Educational Experience
In May 2015, we began the PUCP training
program in earthquake-resistant construction in the
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district of Pullo. We assembled an interdisciplinary
team, which included three civil engineers, one
psychologist, and one communications professional,
to travel to the community. The main objective of the
trip was to conduct a familiarizing educational
workshop with participants from all ages and genders.
Attendance was free and voluntary; participants did
not receive any form of compensation. However, to
increase community interest in the educational
workshop, we conducted a small promotional
campaign on arrival.
Fifty-three community members, including men,
women, seniors, and children, attended the two-hour
familiarizing educational workshop. First, we
presented ourselves and the results from the evaluation
conducted during the first visit, then we presented the
motivation for the project and what we hoped to
achieve in the community. We were careful to avoid
misunderstanding or misinterpretation: participants
would not be given construction materials but would
receive training in earthquake-resistant adobe-
construction techniques.
As an introduction to the familiarizing educat-
ional part of the workshop, we showed a video from
the 1970 earthquake in northern Peru. The team asked
participants open questions (e.g., “How did you feel
watching the video?”) that allowed community
members to express their thoughts—and fears—about
earthquakes and how they perceived their adobe
houses. Participants confirmed the need for safer
housing in Pullo. They regarded adobe to be a brittle
material, but the only one they could afford; thus, they
feared losing their households and their lives to
earthquakes.
Next, the project team elicited responses to one
specific question: “Do you believe construction with
adobe can be earthquake resistant?” Participants
unanimously answered in the negative. Expecting this
answer, the team showed previously selected technical
and motivational videos displaying the effectiveness
of seismic reinforcement, while adding commentaries
and questions for the audience. The final video
presented the full-scale adobe model reinforced with
the nylon-rope mesh and tested in the full-scale
shaking table at PUCP. Some questions from the
participants showed their interest (e.g., “How thick do
the ropes have to be?”) while others showed
skepticism (e.g., “So those thin ropes are going to
protect my house from earthquakes?”).
We later conducted the shaking table test on the
reduced scale models in front of all the participants.
This live demonstration allowed community members
to observe up close the expected seismic performance
of a non-reinforced adobe house during an earthquake
(Figure 7). When we asked them which house behaved
like theirs during an earthquake, they identified the
non-reinforced model. After the shaking table test,
they commented on the importance of seismic
reinforcement for the enhanced model. Finally, we
repeated the description of the PUCP training project
and its main objectives and asked participants if they
wanted to register for future training workshops.
Figure 7 Dynamic test with the portable shaking table.
Discussion
The Technology
Nylon ropes are well known, available, and
affordable in rural areas, unlike other industrialized
materials such as polymer mesh or wire mesh with
cement mortar. On arrival in the Pullo community, the
team found the nylon ropes needed to reinforce a
dwelling at two different local stores in various colors
and sizes. While reinforcing with the nylon rope-mesh
technique increases a dwelling’s cost by US$3–4 per
square meter, this is considered affordable, as very
poor and poor families in Peru have an average income
of US$700–1,000 per year and usually invest US$20–
30 per square meter in constructing their dwellings
(Macabuag & Quiun, 2010). However, the team noted
that the metal turnbuckles used in the laboratory tests
are relatively unknown and expensive for the Peruvian
Andes; additional research at PUCP suggests that
residents could replace them with knots (Mattsson,
2015).
The nylon-rope mesh and other reinforcement
techniques studied by PUCP researchers have only
been developed for one-story buildings (Vargas et al.
2005; Blondet & Aguilar, 2007). However, in the rural
Peruvian Andes, building adobe dwellings without
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technical assistance often leads to the unregulated
construction of two- or three-story earthen buildings
despite their illegality under the Peruvian Building
Code. Therefore, the team was concerned when
community members asked if this technology could be
applied on their already existing two-story dwellings.
Unfortunately, as of now the nylon-rope mesh has only
been used to reinforce one-story dwellings and further
research is needed to examine if this technology can
also be used with similar results for multi-story
dwellings.
Educational Experience
The educational workshop applied many
strategies to sharing knowledge about earthquake-
resistant construction in the Peruvian Andes. The
schedule for these events and the small promotional
campaign was aimed at increasing the number of
participants. In addition, the live portable shaking
table demonstration and the selected audiovisual
materials were focused on overcoming barriers to trust
while also avoiding social exclusion due to illiteracy.
Using the portable shaking table as a
communication tool generated a playful environment
that raised interest and confidence among community
members. After the live demonstration, the team asked
participants to raise their hands if they believed
earthquake-resistant construction with adobe was
possible. The answer was affirmative and unanimous
(Figure 8). Later, through informal conversation,
participants confirmed this belief to the different
members of the team. This interaction appeared to
successfully motivate Pullo’s inhabitants and establish
relationships with the team. Moreover, by bringing
elements of research into the field, the team was able
to show people the efforts made by PUCP to find
sustainable housing solutions for them. Therefore, we
considered the educational workshop successful as it
increased confidence in the nylon-rope mesh as
seismic reinforcement and raised interest in upcoming
training workshops.
Despite the initial success overcoming barriers to
trust, the number of participants represented only
approximately 1% of the total population of Pullo,
much of which is scattered across farming lands.
Therefore, we plan to repeat the educational
methodology using the live portable shaking table
demonstration to reach a wider audience and to
reinforce trust with community members.
Figure 8 Participants raising hands as a sign of confidence in the proposed technology.
Success of the Initiative
In the long term, the success of the PUCP training
project will be measured by the number of repaired
houses and new houses that use nylon rope-mesh
reinforcement. Full assessment of the technique’s
acceptance is not possible at this early stage, but one
optimistic indicator occurred at the end of the
educational workshop, when 32 out of 45 adult
participants signed up for upcoming training sessions.
Figure 9 Participants registering for upcoming training sessions.
The registration process involved community
members writing their full names, providing identity-
card numbers, and signing; illiterate participants could
dictate their information to team members (Figure 9).
In total, over 70% of participants committed to the
training program.
Conclusion
Technical solutions to reinforce adobe dwellings
exist although they vary in cost and accessibility. The
main challenge is not to develop affordable and more
sustainable solutions (Ness & Akerman, 2015), but
rather to disseminate these alternatives to commun-
ities. Greater emphasis must be placed on developing
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educational tools and methodologies that can handle
the difficulties and unexpected challenges that arise
during the technology-transfer process.
Our initial success reaffirms the importance of a
familiarizing educational phase to achieve sustainable
dissemination of earthquake resistant construction, as
dwellers must trust seismic reinforcement in order to
incorporate it into their building practices. The
educational workshop succeeded among inhabitants of
Pullo as it raised awareness and willingness to
participate in future training sessions and learn the
nylon rope mesh technique. Therefore, we recommend
that future studies and training programs include a
familiarizing educational phase when working with
technology transfer in rural communities. More
importantly, the project team envisions that, if the
project succeeds, the communication and educational
tools that we have developed might be applicable or
adapted to be used in other seismic areas where people
build with earth—specifically in poor areas of western
South America, Central America and southern Asia—
with the hope of improving household livability for
more families.
Our work has not been easy and is not finished.
The project team continues to conduct research in rural
Andean communities and this ongoing learning
process is aimed at planning and improving
appropriate workshops. Without such understanding,
community members are unlikely to adopt the
proposed technology despite its benefits. However, the
people involved in this initiative are optimistic that
their efforts will lead to improvement of household
livability for many families and contribute to social
sustainability of housing in the Peruvian Andes.
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank the staff of
PUCP’s Office for Social Responsibility (DARS)–
especially Maria Teresa Rodríguez and Ruth Nevado–for their support on this project, and the staff of the
Structures Laboratory for their help with the
experimental tasks. Special thanks are due to Nicole
Peterson who reviewed this paper and provided
insightful comments. Finally, the financial support of
the National Council for Science and Technology of
Peru (CONCYTEC) is gratefully acknowledged.
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ARTICLE
Social sustainability dimensions in the seismic risk reduction of public schools: a case study of Lima, Peru Sandra Santa-Cruz1, Graciela Fernández de Córdova2, Miryam Rivera-Holguin3, 4, Marta Vilela2, Victor Arana5, and Juan Palomino5
1 Department of Engineering, Pontifical Catholic University of Peru, Avenida Universitaria 1801, Lima, Peru (email: [email protected]) 2 Department of Architecture, Pontifical Catholic University of Peru, Avenida Universitaria 1801, Lima, Peru (email: [email protected], [email protected]) 3 Department of Community Psychology, Pontifical Catholic University of Peru, Avenida Universitaria 1801, Lima, Peru (email: [email protected]) 4 Faculty of Psychology, National University of San Marcos, Calle Germán Amézaga 375, Edificio Jorge Basadre, Ciudad Universitaria, Lima, Peru (email: [email protected]) 5 Department of Civil Engineering, Pontifical Catholic University of Peru, Avenida Universitaria 1801, Lima, Peru (email: [email protected], [email protected])
The provision of education is a vital feature of a socially sustainable system. However, students in highly seismic areas are under permanent hazard, a critical situation for student populations with high vulnerability factors such as insecure infrastructure, low teacher salaries, and poor living conditions due to social exclusion and inequity. In this article, we use community-based elements, such as institutional arrangements and a collaborative and interdisciplinary approach, to develop a comprehensive multi-scale risk model for socially sustainable seismic risk reduction in schools. We analyze the case of schools in the city of Lima, Peru, integrating aims, objectives, and methodologies based on risk-reduction strategy from previous disciplinary studies. Identifying schools that, on one hand, can be most useful during emergency-relief work and, on the other hand, educational facilities that could cause the most harm to students are priorities for a risk-reduction strategy. We identify social sustainability factors in schools, such as security and well-being of the student population, accessibility, incomes, basic service provision, and community organization. Specifying the spatial and territorial relationships within public school surroundings is essential to guaranteeing the effectiveness and efficiency of risk-mitigation strategies.
Keywords: Social sustainability, seismic risk, mitigation, community-based disaster risk management
Introduction
The effective provision of education is a main
feature of a socially sustainable system (Harris et
al. 2001). However, educational arrangements—
including students, teachers, administrators,
authorities, curriculum, equipment, and
infrastructure—in highly seismic areas are under
permanent hazard. This situation is critical for
student populations that attend public schools
with high vulnerability factors, such as insecure
infrastructure, low teacher salaries, and poor
living conditions due to social exclusion and
inequity (including populations living in
conditions of poverty and extreme poverty). The
combination of hazard, vulnerability, exposure,
and low resilience results in a high-risk situation.
Risk reduction challenges decision makers
because of the sheer number at factors and the
lack of economic capacity to attend to them
simultaneously (Freeman et al. 2003; Cardona,
2010).
Academics and international agencies have
been working for the past several decades to
develop risk-reduction strategies for educational
systems. These efforts have ranged from
programs to reduce structural vulnerability to
initiatives focused on nonstructural elements like
retrofitting building infrastructure, improving
earthquake preparedness, and contingency
planning. Although these endeavors involve
different knowledge areas, no opportunities have
been created for interdisciplinary and
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participatory work to create an integrated vision
of the problem.
More specifically, retrofitting measures in
schools proposed from an engineering point of
view tend to rely on a “top-down” management
(TDM) approach that prioritizes the most urgent
tasks from a multifactor standpoint based on
physical and structural risk analysis and student
numbers (Grant et al. 2007; Pina et al. 2012;
Grimaz et al. 2010; Tesfamariam et al. 2012).
Strategies focused on preparedness, especially
through the training of teachers, principals, and
administrative staff, and informing parents and
students, have shown little increase in school-
team and parent awareness about the importance
of taking precautionary actions such as
participating in emergency simulations and drills
(IASC, 2007; Rivera et al. 2016). By contrast,
strategies aimed at children have been more
successful because messages disseminated by
youngsters have a high level of acceptance among
parents (Izadkhah, 2005).
In this article, we use community-based
elements, such as institutional arrangements
(UNDP, 2015) and collaborative and
interdisciplinary approaches, to understand the
risk factors and to develop comprehensive,
socially sustainable risk reduction strategic plans
for educational systems. We aim to demonstrate
that 1) design of seismic risk-reduction strategies
should include an emphasis on social
sustainability and 2) a participatory and
interdisciplinary approach should integrate aims,
objectives, and methodologies used by previous
TDM studies in a knowledge-creation process.
Community-based Disaster Risk Management
Community-based disaster risk management
(CBDRM) is a complementary approach to TDM
(Birkman, 2007). The concept of CBDRM is
based on a multi-sectoral and interdisciplinary
strategy, experience, local knowledge-sharing,
and community empowerment and ownership by
the target beneficiaries.
Programs based on CBDRM have been used
extensively worldwide (Maskrey, 2011), mainly
to improve emergency-response capabilities,
urban planning, and disaster prevention (Chen et
al. 2006; Vilela & Fernández de Córdova, 2013)
as well as to facilitate post-disaster reconstruction
processes (Rivera, 2010; Velásquez et al. 2016).
For instance, participatory multi-sectoral
partnership and community engagement has also
been deployed by a grassroots parents group in
Berkeley, California (USA) as part of a process to
retrofit a local school (Chakos, 2004). Although
these initiatives are useful examples entailing the
empowerment of target beneficiaries, they lack an
interdisciplinary vision that can encompass all
risk-management activities in greater detail.
The community-diagnosis method is a tool of
CBDRM that enables a knowledge-creation
process that combines local knowledge and
technical know-how for implementing
participatory disaster preparedness (Matsuda &
Okada, 2006). It consists of two phases: a
diagnostic survey and a prescriptive meeting, the
latter providing space for face-to-face interaction
to share survey results and to combine the local
knowledge of various participants. The
prescriptive meeting also plays the role of
providing a community with a solution for risk
reduction.
Social Sustainability Dimensions
Social sustainability is based on two
dimensions: social equity and the sustainability of
a community itself (Bramley & Power, 2009). An
equitable society is one with no “exclusionary” or
discriminatory practices hindering individuals
from participating economically, socially, or
politically. Within an urban context, social equity
is related to access to services, facilities and
opportunities, public transportation, and adequate
infrastructure. Community sustainability
involves social interaction among community
members, including the opportunity to participate
in public life, the existence of formal and
informal organizations, as well as the presence of
interpersonal trust, security, and positive sense of
identification.
In this article, we examine an ongoing project
for developing a strategic plan for seismic risk
reduction of the student public school population
in Lima, Peru using the community diagnosis
method. Both TDM and CBDRM benefits are
integrated in a participatory manner, with a focus
on an interdisciplinary and multi-sectoral
approach to yield a risk-reduction proposal that
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takes into account the dimensions of social
sustainability.
Case Study: Student Population in Lima
Lima, Peru, is located in the seismically
intensive “Ring of Fire” of the Pacific Ocean and
has been subjected to many earthquakes over the
years (Tavera & Buffon, 1998). Since the 1950s,
Lima has grown largely on an informal basis to
an estimated population of nine million people
and today lacks adequate public infrastructure
and urban facilities including schools, hospitals,
health clinics, and cultural centers.
The city’s current residential and commercial
patterns are scattered and uncoordinated, leading
to socio-spatial segregation (Fernández de
Córdova, 2012). Informal settlements located in
the expansion areas occupy lands exposed to
hazards and poor performance during seismic
events. This configuration fails to incorporate
notions of compactness and inclusion that are
inherent in most urban models of a sustainable
city and reduces the resilience of student
residents. The large number of public schools
located in these problematic expansion areas
increases the risk to this portion of the population.
School buildings also suffer from poor
construction practices arising from a lack of
regulated procedures and quality supervision
(Blondet et al. 2004), increasing the likelihood of
injuries to students during a post-disaster
evacuation. This situation degrades resilience and
will likely delay the recommencement of school
activities following an emergency. With no
regular budget for investment in facilities, parents
frequently build schools themselves after pooling
their own financial resources. Most of the schools
in Lima were built in a staged construction
process and additional capacity has been added
when there has been money from either families
or the government (Santa-Cruz et al. 2013).
In school buildings, the presence of
unsupervised alcoves, dead ends, and narrow
corridors are prevalent due to a lack of planning.
In addition, some evacuation routes include
staircases with low parapets and are likely to
become overcrowded. Safety areas are located
near elevated water tanks, but do not meet
structural safety standards, presenting increased
risk for evacuees.
According to previous studies, if a seismic
event were to occur (similar to the one that
affected Pisco, located 250 kilometers south of
Lima, in 2007), 92% of public schools would
become inoperative and 89% of students would
be adversely affected (Santa-Cruz, 2013). This
situation is mainly due to the fact that schools
have been built in accordance with obsolete
earthquake-resistant criteria and poor quality-
control processes. For typical modules built
before 1997 (Figure 1), a shear failure in columns
(called a short-column failure) is likely to occur,
causing the structures to collapse if the event
scores higher than VII on the Modified Mercalli
Intensity (MMI) scale. More than 50% of the
school buildings in Lima require total
replacement to bring them into conformance with
the Peruvian building code (MINEDU, 2015).
Furniture and placement of doors and
windows in public school classrooms often do not
comply with the current Peruvian safety
legislation. This situation is mainly a
consequence of the staged self-build process. The
lack of technical inspections, along with
insufficient training of people involved in
construction and those responsible for use of the
space and furniture, hinder correct definition and
maintenance of safety areas and emergency exits.
Schoolchildren in Lima have been targets of
previous campaigns to raise risk awareness and
build capacity for emergency preparedness.
Elementary and high-school students have
achieved a basic level of risk awareness after
community training and monitoring activities
Figure 1 Typical school building in Lima, Peru built before 1997
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involving teachers, parents, and the students
themselves (Roca, 2011). However, government
entities, academic staff, teachers, and healthcare
workers lack the proper training required to
provide information or humanitarian aid to
students adversely affected by seismic events
(Rivera et al. 2014). The experience in Pisco
demonstrated that poor communication skills
could increase injuries and psychological
problems for students.
In summary, Lima’s student population is
exposed to earthquake risks in many aspects of
daily life and at different scales: classroom,
school building, neighborhood, and the city
(Table 1). These hazards are to physical,
psychological, and social health, including
quality of life, well-being, education, and
development. An interdisciplinary approach is
needed to help communities organize themselves
to face seismic events and to encourage
coordinated activities to foster integrated risk
management.
Community Diagnosis for Seismic Risk Reduction
in Lima’s School Population
In September 2014, Pontificia Universidad
Católica del Perú (PUCP) organized a
participatory workshop using the community-
diagnosis method to develop a comprehensive
risk-reduction and strategic plan for Lima’s
educational system. The objective was to adopt
an interdisciplinary vision in seismic risk
management and to incorporate CBDRM
elements in the diagnosis and formulation of the
plan.
Table 1 Seismic risk analysis scales and examples of main issues
(a) City
Social-spacial segregation due to diffused patterns
(b) Urban areas
Poor community preparedness and inadequate construction and land-use practices
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(c) School building
Inappropriate emergency exits, obsolete earthquake-resistant criteria, and acceptable level of risk
awareness in some schools
(d) Classroom
Furniture does not comply with safety recommendations
Community Diagnosis for Seismic Risk Reduction
in Lima’s School Population
In September 2014, PUCP organized a
participatory workshop using the community-
diagnosis method to develop a comprehensive
risk-reduction and strategic plan for Lima’s
educational system. The objective was to adopt
an interdisciplinary vision in seismic risk
management and to incorporate CBDRM
elements in the diagnosis and formulation of the
plan.
A diverse group of primary stakeholders from
academia and the government participated in the
workshop. Participants included authorities and
decision makers, with officers from the National
Program of Educational Infrastructure (known by
its Spanish acronym PRONIED); Office of
Investment Planning; Office of Strategic
Planning; Office of Strategic Planning and Measurement of Educational Quality, Office of
Community and Environmental Education; and
researchers from the World Bank and the PUCP
Departments of Architecture, Engineering, and
Psychology. Lima school principals were
represented by officers from the Regional
Directorate of Metropolitan Lima (DRELM). The
participation of the stakeholders was possible due
to the relationship that all parties had built while
participating in research and social responsibility
projects previously implemented by the PUCP
Engineering Department.
Diagnostic Survey
The participants presented the main aspects
of seismic risk facing Lima’s student population
based on three recent studies of public schools in
Peru: 1) Short-term strategy for immediate
upgrade of the educational infrastructure in the
city (MINEDU, 2014), 2) Probabilistic seismic
risk assessment of local schools and hospitals
(Santa-Cruz, 2013), and 3) Program Vulnerability
Reduction and Emergency Disaster—PREVAED
0068 (DRELM, 2014). All of these studies
estimated risk indexes using hazard and structural
fragility factors. While the first two reports
recommended carrying out structural measures
(retrofitting or replacement) to most high-risk
schools, the third proposed a strategy focused on
school preparedness (Table 2).
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Table 2 Studies of seismic risk of schools in Lima City
Short-term strategy for the immediate attention of the
educational infrastructure in Lima
2015 (MINEDU, 2014)
Probabilistic seismic risk assessment of local schools and
hospitals Lima (Rivera et al. 2014)
Program Vulnerability Reduction and
Emergency Disaster—PREVAED 0068 “Safe
Schools in Lima” (DRELM, 2014)
Participatory proposal
Recommended actions and
prioritizing criteria
Implement some of three actions: maintain, retrofit, or replace schools prioritizing the most vulnerable and located in the most densely populated districts
Urgent structural retrofitting or replacement in schools
with highest expected
annual loss (EAL)
Distribution of basic safety kits to schools with higher risk and award to the most prepared schools
Incremental retrofitting prioritizing schools that could be more useful during emergency and could cause the most harm to students
Methodology
Establish an index of structural interventions according to ad-hoc algorithm
Determination of EAL for each school using CAPRA©
Evaluation of safety index of the schools
Multi-criteria and GIS analysis, related to weaknesses or capabilities in all risk-generation levels: classroom, school, environment, and city
Factors
Technical expertise of the constructor
Year of construction
Predominant structural system of the building
Condition of the structure
Seismic hazard
Type of soil
Predominant structural system of the building
Distance from main street and facilities
Interior free area
Structural inspection results
Basic services coverage
Expected structural performance in future events
Interior free area
Surrounding density
Accessibility
Socioeconomic class
Community organization
Basic services coverage
The last part of the diagnostic survey was
aimed at preparing a comprehensive and
participatory diagnosis of seismic risk to students
based on discussion of previous risk-analysis
studies (Vilela & Fernandez de Córdova, 2013).
To facilitate discussion, participants were divided
into groups (Figure 2) and received maps and
tables with information on the location and
characteristics of the school buildings, land uses,
routes and roads, socio-economic characteristics,
and soil types for three representative districts
located in the expansion area of Lima: Comas,
San Juan de Lurigancho, and Villa el Salvador
(Figure 3). An effort was made to create
multidisciplinary working teams to identify the
risk problems and their associated factors in a
collaborative manner from different approaches
and areas of knowledge.
Figure 2 Development of the diagnostic survey and participatory diagnosis of seismic risk
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Based on the information analysis and the
reflections of the participants on the potential
disaster and post-disaster situation, participants
identified possible critical situations, as well as
their associated factors. Factors were found in
relation to weaknesses that would increase the
physical, psychological, and social impacts on
students, and capabilities that could decrease the
adverse effects of a seismic event. Positive
factors, that is strengths and capabilities, were
written down on green cards with negative
factors, weaknesses, and lack of capabilities, on
red cards (Figure 4).
Figure 3 Representative zones of the expansion area of Lima used in the diagnosis survey
Figure 4 Identification of positive and negative factors related to the risk of the student population
Results of Diagnosis Survey
Participants first cited factors related to the
structural fragility of buildings. Construction
prior to 1997 was the main indicator of high
structural weakness of some schools. Another
factor was the soil’s low load bearing capacity.
Buildings located in areas with soft soils were
identified as the most at risk, because poor quality
soils can amplify seismic ground motion.
Students at these schools could suffer harm from
fallen objects or partial collapses during an
earthquake.
Accessibility in a post-disaster scenario was
another factor that the workshop participants
identified. For example, the location of main
avenues in lower elevation and plain areas of the
Comas District was considered positive because
such conditions could allow for distribution of
humanitarian aid or, if necessary, evacuation of
injured victims. However, the district’s upper
areas pose serious difficulties due to
overcrowding, slope instability, and the lack of
well-maintained roads and highways. By
contrast, the large number of schools in the
vicinity was considered to be a positive factor
because the existence of these buildings could
increase the possibility that local habitants would
be able to continue classes and have a focal point
if some schools in the area became inoperative.
Participants highlighted the need for information
about the total number and built-up area of school
buildings, deemed to be relevant information
because vacant areas would be useful for setting
up prefabricated classrooms in a post-disaster
reconstruction scenario. A finding that produced
major concern was the high number of public
school buildings without property title, a result of
the informal settlement and construction process.
This is a risk factor since it could delay the
provision of financial aid in post-disaster
reconstruction process.
The working groups also discussed social
sustainability with respect to socioeconomic,
class-based, and community resilience. In the
three study areas, most of the population is low to
medium income which was considered to be a
negative factor because insufficient financial
resources are associated with a slow recovery
process. Problems of alcoholism, violence, and
crime in parts of these districts were also
identified as social gaps for community cohesion.
Workshop participants indicated that a good
relationship between the school and the
community would be a significant factor in the
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whole reconstruction process. They suggested
that the government should provide training to
teachers to help them respond to a crisis without
allowing feelings of distress and sadness to
intervene with respect to the children and other
community members. Finally, participants
stressed the importance of the school building as
a community-meeting point, especially in areas
characterized by low socioeconomic status.
The working groups also took land-use
information into account. The arrangement of a
residential area was considered a positive factor
for responding to emergencies, together with the
presence of wide green areas in strategic locations
for post-disaster humanitarian logistics.
Likewise, isolation from industrial areas was also
considered to be helpful because such districts are
usually associated with secondary risks caused by
seismic events, like explosions and fires.
However, the workshop participants questioned
the official land-planning and land-use data
because they were not reliable given the
widespread informal construction process in
Lima. A summary of identified factors and
related problems appears in Table 3.
Prescriptive Meeting
The participants arrived at the first part of the
workshop with various forms of tacit knowledge
and this diversity of perspectives led them to
discuss a range of risk-reduction procedures for
schools. Specific topics included structural
retrofitting, planning evacuation routes and safety
areas, preparedness, community responses, and
psychological support teams. In the second part
of this session, groups worked together to
comprehensively define the aims, objectives, and
methodologies of strategic planning for seismic
risk mitigation.
With respect to risk reduction, the structural
retrofitting measures that participants presented
included adding complementary frames, energy-
dissipation devices, and enlarging columns. First,
the complementary frame technique, used in
previous interventions in other Peruvian cities,
consists of supplementing the original structure Table 3 Problems, factors, and measures identified in the participation process from two sessions
Factors Problem Measures
Soil type
Potential physical damages caused due to fallen heavy objects or partial collapses. Disruption of classes
Complementary frame technique
Structural fragility Enlargement of columns
Population density Installation of energy-dissipation devices
Specific regulation for rehabilitation of existing constructions and use of new materials
Distribution of the buildings and free areas inside the school
Potential physical damages caused by falls, crashes, and overcrowding of students during the evacuation
Upgrading corridors and ramps that do not meet the required standards
Implementation of emergency exits and safety areas
Awareness-raising activities for students to correctly follow instructions during evacuation procedures
Accessibility and closeness to main routes Deficiency and delays in
humanitarian response and difficulties in evacuation procedures during the emergency response and rehabilitation stages
Adopting urban models of sustainable cities with compactness and inclusive solutions
Basic services Improvement of water supply, electricity, and telephone communication systems
Socio-economic level related to social segregation and little compactness
Civic and social empowerment to face the disaster
Level of preparedness and commitment of neighboring communities
Psychological impact due to poor crisis management by local authorities and humanitarian aid
Training teachers, health workers, parents, church leaders, and NGO representatives through “community interventions”
Regulation of the Ministry of Economy and Finances for Public Investment Projects
Difficulty to obtain funds for retrofitting projects
Legal clearing of property
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with a reinforced concrete frame. This technique
is suitable for low-rise structures and eliminates
the short-column problem in typical modules
built before 1997. Second, the technique of
incorporating energy-dissipation devices, like
dampers and base isolators, was considered too
costly by the experts. Finally, the enlarging-
columns alternative was questioned because it
has a very disruptive construction process.
To decide the optimum retrofitting
alternative, it is necessary to analyze all of the
options using multi-criteria decision-making
methods (Caterino et al. 2004; 2009) or life-cycle
economic assessments aimed at maximizing
benefits or minimizing costs and losses (Santa
Cruz & Heredia, 2009). The implementation of
all of these structural interventions typically
requires rapid assessment and analysis methods
for strengthening existing structures and new
technologies and materials (e.g., carbon fiber,
electro-welded meshes, geo-meshes and fabrics).
Unfortunately, Peru has no precise regulations
pertaining to structural intervention in existing
structures so local engineers have no guidance on
which to rely when applying new techniques.
Another proposed measure was to improve
school-evacuation routes by building ramps,
removing obstacles and stairs from safety areas,
constructing additional staircases, and
strengthening walls, elevated tanks, and parapets.
For the immediate school surroundings,
workshop participants suggested enhancing road
infrastructure and removing informal facilities
and open dumps. In addition, they stated that
awareness-raising campaigns should continue as
well as preparedness activities (like the scheduled
simulations carried out by the Ministry of
Education), and regular emergency-management
workshops for teachers and students. To address
a potential post-disaster crisis, the workshop
participants proposed changes to the urban
model, including compactness, inclusivity and
social cohesion, and improvements to the water
supply, electricity and telecommunication
systems.
In terms of community organization,
workshop participants proposed mobilizing
social and human resources to respond to
potential crises through community interventions
that promote solidarity among neighbors and
their organized participation in rehabilitation and
emergency-relief processes. Due to their roles
and positive influence on the population,
stakeholders like teachers, healthcare workers,
church representatives, and employees of
nongovernment organizations (NGOs) would
also be involved in such interventions. In
addition, they noted the importance of training
potential members of the psychological support
team to identify harmful emergency-relief
practices, such as healthcare workers prescribing
unnecessary drugs or “antidepressants” to
students.
Workshop participants also proposed a third
point of intervention, namely to formalize
ownership of school buildings in accordance with
the law. This measure requires the help of
architects, engineers, and lawyers to gather
relevant data, necessitating the involvement of
pertinent professional associations.
Participants agreed that all of these measures
should include regular follow-up assessments. In
particular, contact with disaster victims was
recognized as important for identifying
intervention results and verifying whether goals
were accomplished. Table 3 includes a summary
of the proposed measures.
We now turn our attention to specific
recommendations raised at the workshop for
achieving seismic risk-reduction objectives.
According to the guidelines established by the
Ministry of Education and the objectives of the
National Risk and Disaster Management Plan
2014–2021 (PLANAGERD), the school is the
intervention target (e.g., infrastructure,
equipment and furniture, teacher training and
teaching management). The first action calls for
acknowledging the high risk levels in most school
buildings, as well as the limited resources and
time for their retrofitting and improvement. We
posed the following questions: What should the
strategic goals be? What methodology or criteria
should be followed to attain them? How can
viability of the proposals be ensured?
Workshop participants agreed that the
strategy should be to implement priority
interventions in: 1) schools likely to be most
useful during emergency-relief work and 2)
schools with the greatest risk of injury to students.
The first objective was to list buildings with
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higher capability and preparedness in terms of
high accessibility, quality services, well-
distributed free areas, and effective community
organization. The second objective was to
prioritize the least adequate buildings by
accounting for structural weakness, poorly
planned evacuation exits and safety areas, and
segregation by socioeconomic class.
To achieve the objectives, the participants
reviewed the risk factors identified in the
diagnostic survey which could be useful to
establish an index or ranking to measure the need
for interventions. It was deemed that a list of
priority schools could be prepared later. For
instance, the project team started a qualitative
assessment of risk factors in schools located in
one of Lima’s represented districts. The year of
construction was used as an indicator of structural
weakness of school buildings and socioeconomic
class as a measure of resilience (i.e., conditions of
extreme poverty were deemed to be less
resilient). They next established a ranking and
prepared a list of the priority schools. However,
this strategy was found to be inappropriate
because in some cases highly ranked school
buildings were relatively close to each other or
lacked access. The project team therefore realized
that algorithms and multi-criteria tools for risk-
management decision-making processes in
school buildings had to be correlated with the
relationship between schools and urban systems
to be reliable.
Workshop participants identified that the
infrastructure of some school buildings could be
so severely damaged that safety could no longer
be guaranteed, risking injuries to the student
population, as happened in Pisco’s 2007 seismic
event. Thus, the group understood that
multifactorial prioritization needed restrictions,
since particularly vulnerable school buildings
need an emergency intervention owing to their
high fragility, as is the case of adobe-wall
buildings and typical modules built before 1997
(Muñoz et al. 2004).
With regard to healthcare, emergency
intervention would require an immediate measure
to stabilize patients, although that might not mean
that they could be discharged. In the case of
school buildings, an emergency intervention
would have limited objectives to stabilize the
structure. In relation to these constrained scopes,
the workshop participants agreed that it would not
be feasible to approve a structural project with
lower design performance than required in the
construction standards.
An option for implementing these
emergency measures would be to include
incremental retrofitting which entails adapting
the school to regulatory requirements in partial
interventions or stages (Krimgold et al. 2002).
Under these arrangements, an improvement
would be made in the structural performance in
every stage until the performance reached the
requirements of existing construction codes.
Some progress has occurred regarding
regulations in Peru and designers have since 2016
begun to apply this concept to existing structures.
Regarding this proposal’s feasibility, the
team members were skeptical about the efficacy
of the requirements set by the Ministry of
Economy and Finances for the approval of Public
Investment Projects (PIP), as these are too
complicated and slow to address the problems of
school buildings in need of urgent intervention.
The time that it takes for the preliminary design
and the comprehensive approach required by the
Ministry are not consistent with the timescale
associated with emergency interventions.
It merits observing, though, that there is
previous experience with rapid approval
processes in hospitals in Peru. A 2014 decree
stipulated that special measures should ensure
their operation even during seismic disasters.
Through similar measures, the national
government has been able to speed up
interventions in school buildings identified as
“representative.” The workshop concluded that
this topic required political attention and
commitment from legal and regulatory
authorities.
Conclusion
Community diagnosis is a tool that is
appropriate for developing strategic plans for
socially sustainable seismic risk reduction in
schools. In the case described here, the
prescriptive meeting provided a comprehensive
and participatory framework for risk reduction-
strategy planning and introduced social
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sustainability dimensions into the scoping
process. This approach integrates TDM and
CBDRM benefits and can create knowledge from
previous risk studies that have been developed
separately from the perspectives of different
disciplines. Therefore, a new comprehensive
multi-scale risk perspective has been created.
Aims, objectives, and methodologies of the risk-
reduction strategy are redefined by integrating
previous studies. We have found that social
sustainability factors such as social equity and the
sustainability of a community itself must be taken
into account to achieve these new goals.
To address the situation of high risk and
limited resources, we suggest a prioritizing
methodology, one that is based on indicators or
rankings that take into account factors related to
weaknesses or capabilities at all stages of risk
occurrence: classroom, school, neighborhood,
and city. It is also necessary to analyze physical,
psychological, and social factors that may have
an impact on the student population.
During the course of the workshop,
participants prioritized two sets of schools: those
that could be more useful during emergency-
relief work and those where students faced the
greatest risk. The most highly ranked facilities
were identified through social sustainability
factors such as security and well-being of the
student population, accessibility, income,
presence of basic services, and community
organization. Identifying spatial and territorial
relationships in public school surroundings is
essential to guaranteeing the effectiveness and
efficiency of risk-mitigation strategies.
The regulation and approval processes for
public projects provide critical windows of
opportunity for proposing interventions, mainly
for urgent cases. Specific urban and construction
standards are required for more effective titling of
property, better connectivity among public
spaces, and incremental retrofitting of school
buildings. Such measures could mitigate risk to
the school population by reducing weaknesses
and increasing resilience and capability.
Likewise, political commitment is needed to
exempt emergency projects from the demanding
approval process that other public investment
projects are required to undergo.
This project was an opportunity for
interdisciplinary discussion that led to consensus
on risk management in a participatory manner
involving different areas of knowledge. It also
allowed members of the PUCP academic
community from different departments to attain a
more complete vision of the cross-cutting topic
pertaining to the safety of vulnerable students and
raised the need to continue holding similar
meetings.
The next steps are: 1) to determine a
methodology to analyze the feasibility of the
retrofitting measures to reduce structural fragility
and interventions to increase the resilience and
capacity of the education systems from a multi-
criteria point of view and 2) to develop a
methodology for risk reduction of public schools
based on the prioritization criteria presented in
this article.
Acknowledgements
The workshop described in this article was
partially funded by Common Funds 2014 of the
PUCP Academic Office of Social Responsibility
(DARS), the National Council of Science,
Technology, and Technological Innovation of
Peru (CONCYTEC), and the National Fund for
Scientific and Technological Development
(FONDECYT) within the framework of the 012-
2013–FONDECYT Agreement. We would like to
thank Nicole Peterson for her comments and
review of this article.
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ARTICLE
Achieving one-planet living through transitions in social practice: a case study of Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage
Robert H. W. Boyer Department of Geography & Earth Sciences, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, 9201 University City Boulevard, Charlotte, NC 28223 USA (e-mail: [email protected])
The per capita resource consumption for inhabitants of Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage (DR) is less than ten percent of the average American in most major categories, approximating “one planet” living in a nation that contributes disproportionately to global resource consumption. This article examines DR’s extraordinary energy and resource savings through the lens of social practice theory, which focuses on the meanings, competencies, and materials that individuals combine to form everyday practices. Participant observation and interviews with DR community members reveals how this rural ecovillage achieves remarkable energy and resource savings by transitioning away from the exclusive ownership of capital goods, investing in skills that facilitate the collective management of resources, and eliminating waste by taking advantage of locally available resources. Results suggest that local governments interested in sustainability and climate mitigation should encourage systems of collective resource management rather than maintaining a traditional focus on influencing changes in individual consumption choices. KEYWORDS: social sustainability, social practice theory, ecovillage, intentional communities, one-planet living
Introduction
During the spring of 1992, a small group of
environmentally conscious Stanford University
undergraduates decided to form an “eco-town.” After
graduation, they pooled their resources, developed
plans for a community that reflected their ideals, and
began searching for land. By October of 1997 the six
remaining founders had purchased a 280-acre former
pig farm in rural Scotland County, Missouri.
Eighteen years later, the population of Dancing
Rabbit Ecovillage (DR) has grown by nearly tenfold,
including 46 adults and 9 children.1 The experimental
community, which now includes inhabitants of
diverse ages and family composition, demonstrates
the possibilities and challenges of a lifestyle that
consumes less than 10% of the energy and material
resources of the average American in several major
consumption categories. This level of resource
savings approximates “one-planet” consumption
(BCSD, 1993; Moore & Rees, 2013; Rees &
Wackernagel, 1996), and may therefore serve as an
existing model of an ecologically sustainable
community in a nation that represents less than 4.5%
of global population, but 13.7% of humanity’s eco-
logical footprint (WWF, 2014).2
1 E-mail correspondence with Dancing Rabbit, May 14, 2015. 2 An individual or community living at “one-planet” consumption
levels consumes no more than their fair share of global biocapacity, which is approximately 1.7 global hectares per person
(Moore & Rees, 2013). Calculating the precise per capita
While DR has received abundant media attention
for its inspirational environmental and energy
accomplishments, this ethnographic study highlights
how understanding and deconstructing social
practices—the day-to-day convergence of materials,
meanings, and competencies—at DR is critical to
understanding how “Rabbits” (a local term) survive,
and by several accounts thrive, at uncommonly low
levels of energy and material throughput. 3 As
isolated units of analysis, the physical technologies,
skills, and ambitious environmental goals at DR are
neither novel nor inherently sustainable. Yet, when
the ecovillage is viewed as a site for the production
and integration (or “bundling” in the terminology of
Shove et al., 2012) of social practices like car
sharing, human-excrement composting, renewable
electricity production, and natural building, two
things become clear. First, choice-based models of
environmental change employed implicitly or
explicitly by local governments miss opportunities
for transitioning to more sustainable consumption.
Second, social competencies of interpersonal
ecological footprint of DR Ecovillage is beyond the scope of this article, and even if such data were available both the community’s
ecological footprint and global biocapacity change from year to
year. In this article, therefore, “one-planet” living is used as a symbol, and I have been careful to qualify DR’s achievements as
“approximating” one-planet living. 3 See DR’s media coverage page, which can be accessed at http://www.dancingrabbit.org/about-dancing-rabbit-
ecovillage/press/media-coverage.
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communication and conflict resolution are critical to
sustainable consumption.
The 18-year existence of DR coincides with the
diffusion of local plans and regulations for
sustainable development (Beatley, 1995; Saha &
Paterson, 2008) and climate action (Lutsey &
Sperling, 2008; Wheeler, 2008) at multiple scales in
the United States. Thousands of local officials,
representing hundreds of millions of residents across
the country, have signaled their commitment to
lowering greenhouse-gas emissions by signing the
Mayors Climate Protection Agreement (MCPA, n.d.).
Similarly, more than 1,000 municipalities in the
country have signed on as members of ICLEI-Local
Governments for Sustainability, committing their
jurisdictions to conducting at least a baseline
inventory for sustainable development and/or climate
action. Despite these encouraging trends, progress on
the most substantial environmental issues has at best
inched forward incrementally (Betsill & Bulkeley,
2007; Culotta et al., 2015; Lane, 2015; Wheeler,
2008). Multiple studies indicate that the association
between verbal commitment to climate action and
actual investments that reduce carbon emissions in
the United States is weak or undetectable (Krause,
2011; Sharp et al., 2011; Wang, 2013). In recent
years, state and local governments have even begun
to block or abandon plans for sustainability and
climate action in the face of ideological opposition
(Frick et al., 2015; Hurley & Walker, 2004) and/or
perceived ineffectiveness (Krause et al., 2015).
Sociologist Elizabeth Shove (2010) describes
how climate action policies in the United Kingdom
and the United States have adhered to what she labels
an Attitude-Behavior-Choice (ABC) approach that
assumes improving environmental outcomes is a
matter of modifying individual preferences, and
consequently consumption choices. If only we could
change individuals’ attitudes through information
campaigns and economic incentives—follows the
ABC model—then they would choose more
environmentally benign behaviors, “doing their bit”
to address major environmental challenges like
climate change. This approach is evident in the
popularity of incentive-based energy-efficiency
standards for buildings and neighborhoods (Retzlaff,
2009; Sussman, 2008), Smart Growth programs that
rely principally on financial “carrots” rather than
regulatory “sticks” (Krueger & Gibbs, 2008; Lewis et
al., 2009) and the prominence of “voluntary” policies
for lowering local greenhouse-gas emissions
(Wheeler, 2008: 488).
The ABC approach competes with perspectives
that view reversing the most troubling environmental
and ecosystem trends as an overhaul of entire moral
paradigms (Rees, 1995) and/or socio-technical
regime transition (Rotmans et al., 2001; Voss &
Kemp, 2006). However, these ambitious visions lack
a clear picture about the day-to-day realities that lie
on the other side of a hypothetical socio-technical
transition. In other words, we have relatively few
satisfying examples of what sustainable consumption
looks like in practice. This article takes advantage of
the willing and ongoing experimentation at DR to
sketch a picture of the daily practices associated with
one version of sustainable community. While the
radical socio-material practices at DR may not
transplant directly into mainstream contexts, and DR
community members are far from representative of
individuals in the general public, extreme case
studies like the description that follows “activate
more actors and more basic mechanisms” than case
studies that claim to be representative (Flyvbjerg,
2006: 289). In other words, the DR case study offers
a window into an exceptional context that
demonstrates the multidimensional challenges that
mainstream communities may face if they aspire to
accomplish savings of a similar magnitude. The
example also contributes to existing social practice
theories by offering an in-depth ethnographic account
of sustainable practice.
The following section offers an overview of
social practice theoretical approaches. The article
then provides a background discussion of DR before
diving into a detailed discussion of the community’s
systems of cooperative automobility and human-
excrement reclamation. I argue that neither the
preferences of individual “Rabbits,” nor the strong
community environmental rules, nor the materials
employed can—as isolated units of analysis—explain
the ecovillage’s impressive achievements. Rather,
interviews and participant observation reveal that
active investments in interpersonal-communication
and conflict-resolution skills are critical to lowering
material and energy consumption. In the final
sections, I reflect on implications for policy and
planning outside this niche context.
Sustainability as Transitions in Social Practice
As discussed above, contemporary attempts to
steer communities toward more sustainable
consumption are dominated by a model of change
that focuses primarily on transforming individual
attitudes, and then behavior and choices. Social
practice theory (SPT) has emerged in recent years as
an alternative approach. Drawing heavily from the
separate work of sociologists Anthony Giddens
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(1986) and Pierre Bourdieu (1990), SPT shifts the
ontological focus away from transforming the
preferences of individuals, without devoting attention
entirely to inescapable social structures (Shove &
Walker, 2010). Instead, SPT highlights the
production and reproduction of practices—mundane,
everyday activities like driving a car, skateboarding,
or showering—and the material and symbolic
elements that individual “carriers” of practice
combine to reproduce these practices every day
(Reckwitz, 2002).
Shove et al. (2012) simplify older social practice
models by dividing practices into three elements: 1)
materials like physical artifacts, tools, and
technologies; 2) meanings such as norms, rules,
emotions, and symbols; and 3) competencies
including skills, routines, and background
knowledge. Individual practitioners tend to
recombine these “ingredients” of social practice in
their day-to-day lives (Shove & Walker, 2010), but
individuals can reshape practices by integrating new
materials, meanings, or competencies that circulate
through space. For example, SPT understands the
worldwide diffusion of mechanical air conditioning
as inseparable from conceptions of luxury, health,
and professional attire that have diffused
internationally through specific economic sectors and
industries (Shove et al., 2013). Similarly, the practice
of daily showering has coevolved with perceptions of
propriety, freshness, relaxation, and routines
associated with the modern white-collar workday
(Shove & Walker, 2010). These and other transitions
in practice are difficult to explain by the changing
preferences of individuals or the introduction of
physical technology alone.
Watson (2012) proposes a “systems of practices”
perspective that focuses on the overlapping structures
that normalize and extend particular practices in
favor of others. Automobility, for example, has come
to dominate transportation in the United States and
most of Europe due to decades of decisions that have
extended the practice of driving while recruiting
practitioners from other forms of mobility like
walking and cycling. Automobiles-as-objects have
not simply displaced bicycles, nor do individuals
have an inherent desire to drive, but the practice of
automobility has extended itself through interrelated
changes in infrastructure, land use, safety, and the
skills required to operate a vehicle. Transitioning
away from automobility and its associated
environmental ills, then, requires a series of policy
decisions that reconfigure meanings, competencies,
and materials associated with driving, and encourage
momentum toward alternative modal options. For
example, the city of Groningen in the Netherlands
has increased the number of cyclists through decades
of mutually reinforcing policies that encourage
compact land use, restrict driving, and invest in
cycling infrastructure (Watson, 2012). These policies
have layered upon one another over many years and
can be understood alongside an enduring cultural
milestone of learning to ride a bicycle as a child in
the country. Watson explains that understanding
policy decisions as interventions in practice
“broadens the suite of potential interventions to
promote either recruitment or defection from a
practice.” In other words, policies that address major
issues like energy consumption can engage new
meanings and new skills that are typically overlooked
as outside the realm of public policy. Shove et al.
(2012), for example, discuss how a Japanese
initiative to reduce indoor-energy consumption began
by changing meanings of appropriate work attire that
promoted lighter clothing (and less need for air
conditioning) in the summer and heavier clothing
(and less need for indoor heating) in the winter.
To date, most SPT adherents have employed
historical case studies and secondary data sources to
document changes in social practices. Given the
incremental, typically long duration of transitions in
practice, such an approach is appropriate. However,
SPT stands to benefit from detailed, ethnographic
explorations of the production and reproduction of
social practices. As Tom Hargreaves (2011) explains,
“Social practice theory directs research attention
towards the practical accomplishment or ‘doing’ of
everyday practices. Accordingly, it implies the use of
methodological techniques capable of observing what
actually happens in the performance of practice such
as ethnography, rather than relying solely on the
results of either questionnaire surveys or interviews
as is typically the case within conventional
approaches.” The case study that follows employs an
ethnographic approach to illustrate the details of day-
to-day practices that allow for dramatically lower
consumption at DR. The narrative begins with an
overview of the community and continues into more
specific practices.
Methods
Data collection for this case study began with the
objective of explaining the extraordinary energy and
materials savings at Dancing Rabbit, and narrowed to
an analysis of daily social practices through
participant observation and interviews with
community members. Between the summers of 2010
and 2011, I spent a total of twelve weeks living and
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working at DR, engaged in routines similar to
ecovillage members. In the summer of 2010, I
assisted on a small building project and in 2011
returned as an intern for a privately owned bed-and-
breakfast inn. Like most full-time inhabitants of the
ecovillage, I contributed to community-wide cleaning
duties and attended regular community dinners and
meetings. Although most days were structured by
work obligations, I found time on weekends and off-
hours to conduct semi-structured interviews with
community members. Detailed memos about daily
interactions supplemented my interviews.
Initial interviews (16 total) gauged members’
day-to-day routines and how they differed from
routines prior to taking up residence at DR. Questions
probed 1) the events that led to the decision to move
to the ecovillage; 2) a “typical day” in the
community; 3) a “typical week”; 4) the community’s
role in the larger region; and 5) sources of success
and concern at DR. Questions were designed to elicit
candid stories about resource-consumption decisions
at the ecovillage. Responses often led to lengthy
discussions and follow-up questions that explored the
challenges of cooperative resource management.
Interviews typically lasted an hour and were recorded
and transcribed. Interview participants were selected
to achieve a balance in gender, age, and parental
status, although women outnumbered men in the
sample ten to six, as they constitute a larger
proportion of the community overall. 4 Following
Corbin & Strauss (2007), initial observations were
tested against follow-up interviews, which challenged
the data’s internal consistency. I returned to DR
about once every year for four years for brief visits,
while keeping in touch with members over e-mail
and social media.
The following section presents an overview of
the environmental accomplishments of DR before
describing the daily practices that enable the
community to achieve impressive resource savings,
and ultimately into the importance of social
competencies to achieve these outcomes.
Background: Dancing Rabbit’s Ecological
Covenants
Since its founding in 1997, DR has operated
under six “ecological covenants” that impose
extraordinary restrictions upon inhabitants’
consumption behavior. The covenants (see Table 1)
4 See Appendix A for a breakdown of gender, age, and parental
status of interview subjects. The names and personal details of respondents have been modified to protect the identity of human
research subjects.
change rarely, although the community can amend
them with a consensus vote.5 Members of DR agree
that they will neither use personal motor vehicles nor
keep them on the community’s land; that they will
avoid using fossil fuels for most purposes (cooking
with propane is an exception); that they will follow
organic gardening standards; that all electricity
consumed on-site will be produced by “sustainable”
non-fossil sources or that the community will offset
any electricity it imports from the grid by returning
clean electricity back; that all structural lumber will
be harvested within the bioregion or acquired from
recycled sources; and that they will reclaim all
organic waste (including human excrement) on site.
Table 1 Dancing Rabbit Covenants
Covenant 1 DR members will not use personal motorized vehicles, or store them on DR property.
Covenant 2
At DR, fossil fuels will not be applied to the following uses: powering vehicles, space-heating and -cooling, refrigeration, and heating domestic water.
Covenant 3
All gardening, landscaping, horticulture, silviculture and agriculture conducted on DR property must conform to the standards as set by the Organic Crop Improvement Association (OCIA) for organic procedures and processing. In addition, no petrochemical biocides may be used or stored on DR property for household or other purposes.
Covenant 4
All electricity produced at Dancing Rabbit shall be from sustainable sources. Any electricity imported from off-site shall be balanced by DR exporting enough on site, sustainably generated electricity, to offset the imported electricity.
Covenant 5
No lumber harvested outside of the bioregion, excepting reused and reclaimed lumber, shall be used for construction at DR.
Covenant 6 Waste disposal systems at DR shall reclaim organic and recyclable materials.
5 As a brief example, for thirteen years DR remained proudly
disconnected from an external electricity source (e.g., it was “off
the grid”). In 2010, however, the community amended its covenants to enable a grid connection (see Covenant #4 in Table
1), which allows the community’s solar electricity cooperative to
“borrow” electricity during dark winter months and return surplus electricity to the grid during summer months. The amendment did
not receive unanimous approval as several members felt strongly
that connecting to the grid would contradict a cornerstone of the community’s mission and preclude individuals from closely
monitoring their electricity consumption. These members
articulated their disapproval of the amendment without blocking its passage, a move called “standing aside.” Such a stance is not
considered an impediment to a consensus decision.
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DR members have developed a series of
practices to live within these restrictions and work
toward the community’s mission to “create a society
the size of a small town or village, made up of
individuals and communities of various sizes and
social structures, which allows and encourages its
members to live sustainably.”6 The results of this
experiment are encouraging. By the community’s
own calculations, inhabitants of DR consume less
than 10% of the resources of the average American
resident in categories like vehicles per person (7%),
vehicle miles traveled per person (9%), motor-fuel
use (7%), electricity use (7.5%), natural gas
consumed (8%), water consumed (9%), and still
substantially less than average in categories like
pounds of household waste per person (26%), and
square feet of housing per person (31%).7
As the following sections detail, achieving these
savings—especially in a rural county with no public
transportation—requires a level of skill and
coordination that is remarkable in contemporary
American society. According to the U.S. Census
Bureau, 95.8% of all housing units in the country
have their own “complete” kitchens, 97.5% have a
refrigerator, 97.6% have a stove or cooking range,
78.6% have a washing machine, and 76.6% have a
clothes dryer.8 By contrast, DR meets many basic
services through shared access to a limited number of
appliances. Household kitchens, for example, are the
exception rather than the norm at DR. One
community member described how beginning her
day by brushing her teeth in her own dwelling each
morning was “a luxury.” While individuals live in a
variety of custom-built dwellings—ranging from a
six-bedroom house to small individual cabins—
households typically share cooking, dining, and
gardening space in multiple food cooperatives. The
entire community of 55 people shares two clothes
washing machines that are part of a larger general-
6 The DR mission statement is available at
http://www.dancingrabbit.org/about-dancing-rabbit-ecovillage/
vision/mission-statement. The DR website clarifies that
“sustainably” means, “[i]n such a manner that, within the defined
area, no resources are consumed faster than their natural replenishment, and the enclosed system can continue indefinitely
without degradation of its internal resource base or the standard of
living of the people and the rest of the ecosystem within it, and without contributing to the non-sustainability of ecosystems
outside.” 7 These data, including explanations about calculation methods, can be accessed at http://www.dancingrabbit.org/resource-use-
average-american-vs-dancing-rabbit-2011. 8 Table C-03-AH, American Housing Survey. Available at http://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/ahs/data/2013/national-
summary-report-and-tables---ahs-2013.html.
services cooperative, with zero clothes dryers on site.
Many of these collectively-owned appliances reside
inside the community’s common house which
includes a kitchen, offices, a small library, showers,
sinks, a children’s playroom, and a “great room” used
for social events and meetings. Similarly, the four
automobiles at DR are owned by a vehicle
cooperative that members support by paying a flat
rate proportional to the number of miles they drive.
This per-mile fee covers fuel, maintenance, and
insurance. Electricity in the community is generated
almost exclusively by solar photovoltaic panels and
delivered on a micro-grid maintained by a
community-wide cooperative called Better Energy
for Dancing Rabbit (BEDR). Services like Internet,
landline telephone, health insurance, and human-
excrement recycling (called “humanure”) are all
managed by cooperatives as well.
This type of coordination requires that
individuals commit to deliberate and ongoing skills
development, as almost all inhabitants have migrated
from settings in which consumption decisions occur
at the household or individual scale. Shared
ownership of everyday infrastructure reduces the
individual dollar cost for basic services, but
individuals also “pay” through investments in skills
and routines that appear cumbersome to an
uninitiated observer. These practices are critical for
coping with the conflict that coincides with shared
ownership of resources. After elaborating on two
specific practices below, this article discusses how
transitioning to low-consumption practices involves
changes in meaning, skills, and technologies rather
than attitudes, behaviors, and choices, as is typical at
the municipal scale.
Collective Automobility: From “Individualized
Transport” to “Community Infrastructure”
As discussed above, Rabbits navigate their rural
surroundings with a small fleet of four cooperatively-
owned vehicles: three sedans and a pickup truck. The
DR community is situated two miles from the small
town of Rutledge (population 106) and about thirteen
miles from the county seat of Memphis (population
1,822), but DR’s location offers few convenient
employment opportunities. The nearest metropolitan
center, Iowa City, is 125 miles to the north.
Fortunately, DR members have found ways to subsist
with relatively little cash income. What money they
have, they typically earn through small online
businesses and local enterprises that require minimal
travel. One particularly entrepreneurial member
explained, “I have ten jobs,” including two online-
clothing businesses and multiple small remunerated
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duties inside the community. One couple started the
Milkweed Mercantile Eco Bed ‘n’ Breakfast, where
guests stay and attend workshops ranging from food
canning to straw-bale construction. Two women have
started a regional midwifery business that requires
only intermittent travel outside the ecovillage.
Several members have drawn from their experience
building their own homes to start independent design-
build companies, which also offer temporary work to
other members and residents.9 Other individuals have
founded small web-design and online-marketing
businesses that they operate from inside the
community.
While DR members reduce commuting trips by
earning income onsite, they still travel by automobile
to nearby towns to purchase building supplies,
borrow library books, shop for clothing, access
schooling and medical appointments, see movies,
among other reasons. For these trips, automobiles are
the most practical option. Whereas car use in the
United States is typically an act of individual
discretion, the Dancing Rabbit Vehicle Cooperative
(DRVC) approaches vehicle use as a social act that
begins with the exchange of information about the
timing and destination of each trip. Members of
DRVC can reserve a car at any point during the week
by indicating the departure date, time, destination,
and estimated return time on a clipboard stored in the
common house. Reservations are read aloud at a
weekly meeting called the “WIP” (week-in-preview),
attended by most of the community. The WIP allows
information exchange that facilitates shared trips,
which further reduces vehicle-miles traveled. As one
member named Oren explains,
Often we’ll find out [at the WIP meeting] if
someone is going into town on a certain day.
You might call the hardware store and say I
need, this, this, and this, pay for it over the
phone and have that other person pick it up
when they’re in town, and I’ll do that for
others.
Another member explained how she had recently
relied on a neighbor to return a book to the county’s
public library. In exchange for such services,
9 At DR there is an important distinction between “members” and “residents.” Members are relatively permanent inhabitants. They
can both lease land and build permanent structures it. Members
have also pledged to follow the community’s ecological covenants. To become a member, individuals must live for at least six months
at DR as a “resident,” and complete an interview process before
being accepted as a member. Residents can lease land, but cannot build permanent structures it. Both members and residents can
subscribe to any of the community’s cooperatives.
individuals can share some of the per-mile cost of the
trip or return the favor later. The system appears to
serve the community well. As discussed above, the
average DR member drives 9% the number of miles
and consumes 7% the volume of motor fuel as the
average American motorist. Oren continues,
[W]hat a relief it is to go from having to
drive everywhere [prior to living at DR] to,
ironically enough, being here practically in
the middle of nowhere where you’d think
you have to drive for anything and I get in
my car once every few weeks…And there
are days when [the cars] don’t get used.
Of course, such a system is not immune to
conflict. Decisions about maintenance and insurance
typically made by households as isolated units are
subject to a greater variety of demands when vehicles
are owned cooperatively. During my brief residence
in the community, members of the vehicle
cooperative were struggling to decide whether and
how it should accept rate increases brought on by
inexperienced drivers or members with a poor driving
record. The issue emerged as a teen raised in the
community approached driving age and wished to
join the vehicle cooperative. Was the cooperative
willing to pay for the large and imminent insurance-
rate increases as a consequence of a new teenage
member? Should the teen (or his parents) have to pay
a higher rate, or should all members of the
cooperative absorb the more expensive rate?
Addressing this conflict involved a series of
highly structured meetings. At one session, the
conversation began with an introduction from several
appointed “facilitators”—community members
trained to summarize, steer, and set the ground rules
for discussion. The facilitators of this particular
meeting spent the first twenty minutes “filtering” the
discussion, having spent the previous week speaking
one-on-one with different stakeholders, and began by
admitting that they were themselves “exhausted”
from the process. The meeting touched on a large
number of topics: insurance rates, the neurological
development of teenage drivers, different child-
rearing philosophies, intergenerational justice,
interpersonal tensions, automobile culture, and even
the morality of insurance. Advocates of each
perspective provided passionate and personal pleas.
At one point, a father entrenched strongly at one
extreme of the argument repeated, almost verbatim,
the perspective of an individual with the opposing
opinion. Such “reflection” is a critical element of
nonviolent communication (a technique described
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below), and it ensures that discussants listen and
know they are heard.
The community did not resolve this dilemma by
the end of the ninety-minute meeting, and would
continue to discuss the topic for over a year.10 Yet
even in the midst of an emotional debate, the
gathering concluded with a reflective dialogue about
the meeting itself. Such reflection is a routine fixture
in important meetings at DR, but in a mainstream
municipal hearing such an undertaking might seem
bizarre. Open and emotional self-expression and
reflexivity is discouraged in mainstream public
hearings, which have received criticism for their
intimidating, expert-driven, and unidirectional
dialogue (Halvorsen, 2001; Innes & Booher, 2004;
Lowry et al., 1997).
Managing Excrement: From “Waste Removal” to
“Nutrient Reclamation”
Another extraordinary resource-saving practice
at DR involves the recycling of human excrement
through a network of five-gallon buckets called
“humanure” (human plus manure), or the “humey”
system. In a study of indoor-water consumption at
twelve different sites around the United States,
(Mayer et al., 1999) estimated that the average
individual uses 18.5 gallons of water per day for
flushing toilets. While federal regulations that
mandate more water-efficient toilets have likely
lowered this figure in recent years, DR members have
effectively eliminated the consumption of potable
water for sanitation by composting solid and liquid
excrement. This community-wide system transforms
the acts of urination and defecation from “waste
removal” to “reclamation,” and involves a
substantially different routine than what is customary
in contemporary water closets. A “humey” (the
alternative word for “toilet”) is simply a five-gallon
bucket capped with a typical toilet seat. Like
mainstream toilets, humeys are enclosed in indoor
stalls, often with the bucket hidden inside a wooden
fixture. Alongside the humey bucket is typically
another bucket with wood shavings or sawdust and a
plastic scoop. As one member explained, “After you
make your contribution [emphasis added], you cover
it with sawdust.” The sawdust works to mask the
odor and jumpstart the composting process. Toilet
paper is deposited directly in the humey bucket as
well.
10 The vehicle cooperative ultimately resolved to switch from a
“family” to a “commercial fleet” insurance plan, which is less
sensitive to the age of drivers. Premiums for DRVC increased $100 per year, rather than $8,000, as was projected with the family
plan.
When humey buckets are nearly full, they are
covered with a tight-fitting lid and placed in a
designated outdoor spot to await a weekly pickup.
Every member, resident, and visitor must contribute
labor, or “humey duty,” by collecting the buckets in a
wheelbarrow, depositing the excrement in designated
humanure-compost bins, rinsing the buckets (a
marginal use of potable water), and returning them to
their origin. The whole process takes a few hours to
complete. Depending on the specific humeys to
which individuals subscribe, they complete “humey
duty” as little as once a year and no more than once a
month. The individuals responsible for humey duty in
any given week receive a reminder at the weekly
WIP. Humanure compost is kept separate from food
scraps and other organic compost in the community
because it takes more time to decompose completely.
After two years, however, the compost is safe to
distribute for application on the community’s fruit
trees and ornamental plants. 11 The entire system
helps Rabbits achieve their obligation to reclaim all
organic waste onsite (Covenant #6) and offers an
organic fertilizer that allows the community to
enhance local soils without resorting to synthetic
chemicals (Covenant #3).
Discussion: New Meanings, New Skills, New
Materials
It is clear from observing practices of collective
automobility and excrement reclamation that
accomplishing these resource-saving practices
involves transitions in the “ingredients” of social
practice—in meanings, competencies, and materials.
These changes transcend the traditional ABC model
of change typical in the realm of public policy.
Transition in Meanings
The impressive savings of DRs in vehicle-miles
traveled and volume of fuel consumed cannot be
explained by individuals willingly suppressing their
use of a vehicle or choosing an alternative mode of
transportation. DR’s covenants do not restrict driving
per se; rather, they forbid individually owned
vehicles onsite. As a consequence, DR members have
accepted automobiles as components of a
community-scale transportation system, signifying an
important shift in their meaning. Since all users own
and manage the system, and pay by the mile, it is in
everyone’s best interest to limit total mileage by
11. While properly composted humanure is theoretically as safe as
commercial fertilizer, the community applies it conservatively, avoiding application with food that comes in direct contact with
what people put in their mouths.
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“sharing” trips. One casualty of this transportation
system, however, is the symbolic “freedom of the
road” upheld as a right-of-passage to young
Americans throughout the twentieth century (Jackson
1985). The personal automobile emerged from a
sports-and-leisure niche in the United States (Geels
2005), so a pivot away from these historical roots is
significant, although in parallel with nationwide
decline in enthusiasm about driving (Delbosc 2016).
The DR automobile cooperative also demands that
individuals relinquish some privacy that exclusive car
ownership generally affords. While revealing the
duration and destination of car trips is meant
primarily to improve the efficiency of use, it also
requires a level of transparency uncommon in the
mainstream.
The humanure system is also founded on a
reinterpretation of the meaning of human excrement,
from “waste” that is typically flushed away to a
“contribution” managed and reclaimed for
agricultural purposes. Individuals in developed
countries learn from an early age that they can simply
and permanently separate themselves from their
excrement with the flick of a lever or push of a button
and no shortage of technologies have emerged to
improve the efficiency of a toilet flush. Yet by
inverting the meaning of the act of urination and
defecation, DR undermines the practice of “flushing”
completely.
Transition in Competencies
Individuals also invest time developing
competencies to manage collectively owned
resources and resolve inevitable conflicts. Both car
sharing and excrement reclamation at DR require an
atypical level of scheduling and interpersonal
transparency. These social competencies prove useful
far beyond the vehicle cooperative or the humanure
system, and are worth discussing in some detail.
A surprising portion of day-to-day life at DR is
devoted to maintaining interpersonal relationships.
The schedules of members and residents are filled
with regular “check-ins,” “co-counseling” sessions,
women’s groups, men’s groups, and other meetings
with the express or ancillary purpose of supporting
friends and neighbors emotionally. A “check-in,” for
example, is a formal technique used in the ecovillage
to increase empathy under challenging
circumstances. Different individuals practice check-
ins differently, but one typical version invites people
to verbalize physical, intellectual, emotional, and
spiritual needs (“PIES”), without time restrictions or
interruptions. Some individuals practice check-ins
only as needed, and others schedule regular check-ins
with romantic partners and co-workers. These
practices create space for emotional transparency and
allow community members to isolate interpersonal
disputes from day-to-day tasks integral to community
functioning. One member found such transparency
refreshing when he moved to DR.
If somebody was upset, they didn’t stuff it.
It came out. They’d show it, and it was dealt
with. It was okay to say, “Y’know I
understand that you’re in a hurry or
whatever, but this just really caught me the
wrong way and I’m feeling a little upset
about it, and so, I'm hoping that maybe
you’ll think about that before you do it
again.” It was powerful.
Emotional transparency is enhanced by
adherence to nonviolent communication (NVC), a
technique that most Rabbits train themselves to use
when addressing concerns with others. Perhaps
surprisingly, an individual employing NVC begins by
observing and articulating her own needs, and how a
particular action has affected her feelings. Explains
Rosenberg (2003), “NVC guides us in reframing how
we express ourselves and hear others. Instead of
habitual, automatic response, our words become
conscious responses based firmly on awareness of
what we are perceiving, feeling, and wanting.” One
interviewee explained that NVC was
[R]eally key in terms of getting along with
people in such close proximity and in terms
of, like, dealing with your own [problems]
which you also need to do to get along with
people. It’s not just listening to other people;
it’s also having to listen to yourself in a
deeper way.
A short anecdote illustrates how one member
used NVC to address a violation of her personal
living space. In the summer of 2010, a veteran
member, Shirley, left her home under the temporary
care of a young resident while undergoing medical
treatment. When she returned, she found her self-
built house in disarray. The week prior, a group of
young residents and interns—this author included—
had taken advantage of the empty space for a small
gathering and neglected to clean up the mess.
At the first community meeting after Shirley’s
return, she announced that she was “very saddened”
to arrive home and find empty bottles and dirty
dishes all over her house. She explained that she
“trusted” we would take care in her absence and that
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she expected future visitors to show respect for her
home as if it were their own. Her message was short,
clear, and extremely powerful. Instead of accusing or
blaming, her speech focused on how the event
affected her. We had betrayed her trust and invoked
sadness in her. It was a situation I wanted very much
to remedy, and I worked consciously to respect
individuals’ space in the subsequent weeks. The
member’s choice to express her own emotions invited
the “offenders” an opportunity to rectify the situation
without feeling attacked or damaged.
Transition in Materials
Low-consumption practices at DR also involve
alternative materials, tools, and technologies.
Encouragingly, however, all physical technology is
either readily available for retail purchase or
extracted from DR’s property. Transitions in
meanings and competencies discussed above position
DR members to achieve their environmental goals
without having to import costly new technologies.
For example, Covenant #5 requires use of only
recycled lumber or wood products sourced within the
bioregion. As a consequence, Rabbits have reclaimed
lumber from abandoned barn structures throughout
depopulating northeast Missouri. Members also take
advantage of locally-sourced straw bales (a waste
product of wheat) to insulate their dwellings.
Covenant #4 restricts electricity consumption to
“sustainable” sources, which members interpret as
solar- and wind-generated electricity. In the
community’s first thirteen years, members relied on
multiple individual solar photovoltaic and micro-
wind systems. In recent years, however, DR has
received of state and federal subsidies to establish a
community-wide solar-energy cooperative and
micro-grid, which saves individuals the upfront cost
of energy infrastructure and batteries.
The DRVC has taken advantage of the
community’s solar-energy cooperative to power its
newest vehicle with electricity generated onsite,
while previously DR has deliberately chosen small,
fuel-efficient vehicles to save on the cost and
quantity of fuel consumed. Multiple case studies in
the social practice theory literature (Watson, 2012;
Spotswood et al., 2015) focus upon transitions in
practice that involve the displacement of one
transportation mode (e.g., automobiles) for another
(e.g., bicycles), yet the DR case study shows how a
transition away from the environmental ills of
automobiles is possible without eliminating
automobiles per se. This is an encouraging finding
for communities that have invested for many years in
vehicular infrastructure. Rural communities and those
without the financial capital to install new public
transit infrastructure may still find ways to achieve
climate-action goals by encouraging shared-access
systems that simultaneously lower costs and reduce
road congestion.
The practice of excrement reclamation clearly
employs new materials, including five-gallon
buckets, sawdust, compost piles, and wheelbarrows,
much of which is recycled from construction
initiatives in the ecovillage. Excrement itself is also
reframed as a new type of “material” that can be
applied in a new context and used in lieu of
petrochemical fertilizers imported from far away.
Conclusion
It is perhaps unreasonable to expect urban and
suburban jurisdictions to adopt DR’s exact practices
which have evolved to fit a specific context and
community mission. The ecovillage members unite
ideologically around sustainable living and they
agree to covenants exceptional in the United States.
DR is also a small community in a rural region with
limited land-use regulations or legal constraints on
building design or materials. Yet the DR case study
reveals a blind spot in contemporary sustainable
development and greenhouse gas-reduction efforts
which have both emerged as mainstream
undertakings in recent decades (Lutsey & Sperling,
2008; Saha & Paterson, 2008). Municipalities tend to
initiate the climate action-planning process by
reducing emissions from municipal operations, with
the intention of modeling smart practices to the
community at large (Sussman, 2008; Wheeler, 2008).
Cities and other local and regional governments
invest in fuel-efficient vehicles, increase their
renewable energy portfolios, replace aging
infrastructure, and improve public transportation
options, with the expectation that the private sector
will follow suit. When municipalities use public
policy to extend climate-action efforts beyond their
own operations, they tend to focus on changing
individual attitudes, behaviors, and choices without
challenging systems of exclusive ownership that
render even successful climate action incremental
(Shove 2010).
The DR ecovillage, as viewed through the lens of
social practice theory, reveals the possibility of
incredible environmental and economic savings by 1)
transforming individual and household practices into
collectively managed community systems; 2)
investing in interpersonal communication skills that
help guide collective management processes; and 3)
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taking advantage of readily available, locally sourced
materials that might otherwise be considered “waste.”
Similar practices are not difficult to imagine in
“mainstream” urban settings. Because of a barrage of
new mobile applications, an emerging collaborative
consumption movement is allowing individuals
worldwide to share access to goods and services
without necessarily owning them exclusively
(Botsman & Rogers, 2010; Belk, 2014). Private and
nonprofit initiatives like car sharing (Shaheen et al.,
2009; Shaheen & Cohen, 2013), bicycle sharing
(Shaheen et al., 2010), cohousing (Williams, 2008;
McCamant & Durrett, 2011), and co-working
(Spinuzzi, 2012) allow individuals to access goods
and spaces without the expense or time commitment
of exclusive ownership. Other peer-to-peer
applications like Couchsurfing and Neighborgoods
allow shared access to living spaces and household
goods for free, reducing idle capacity and landfill
waste, respectively (Botsman & Rogers, 2010). 12
Local governments can assist these initiatives by
reforming regulatory barriers and/or encouraging
shared-access services in planning documents.
The DR ecovillage pushes one step beyond
private and nonprofit “collaborative consumption”
initiatives by investing in social skills that allow
individuals to work productively through conflict,
facilitating democratic management of limited
resources. Its members have chosen to live in an
intentional community where shared-access resources
are the rule. The skills necessary to function in such a
setting are bound to increase in importance outside
the ecovillage context as growing urban populations
confront unprecedented environmental and resources
shocks. Skills like NVC have already established a
foothold in other applied social science fields like
public education (Rosenberg, 2003a), criminal justice
(Marlow et al., 2012), and nursing (Nosek, 2012). It
is increasingly common for American municipalities
and public libraries to sponsor home-maintenance
workshops that help homeowners save on electricity
and water bills. The DR case suggests that local
governments may benefit from investing in social
skills like NVC that help residents work productively
through challenging public debates about common
resources. Watson (2012) illustrates that “transitions
in practice” begin when public policy extends certain
practices over others through small, yet mutually
reinforcing, steps. Local governments can begin to
model NVC and facilitated conflict resolution as part
12 For details on Couchsurfing, see http://www.couchsurfing.com and for information on Neighborgoods refer to
http://ww.neighborgoods.net.
of their own decision-making processes, providing a
first step toward low-consumption systems at the
local scale. To the extent that conflicting values and
competing demands are inherent in all sectors of
democratic decision making, DR’s communication
models offer local planners and elected officials tools
to navigate through myriad conflicts including, but
not limited to, social equity, economic development,
public safety, and land use.
Of course, DR’s experiment is not perfect. Some
interpersonal conflicts endure for years despite
earnest efforts to work through them, and every year
some members depart in the face of irresolvable
problems. Like any community, the ecovillage’s
residents cope with emotional fatigue, isolation, and
power imbalances. Over nearly two decades, its
specific practices have evolved as new meanings,
competencies, and materials circulate within a
dynamic population. Likewise, transitions outside the
ecovillage context are unlikely in practice to resolve
issues of resource consumption completely or
permanently. New meanings, competencies, and
materials will continue to challenge or reinforce old
practices. Yet DR illustrates that radically low-
consumption, low-waste living is possible without
abandoning democracy or relying on hyper-
sophisticated (and necessarily undemocratic)
technologies. The potential for sustainable living,
then, resides in human cooperation and empathy,
which can improve with practice.
Acknowledgements
Many thanks to the members and residents of
Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage, especially the unnamed
individuals who took time to sit down for interviews.
Thanks also to Tony Sirna and Ma’ikwe Ludwig,
who have helped with many last-minute inquiries,
and to Ted Stirling, Sara Peters, Alline Anderson, and
Kurt Kessner for hosting me in the community. Three
anonymous reviewers helped shape the manuscript
significantly.
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Appendix A: Interview subjects, gender, age, and parental status
ID# GENDER AGE PARENTAL STATUS
1 Female 33 yes
2 Male 40 yes
3 Male 57 yes
4 Female 26 no
5 Female 41 yes
6 Female 27 no
7 Female 37 yes
8 Male 27 no
9 Female 36 no
10 Female 58 yes
11 Female 26 no
12 Male 61 no
13 Female 55 no
14 Male 35 yes
15 Male 40 no
16 Female 35 yes
Males (n) = 6 Females (n) = 10 Average age = 39.6 years Parents (n) = 8 Non-parents (n) = 8
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ARTICLE
Managing the triple bottom line for sustainability: a case study of Argentine agribusinesses Poonam Arora1, Nicole D. Peterson2, Federico Bert3, and Guillermo Podesta4 1 Department of Management, Manhattan College, 4513 Manhattan College Parkway, Riverdale, NY 10471 (email: [email protected]) 2 Department of Anthropology, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, 9201 University City Boulevard, Charlotte, NC 28223 (email: [email protected]) 3 La Asociación Argentina de Consorcios Regionales de Experimentación Agrícola (AACREA), Sarmiento 1236, Buenos Aires, Argentina (email: [email protected]) 4 Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science/MPO, University of Miami, 4600 Rickenbacker Causeway, Miami, FL 33149 (email: [email protected])
Using surveys and interviews with Argentine agribusiness owners and managers, we examine the relative importance of economic, environmental, and social goals in their planning processes. While in one survey, respondents rate these three objectives as equally important, they also prioritize economic goals over environmental and social targets when assigning points based on the importance of decisions made for various sub-categories. Discussions of specific scenarios illuminate goal importance, but also demonstrate that perceived losses can be valuable for understanding how managers think about sustainability in terms of comparative economic gains, social relationships, and different social and economic outcomes. Subsequent analyses suggest that the three categories of the “triple bottom line” are overly rigid and cannot capture the integration among environmental, economic, and social aspects of sustainability. Given these findings, we suggest future directions for research on losses, time scales, and sustainability.
Keywords: managing for sustainability, Triple Bottom Line, agribusiness, Argentina, social goals
Introduction
Businesses in many parts of the world are
discussing sustainability more than ever,
often to understand what the word means
within different organizational decision-
making contexts. Perhaps the most common
definition measures a firm’s focus and
progress along three trajectories, the so-
called triple bottom line: economic well-
being, environmental quality, and social
justice. The notion of a triple bottom line
became popular in the early 1990s following
publication of the Brundtland Report and
during intervening years an increasing
number of companies have chosen to report
non-financial measures. According to the
KPMG 2013 Survey of Corporate
Responsibility Report (which covers 4,100
companies in 41 countries), the number of
firms voluntarily reporting some non-
economic (environmental and social) metrics
to corporate sustainability rating agencies
increased from approximately 10% to over
90% between 1993 and 2013. This increase
has been fueled in part by greater stakeholder
expectation that reputable businesses are
concerned with sustainability (Sridhar,
2012).
In 2013, almost all of the top 250
corporations on Fortune’s Global 500 list
provided some type of reporting on their
corporate social responsibility (CSR)
activities. Eighty-two percent of them
referred to the Global Reporting Initiative
(GRI) guidelines which emerged from work
carried out by CERES, a Boston-based non-
governmental organization (NGO) focused
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on encouraging the adoption of sustainable
business practices and solutions by economic
entities.1 Though GRI’s original purpose
(dating back to the 1990s), was to provide
mechanisms to determine environmentally
responsible conduct, over the years the
framework and protocols have expanded to
also include social and governance activities
(ESGs). In its latest iteration, the fourth
generation of the guidelines (called G4)
provide reporting principles and standard
disclosures. They also identify the criteria
that an organization should use to prepare its
sustainability report, including evidence of
economic, environmental, employee,
shareholder, and stakeholder impact.2
A major problem, however, is that simply
disclosing about sustainability is often
confused with actually making progress
toward being more sustainable (Milne &
Gray, 2013). While concern with
sustainability is usually accompanied by
measurement across the triple bottom line,
simply reporting ESG outcomes is not
evidence of positive overall impact on
environment and society (Sridhar, 2012).
Additionally, evidence shows that firms tend
to report cherry-picked positive ESG
activities while overlooking aspects of their
operations that have negative impacts and
connotations (Cho et al. 2015).
Nonetheless, a benefit of reporting is that
it has introduced the triple bottom line into
the conversation in boardrooms, drawing
attention to existing environmental and social
consequences of economic decisions and
introducing new levels of transparency and
changes in legislation (Wilburn, 2014).
Greater cooperation among different CSR
rating agencies also suggests a move toward
understanding that economic growth, social
well-being, and environmental quality are
interdependent (Stutz et al. 2012). However,
Norman & McDonald (2004) argue that triple
1 CERES was previously known as the Coalition for Environmentally Responsible Economies. For further
details, see http//www.ceres.org. 2 Refer to www.globalreporting.org.
bottom line accounting focuses to an overly
large degree on the economic values of
sustainability, ignoring a long history in
business of incorporating non-economic
values into decision making.
The question then remains: How do we
incorporate sustainability into business
activities, thereby moving from the realm of
talk into action? In this article, we examine
sustainability as a decision-making process in
which owner-managers make tradeoffs
among different options facing their
organizations. The concept of the triple
bottom line and discussions of tradeoffs
already suggest that sustainability is about
decisions, but this article takes this starting
point and uses real-world situations to probe
what decision making for sustainability
means in practice. We consider four aspects
of decision making and sustainability.
First, decision making for sustainability
usually occurs under conditions of
uncertainty, both in terms of the context
surrounding the decision as well as
associated outcomes and probabilities
(Chichilnisky et al. 2012). Mangers
unavoidably make decisions that affect
environmental, social, or even economic
sustainability without full knowledge of the
context or a clear understanding of causal
relationships between choices and outcomes.
To understand decision making for
sustainability requires that we examine
conditions of uncertainty.3
Second, although decision making is
frequently characterized as involving trade-
offs among the components that comprise the
triple bottom line, there is little discussion
about the relative importance and weighting
assigned to the three areas. Arguably, balance
assumes that the economic, environmental,
and social consequences (and measures) are
equally weighted in terms of significance
(Santiago-Brown et al. 2015). However,
3 All managerial and business decisions involve some form of uncertainty about causal relationships and future outcomes.
Sustainability highlights uncertainties added by environmental
and social relationships, often not made explicit in business planning.
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social justice and environmental quality are
not typically considered at par with economic
outcomes for businesses (Kumar, 2014), and
an unequal weighting of the three elements
effectively changes the definition of
sustainability. As the balance among the
three elements changes, so does the context
surrounding the decision maker and the
organization’s decision process, and
therefore its actual choices (i.e., the relative
weighting of the three elements of
sustainability is crucial and can depend on the
context).
Third, we consider the role of decision
priorities for choices that are made.
Traditional business measures of outcomes
(e.g., profitability) do not necessarily predict
importance, but goals can and do signal likely
choices and therefore outcomes (Krantz &
Kunreuther, 2007). We therefore focus on
how decision makers (typically CEOs of
family-run enterprises) prioritize and make
tradeoffs among economic, environmental,
and social goals given their socioeconomic
and political contexts. Specifically, we
examine whether businesses consider
elements of the triple bottom line as goals for
their decisions and the relative importance
that they give to these objectives.
Finally, we investigate the role of risk
perception in decision making. Do the
assessments of agribusiness managers
incorporate social risks as well as
environmental and economic risks? How do
social considerations in their decision making
relate to environmental and economic
factors? Given the novelty of these questions,
we ask more broadly how we can begin to
characterize the intersection of triple bottom
line accounting and risk perception.
This article considers decision making
for multiple aspects of sustainability under
conditions of uncertainty as a way to expand
ideas about sustainability in business and
decision making under uncertainty. We use a
real-world case in which uncertainties are
very important—agriculture. Agribusinesses
are ideal candidates for studying the triple
bottom line because firms need to balance
land use, technology, and labor to be
economically sustainable. They arguably also
must give credence to all three aspects to
ensure their survival; yet their primary
success measures are economic in nature.
More broadly, agribusinesses are
primary players in determining the continuity
and sustainability of agricultural systems
globally. Our work complements studies on
industrialization (Boehlje & Gray, 2007;
Drabensott, 1995) and globalization
(Pimentel, 2004) in the food and agricultural
sector and the impact of “corporatization” of
agriculture in the form of agribusinesses
(Schertz & Daft, 1994) on sustainability and
maintenance of the triple bottom line.
While clearly not representative of all
businesses, Argentine agribusiness allows us
to examine how such companies perceive the
relative risks across the triple bottom line and
prepare for contingencies under conditions of
climatic and economic uncertainty. In taking
this approach, we find that decision making
for sustainability necessarily involves a more
integrated view than is currently promoted as
a triple bottom line approach. Our research
shows that decision makers often focus on
expected losses, but in a much more nuanced
way than the literature on loss aversion
suggests. We argue that our findings point to
the need for a much more dynamic view of
decision making for sustainability.
Background on the Argentine Pampas
The Argentine Pampas is among the most
naturally fertile regions in the world (Hall et
al. 1992; Calviño & Monzón, 2009).
However, climate fluctuations, technological
innovations, and global and local economic
and political contexts have shaped the
evolution of agricultural systems in the
Pampas (Bert et al. 2011). Specifically, over
80% of the agriculture in the Pampas is rain
fed, mainly due to the high cost of irrigation.
Over the past two decades, climate change
has increased the variability in precipitation
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(Seager, 2010) with extremes becoming more
frequent. As a result, despite its natural
fertility, agricultural outcomes in the region,
in terms of yield and profitability have
become unpredictable (Giorgi, 2002).
There have been significant changes in
land use and the structure of the farming
sector. Due to its higher profitability
compared to other enterprises, cropping-
related activities now encompass over 70%
of the cultivable land, displacing pastures and
native grasslands (Magrín et al. 2005; Pengue,
2005; Viglizzo, 2011). The growing global
demand for grains, together with local
changes in the Argentine economy, cost
savings, and the simplification of
agronomical management, have recently
enhanced the relative profitability of
agriculture in Argentina (Qaim & Traxler,
2005). Approximately 23 million hectares are
currently cropped in the Pampas, nearly 60%
by those who rent the land (MAGP, 2015).
Argentine agriculture is not a subsidized
sector and farmers accordingly take on the
full risks inherent in commodity markets;
their economic incentive is the potential
profit based on actual crop prices (Chaddad
et al. 2009). Since “losses loom larger than
gains” (Tversky & Kahneman, 1991),
agribusinesses should be highly concerned
with overcoming their initial loss (financial
outlays for, say, rent, seeds, and fertilizer)
and stemming additional losses. In other
words, the initial outlay of costs is likely to
determine choices and tradeoffs vis-à-vis the
triple bottom line.
Agriculture in Argentina currently
employs 10% of the country’s workforce
(FAO, 2012). Traditionally, farmers lived on
the land and maintained deep connections
with the local community, hiring from within
and sourcing most of their needs from
proximate sources. Recent structural changes
have altered these relationships through
changes in contract forms, outsourcing, and
external investments (Chaddad et al. 2009).
This raises issues central to social
sustainability, such as local participation,
equity, and social cohesion (Murphy, 2012).
Not only do these conceptual and practical
objectives constitute good social policy, but
research in psychology shows that social-
contextual conditions are central to the
creation of meaningful work, an essential
feature of human well-being and productivity
(Ryan & Deci, 2000).
The economic focus in the Pampas on
export crops is inexorably coupled with
environmental and social changes. Unlike
pastures, which are multi-year investments
present on the land year-round, agricultural
crops are annual choices that may remain for
anywhere from four to eight months. When
land is fallow, it collects water through
rainfall, but does not lose nearly as much
through evaporation as it would through the
evapotranspiration that occurs when plants
are in the ground. Thus, the depth of the water
table has shifted upwards throughout the
region by an estimated two meters over the
course of the last twenty years (Aragón et at.
2011), increasing the probability of
inundation from severe rainfall. Floods and
droughts have varying social and economic
implications. Floods cause greater disruption
of social life and capital, while droughts lead
to greater economic hardship.
The decision processes of agribusinesses
in the Pampas present an interesting real-
world case study because of an apparent
contradiction. On one hand, decision makers
are heads of businesses with profitability
goals for the current cropping cycle and they
have a desire to ensure their immediate
survival by preventing a loss. On the other
hand, their very existence is linked to
maintaining the long-term productivity of the
land and employees, who have the local
knowledge to help maximize each farm plot.
Environmental and social goals are therefore
inexorably intertwined with economic goals,
and essential to the long-term sustainability
of agribusiness in the region. These goals,
however, are neither easy to measure nor
direct in their impact upon the bottom line
(Sridhar, 2012). Agribusinesses thus provide
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an invaluable opportunity to examine the
relative importance of economic,
environmental, and social considerations and
to investigate how they connect to ideas
about risk in agriculture.
Current Research
Our research reported here was
exploratory in nature and we did not seek to
test concrete hypotheses. Our goal instead
was to explore three questions. First, do
agribusiness decision makers in the Pampas
consider economic, environmental, and
social goals? Second, what is the relative
importance they assign to these goals (i.e.,
how do they make tradeoffs)? Finally, what
is the role of risk perception and losses in
their decision processes?
Although we did not have specific
predictions, we did expect to find a greater
focus on economic goals and risks compared
with social goals. Based on prospect theory
(Kahneman & Tversky, 1979), which posits
that decision makers are motivated
differently in the domain of gains versus
losses and likely to show loss aversion having
experienced a loss, we expected minimizing
losses beyond the initial financial outlays to
be a priority. Since the initial investment
would be experienced as a loss prior to a
cropping cycle, our decision makers would
likely prioritize maximizing economic gains
ahead of their social obligations to employees,
family, and community. Since profitability is
connected to land quality, we expected
environmental goals to be important,
although perhaps less so than economic goals,
particularly given the longer time scale for
environmental outcomes. We anticipated that
issues of human capital development, such as
creation of social capital, concern with
education, and maintenance of long-term
employees, to be a lower priority.
We examine the three questions outlined
above in two studies—a field survey with
4 For information about AACREA, refer to http://www.aacrea.org.ar.
decision makers from agribusinesses in the
Pampas and a series of in-depth interviews
with fifteen agribusiness CEOs. The
following sections discuss our methodology
and results, as well as theoretical and policy
implications.
Study 1: A Field Survey
We used the thirteen goals (five
economic, three environmental, four social,
and one personal) relevant to typical Pampas-
based agribusiness or farm development
(Arora et al. 2015) as the starting point of our
analysis. Although we collected data on
importance ratings for all objectives (see
Arora et al, 2015), we only report results for
the twelve goals (listed in Table 1) that we
deem to be relevant to the triple bottom line.
The personal goal of simplifying life,
although it can be thought of as a social
objective, maps on to a different factor and
hence we do not consider it here. Participants
also made tradeoffs across six pairs of goals
(Table 2), two each for economic vs.
environmental goals, economic vs. social
goals, and environmental vs. social goals.
Our first study surveyed ninety
Argentine agricultural decision makers
regarding their business goals. Participants
were attendees at one of a series of
workshops hosted by the Asociación
Argentina de Consorcios Regionales de
Experimentación Agrícola (AACREA), a
non-profit farmers association (the largest in
Argentina) that supports farm efforts through
dissemination of information and
technology. 4 Their membership includes
medium to large farms and agribusinesses
(smaller farms tend not to be sustainable in
the Argentine Pampas—see Bert, 2011 for a
review) that are involved in growing crops,
dairy-related activities, ranching for beef, or
some combination of these three activities.
Thus, though all participants were members
of the same organization (although with some
selection bias), we contend that the inherent
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Table 1 Mean, Standard Deviations, and 95% Confidence Interval for Participant Self-reports of Importance of Goals in Service of the Triple Bottom Line in Study 1 (N = 64 participants)
Goal Mean Standard Deviation
95% Confidence Interval
Lower Bound (M-2SD)
Upper Bound (M+2SD)
Economic Goal Meet or exceed profit objectives 3.30 0.683 1.93 4.67 Maximize productivity 3.28 0.723 1.83 4.73 Manage yield variability 3.19 0.664 1.86 4.52 Expand farm/grow agribusiness 3.08 0.762 1.56 4.60 Manage price obtained for crop 2.75 0.836 1.08 4.42 Average economic goal 3.12 0.435 2.25 3.99 Social Goal Fulfill immediate responsibility to
others 3.66 0.511 2.64 4.68
Create a learning organization 3.45 0.641 2.17 4.73 Create local social capital 2.97 0.755 1.46 4.48 Attain status 2.91 0.811 1.29 4.43 Average Social Goal 3.25 0.477 2.30 4.20 Environmental Goal Preserve land quality 3.50 0.667 2.17 4.83 Ensure future viability of
farm/business 3.44 0.794 1.85 5.03
Avoid environmental damage 3.34 0.739 1.86 4.82 Average Environmental Goal 3.43 0.619 2.19 4.67
Note: Ratings are assigned on a 4-point scale where 1 = not at all important and 4 = very important.
Table 2 Points Assigned Out of 100 Where Number of Points Reflects Relative Importance of Each Goal in Six-Goal Pairs Used to Test Tradeoffs Between Goals in Study 1 (N = 64 participants)
Pair First Goal Type &
Goal in Pair
Average Points
Assigned out of 100
Second Goal Type & Goal in Pair
Average Points
Assigned out of 100
Paired Sample T-
test
1 Economic: Meet or exceed profitability goals
56.09 Environmental: Maintain productivity of land
43.91 t = 3.22 p = 0.002
2 Economic: Expand farm operations
56.88
Environmental: Preserve and maintain land for future generations
43.13 t = 2.57 p = 0.013
3 Economic: Meet or exceed profitability goals
56.48 Social: Create social capital in community
43.52 t = 4.11 p < 0.001
4 Economic: Meet or exceed profitability goals
66.87 Social: Meet obligations to employees and family
33.13 t = 6.99 p < 0.001
5
Environmental: Preserve and maintain land for future generations
57.27 Social: Create social capital in community
42.73 t = 3.46 p < 0.001
6 Environmental: Maintain productivity of land
62.07 Social: Meet obligations to employees and family
37.93 T = 8.07 P < 0.001
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diversity of the membership makes the
results credible. Participants were either
provided a link to an electronic version of the
survey or given a paper copy, as per their
preference. Both options allowed for
anonymity.
Sixty-four participants returned surveys
that were sufficiently complete for our
analysis. To best capture underlying goals
that influence decisions, we targeted the main
decision maker, the owner or a CEO-manager.
In addition, 60% of the total land in the
Pampas is farmed on a rental basis, so our
participants included those who own, rent, or
both own and rent the land used in their
agribusiness. Typically, crops are grown on
rented land while owned land is used for
multiple activities, such as growing crops,
maintaining pasture for dairy, and beef
ranching. Specifically, respondents who
rented over 50% of their land grew crops on
74.7% of it, while those who owned over
50% grew crops on only 41.2% [t(45) = 2.373,
p = 0.022]. This pattern is typical of the
Argentine pampas (MAGP, 2015). There
were no other statistical differences based on
tenure (rental vs. ownership) status of land.
We asked respondents to consider the
main agricultural decisions that they had
made during the most recent cropping cycle
(e.g., whether to rent additional land, how to
allocate land use mix, and what crops to
grow) and to rate the importance of all goals
on a scale of 1 to 4 (where 1 = not important
at all or not considered in decisions and 4 =
extremely important or always considered in
decisions). Thus respondents focused on the
critical decisions that ensure the
sustainability of their agribusiness, requiring
them to balance all three areas of the bottom
line—economic prosperity, environmental
well-being of the land, and social capital and
learning within their organizations.
Participants then divided 100 points between
two sets of goals such that the points assigned
to each reflected the relative importance of
that goal in their decision process, a
methodology shown to have validity (Arora
et al. 2012).
Importance Ratings
As a starting point, we calculated the
mean (M), median, and standard deviations
(SD) for the importance ratings provided by
the participants for each of the twelve
relevant goals included in the survey. As
Table 1 shows, the overall ranges, means, and
standard deviations did not vary significantly
across goals. We tested this finding by
calculating the 95% confidence interval (CI)
for each goal rating as the M ± 2 x SD for
each goal. All goal means fall within the
ranges calculated for all other goals, so that
all importance ratings are statistically similar.
Table 1 also provides the 95% CI for each
goal. Since ratings were on a 4-point scale,
and all goal ratings were above 2, all were
rated as important to very important in the
decision process.
To further test this uniform rating of
importance across the three categories of the
triple bottom line, we averaged the
importance ratings across the four economic
goals, three environmental goals, and four
social goals to create average scores for each
criterion. The average importance scores are
3.12 (SD = 0.43) for economic goals, 3.25
(SD = 0.48) for social goals, and 3.43 (SD =
0.62) for environmental goals. All three
average importance scores fall within ±2 SD
of each other, or within the 95% CI,
suggesting that their relative importance to
the participants is not significantly different.
Respondents self-reported that they treat all
three aspects of the triple bottom line equally
in their decision processes.
Tradeoffs Among Goals
We were interested in exploring how the
importance ratings translated into decision-
maker choices when tradeoffs were required.
Respondents assigned points to each goal in
the six pairs shown in Table 2, out of 100
total points. Table 2 shows the average
number of points assigned to each goal type
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vis-à-vis the other goal type as well as the
results of a paired-sample t-test for each pair
of goals. The points assigned reflect the
relative importance of each goal in decision
processes. We created an average point score
for economic goals when paired against
environmental goals by considering the two
pairs that compare economic and
environmental goals. We calculated similar
point scores for all three combinations—
economic vs. environmental, economic vs.
social, and environmental vs. social goals.
This allowed us to conduct a paired-sample t-
test for each set of averaged point scores.
In general, and as is seen in trends with
individual goal pairs, more points were
assigned to economic goals [M = 56.48, SD
= 12.63) when paired with environmental
goals (M = 43.52, SD = 12.63, t(63)= 4.11, p
< 0.001), and a similar pattern was observed
for points assigned to economic goals (M =
62.07, SD = 11.97) when paired with social
goals (M = 37.93, SD = 11.97, t(63 )= 8.07, p
< 0.001]. Thus, economic goals, which serve
the financial bottom line, appear to be the
main priority for the decision makers. We
also measured environmental goals against
social goals to be able to conduct a complete
three-way comparison. Average points
assigned to environmental goals (M = 60.74,
SD = 15.59), compared with those assigned
to social goals (M = 39.26, SD = 15.59), were
significantly higher [t(63) = 5.51, p < 0.001].
If all goals are equally important, as
suggested by the explicit importance ratings
for each goal in Study 1 (see Table 1), then
points assigned to each goal in a pair should
be closer to a 50–50 point split. A statistical
difference in points assigned suggests that
importance ratings may be more like
aspirations, or even “cheap talk,” while
actual choices may be made based on a
relative ranking: the three aspects of the triple
bottom line are likely not implicitly valued
identically. Specifically, economic goals
clearly are considered more important than
the other two categories, and environmental
goals are considered more important than
social goals. A hierarchy of importance
emerges: economic goals, followed by
environmental goals, and finally social goals.
Since goals serve outcomes (Kruglanski &
Kopetz, 2009), there is likely a similar
hierarchy in outcomes: economic
sustainability is considered most important,
followed by environmental sustainability,
and in third place, social sustainability (see
also Santiago-Brown et al. 2012).
Agribusinesses, however, are arguably more
reliant that other enterprises on
environmental and social sustainability to
ensure economic sustainability. Thus, in
Study 2, through qualitative interviews, we
sought to understand the process by which
decision makers prioritize the three
categories of the triple bottom line, and to
explore how the explicit assignment of equal
importance to all goals from the survey
contrasted with the implicit hierarchy across
the three categories revealed by the forced
assignment of points.
Study 2: In-depth Interviews Our second study consisted of in-person
interviews with the CEOs of fifteen
agribusinesses in the Argentine Pampas.
Specifically, we wanted to determine if these
individuals actually considered all three
categories of the triple bottom line during the
decision process and, if so, whether they also
followed the hierarchy observed in Study 1.
We wanted to avoid inadvertently priming
our respondents to consider all three
categories, so that we could see which
categories of goals emerged implicitly, and
their natural ranking in the decision process.
Therefore, we only asked open-ended
questions about the main factors that
mattered to interviewees during their
planning process.
Our respondents were all male (typical
and therefore representative of the region),
and each was the main decision maker (CEO)
of a family owned Argentine agribusiness
that employed between two and twenty
people with the specific number associated
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with the size of their specific land holdings.
Net worth varied between US$20–200
million. All but two interviewees were
members of AACREA, and all of them
volunteered their time.
We conducted interviews in Spanish or
English depending upon the respondent’s
preference and all authors of this article are
either fluent in or have a working knowledge
of both languages. Meetings were held at a
location chosen by the respondent, such as
their office, home, or a restaurant, in various
towns in the Pampas, or at the offices of
AACREA in Buenos Aires. We recorded all
interviews with the consent of the
respondents and we gave them as much time
as they wanted for each response to learn
about their underlying motivations without
any external priming or elicitation. If, in a
response, an interviewee did not mention a
specific category of goals (economic,
environmental, or social), we asked him to
clarify his answer. We encouraged
respondents who were very succinct in their
initial responses to elaborate as an open-
ended follow-up question. Initial questions
were often followed with additional
clarifying or probing questions. The
interviews averaged 65 minutes, ranging
from 46 minutes to 89 minutes.
Interview questions were open-ended
and covered the following topics:
1. Main factors and goals in the planning
process (description, ranking, and
comparison with neighbors).
2. Information regularly tracked pertaining
to major decisions (e.g., prices, rainfall,
groundwater, crop selection).
3. Understanding of the environmental
consequences of land use and crop
selection strategies on groundwater
available, including main sources of
water for crops.
4. Concern about floods versus droughts.
5. Perceived changes in water availability
over the past decade.
6. Changes in operations or decisions based
on inputs about economic, environ-
mental, or social factors.
Land use, which is often economically
driven, affects groundwater availability. We
therefore focus on the understanding of water
availability and impact of human actions on
land use and water availability.
Four coders initially listened to the
recorded interviews and identified general
themes. They then discussed these themes to
identify main trends, after which the same
group conducted a second round of coding to
tabulate responses to specific questions to
better analyze them. There was general
agreement among the coders on the
tabulation of responses.
We wanted to understand our
respondents’ criteria for land-use plans,
which would in turn determine their
economic profitability for the current year,
environmental outcomes such as ground
water levels for the next year, and social
outcomes such as continued employment.
We therefore asked them to describe and
prioritize these factors. All interviewees
mentioned economics (including commodity
prices, soybean demand, global economic
concerns, and foreign exchange issues) as
key considerations, and all but two
respondents mentioned inter-annual crop
rotation to maintain environmental quality.
Other considerations included political
context (seven mentions), crop yields (seven
mentions), soil quality (five mentions),
climate (five mentions), and social
considerations (five mentions).
Six interviewees listed economic factors
as the primary consideration, while another
six ranked yields in first place. However,
since yields determine how much crop can be
sold, and thus overall profits for that year, we
combined profits and yields to create a
category of economic concerns. We
separated yields from soil quality, which
would be another determinant of how well
the crops grow, but is clearly an environmen-
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Table 3 Total Number of Unprompted Mentions and Rankings for Triple Bottom Line Categories by Interviewees in Study 2 (N = 15 Interviewees)
Ranking provided by interviewee*
Economic concerns (e.g. prices, costs,
yields, consumption)
Environmental Concerns (e.g. inter-annual crop rotation,
soil quality)
Social & Human Concerns (e.g., quality of life,
local community)
Other Factors (e.g. political
climate)
1 12 5 0 1
2 4 7 2 2
3 3 5 2 2
4 0 1 1 2
Total Mentions* 23 21 5 7 *Note: Some factors were ranked at similar levels. Also, some mentions raised during the interview are included above, but were not ranked.
tal concern and was identified separately by
the interviewees. We combined soil quality,
climate issues, and crop rotation to create the
category of environmental concerns. Table 3
shows both the number of mentions by triple
bottom line category, and the number of
times each category was ranked in first place.
Respondents mentioned economic and
environmental concerns 23 and 21 times
respectively, suggesting that they view both
as equally important. Concerns for
employees and other stakeholders were
mentioned only three times, while other
factors like the political situation were
mentioned seven times. These results
replicate findings from our first study (see
above), namely that when interviewees are
asked to discuss goals, they mention
economic, environmental, and social ones in
that particular order.
To test perceived differences in
importance, we asked respondents to rank the
factors that they listed. As Table 3
demonstrates, economic concerns are ranked
in first place twelve times, while
environmental concerns are given that status
only five times. Interviewees never ranked
social factors first, but political factors are
listed once. Thus, when it comes to rankings,
we duplicate the tradeoffs observed in the
first study among the categories of the triple
bottom line—economic concerns come first,
followed by environmental concerns, with
social concerns in last position.
As a final step, we explored how triple
bottom line considerations might affect
decisions in a real-world scenario. We asked
participants how they would respond to
drought and flood, to get a better sense of the
economic, environmental, and social impacts
of these events. We presented our
respondents with a scenario requiring them to
choose between buying insurance that
protects against floods versus drought. They
could only choose to cover one potential risk,
thus revealing their greater concern. As
shown in Figure 1, ten of the fifteen
interviewees chose drought insurance over
flood coverage. Socially, floods disrupt life
when standing water inhibits the movement
of people, perhaps more so than droughts.
Economically, however, participants view
floods as having a lower potential for causing
a total loss, since the higher level of water
makes otherwise dry land productive,
providing sufficient harvest to break even, or,
in some years, make a small profit.
Participants perceive droughts, in contrast, as
leading to a full economic loss as land ceases
to be productive, leaving no feasible path to
break even or to achieve profitability. Five
respondents discussed the potential of losing
land to floodwaters, though only two were
sufficiently worried to select flood insurance.
Several of the interviewees who selected
the hypothetical drought insurance
mentioned their fear that with drought, “one
loses everything, and with flood, at least in
the high areas I can recuperate.” Another
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Figure 1 Insurance Choice, Perceptions of Risk and Loss, and Changes in Frequency for Floods and Droughts by Interviewees in Study 2
respondent stated that he would “Always
[buy] drought [insurance], because in floods
there is loss from flooded land, but there is
better yield in the higher lands from
additional water. In a drought, there is
nothing. There is no yield and the animals
suffer. It’s just bad.” While four respondents
mentioned total loss from drought, only one
highlighted total loss from flood and felt it
was a bigger economic danger. When asked
whether floods or droughts had increased in
frequency over the past two decades, six
answered “floods” while another six said
“droughts.” We asked this question to
ascertain whether our interviewees were
aware of the increasing level of groundwater,
which has the potential to increase the
probability of flooding and hence the
likelihood of small but more frequent losses.
Three were not sure and chose not to respond.
What is not evident from the above
responses, however, is the underlying
motivation for avoiding economic losses
from droughts—is it simply a concern with
economic sustainability, or are other factors
involved? We asked our respondents to
elaborate what occurred during droughts. The
most common reply referred to the total
suffering inflicted upon all in a drought—
they expressed concern about their inability
to take care of their employees, families, or
even animals. Although the explicitly stated
reason here is economic in nature, the
prevention of a monetary loss, preliminary
evidence suggests that implicit social
concerns underlie that economic focus.
The respondents did not just compare
losses between drought and flood, but also
engaged in social comparison and concern
with their own expectations to define a loss.
One interviewee discussed loss in terms of
not gaining as much as others: “I would
prefer if everyone gained…not that I gain and
another loses…” Another respondent
described loss in terms of not getting
expected results, particularly in comparison
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
ControllableRisk
Fear of TotalLoss
IncreasingFrequency
InsuranceType
Flood
Drought
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to others, and the fear this created: “That I
lost what I expected one year, I see that from
this perspective, that is the loss I have even if
I made money”. Thus the perception of loss
or potential loss is perhaps more important
than the actual amount of loss itself. Here too,
the underlying reason for this concern is the
inability to meet obligations for family and
employees. Concern with economic loss
appears linked to the consequences of that
loss on other variables, particularly social
ones. This corresponds to much of the work
in psychology on decision making under risk
(e.g., prospect theory) and the role of
emotions in driving priorities and tradeoffs
when making choices (Lowenstein et al.
2001).
Conclusion
Although we find that decision makers in
Argentine agribusinesses assign similar
importance ratings to economic,
environmental, and social goals, when asked
to reflect on the relative importance in a set
of tradeoffs, they do not treat the various
dimensions of sustainability in equal terms.
We expected economic concerns to dominate
environmental and social considerations
mainly because money spent at start of the
cropping cycle on agricultural inputs such as
seeds, is thought of as a loss to be recouped,
and losses, psychologically, loom “larger.”
We see this in our first study, where despite
explicit statements of equal consideration of
all three goals, the points assigned do vary by
category. Similarly, in the second study,
although economic and environmental
factors are mentioned with equal frequency,
economic considerations are consistently
ranked higher. However, probing deeper
through interviews and scenarios reveals that
the economic focus is often motivated by a
concern for fulfilling social obligations to
family and employees, as well as doing well
in social comparisons.
In our interviews that informed the
second study, we found that the risk of
drought narratives reveals a dominant loss
frame, perhaps because of the initial outlay of
funds, making the potential for loss a key
decision parameter. It is further the case that
economic, environmental, and social
sustainability are framed in terms of losses,
often of total versus partial impairment, that
affect how decisions and trade-offs are
understood. While assessing potential losses
through measurement may be challenging,
our respondents found ways to communicate
their loss perceptions in ways that complicate
a separation of economy, environment, and
society. Losses for them are relational and
relative, not absolute, and include animals
and neighbors, as well as social status. Others
have found that relative positioning is
important for loss aversion (Gill & Prowse,
2012), though our study suggests that it is not
just about competition, but may even be
about social standing and self-concept (e.g.,
being someone who fulfills obligations).
Understanding decisions may depend on loss
perceptions, which in turn may be more
difficult to quantify due to the social
implications of losses.
We also find business owners are
concerned about losing local knowledge and
livelihoods, though these appear to be of
lower importance. Perhaps the importance
ratings reflect an aspiration to value equally
all goal types, or are simply social impression
management, and therefore “cheap talk.”
Brown and colleagues (2009) argue that the
accounting focus of “the triple bottom line”
prioritizes measurements usually unavailable
for environmental or social aspects,
providing no easy way to incorporate them
into planning. It is as if, because the social
elements are not the measured reasons, they
are also not stated as top-of-mind, but are not
entirely missing either. Perhaps this is an area
for future research and, drawing on work in
behavioral economics, possible opportunities
for policy-based “nudges” for increasing
social responsibility.
Our research suggests that Argentine
agribusiness owners consider economic,
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environmental, and social factors in their
decision making, though these are not easily
separable, as when economic outcomes are
desired for social reasons. Other research
suggests that some indicators, like aesthetics
or community health, may be linked to
economic, environmental, and social
concerns at the same time (Santiago-Brown
et al. 2015). In our study, examining ideas
about losses helps clarify these relationships
by highlighting the perceived relative nature
of losses (to past or expected outcomes of
selves or others) and the importance of
meeting obligations for ideas about loss
across economic and environmental
considerations.
These results challenge the idea of a
triple bottom line as a set of separate issues—
Argentine agribusiness owners clearly see
them as integrated. Talking about losses
provides a sense of how these might be
integrated, but also suggest next steps for this
research. First, the focus on loss as a
dominant frame in the decision-making
process may highlight a deeper psychological
variable. It may not be the amount of the loss
that matters, but its impact on the decision
maker and others, and its degree of
controllability. Thus, even as floods become
more likely, and multiple years of floods
might result in greater losses than those
caused by a drought, decision makers may be
focusing on droughts as a cause for greater
concern because they perceive the
accompanying circumstances as beyond their
influence and droughts leave them unable to
meet immediate social obligations.
Understanding how loss is perceived, both
economically and psychologically, becomes
an important next step.
A second research direction is to
empirically test whether the immediate
economic focus is indeed supported by a
second order of logic that includes
environmental and social concerns. The
open-ended responses provide some
preliminary evidence, but subsequent
research is necessary. Understanding the
decision process both behaviorally and
motivationally will allow us to grasp more
fully how to use the triple bottom line as a
tool for creating sustainable organizations
and, eventually, a sustainable society.
Third, the impact of the temporal scale of
the decisions and quantifiable nature of the
outcomes needs to be clearly delineated.
When approaching a decision, temporal
framing influences the options evaluated and
strategies pursued. Asked to consider their
decision cycle, our participants focused on an
annual timeframe since that is the average
length for agribusiness decisions, and also the
average period for relatively quantifiable
economic outcomes. Environmental and
social outcomes and consequences are not
only harder to quantify and measure, they
frequently lag behind the annual economic
cycle (Boström, 2012). This begs the
question of whether underlying motivations,
such as concern with fulfilling social
obligations, would manifest themselves
explicitly if the decision timeframe were
longer—say five to ten years. The importance
of social elements for decision making also
highlights the continuing challenge to
measure, calculate, and assess the triple
bottom line in a more integrated manner
(Norman & McDonald, 2004).
In conclusion, sustainability needs to
encompass all three aspects: economic,
environmental, and social. Although there
appears to be a hierarchy in descriptions of
the decision process, discussions of loss bring
elements together in new and provocative
ways. Understanding the multi-faceted
manifestations of sustainability that may not
be sufficiently captured or resolved by a
simple tripartite definition is a vital next step.
This research illustrates that decision makers
already view the various dimensions as more
integrated than the conventional demarcation
suggests. There are, however, many
challenges in how we handle the integrated
considerations. Moreover, if the final choice,
due to metrics or timescales, places one
dimension above others, then the value
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derived from an integrated approach is
diminished. Perhaps the perception of losses
gives us a window into how the triple bottom
line and other contextual variables are
currently integrated by agribusiness owners
and others.
The interdependencies among
environmental, economic, and social goals
has implications for how agriculturalists and
others might envision and pursue
sustainability at various scales for the
creation of agricultural sustainability, or
sustainability more broadly. Although
sustainability is best conceptualized at the
level of the collective (be it organizations or
communities), decision makers are
frequently individuals making choices that
have interdependent consequences. Here,
psychological motivations that govern how
interdependencies are incorporated within an
individual choice process affect the creation
of sustainable agribusinesses in particular.
This lesson likely applies to a variety of
businesses, balancing their own sets of
related variables. Understanding business
decisions regarding sustainability requires a
focus on how goals are understood within
specific contexts of uncertainties, potential
losses, and obligations.
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ARTICLE
The social lab classroom: wrestling with—and learning from—
sustainability challenges
Danielle Lake, Hannah Fernando, & Dana Eardley Liberal Studies Department, Grand Valley State University, 241 Lake Ontario Hall, Allendale, MI 49401 USA (email: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected])
Unlike the traditional disciplinary approach to research and problem-solving still common in higher education, this article explicates and recommends an interdisciplinary, holistic pedagogical approach that takes seriously the interconnectedness of our wicked social sustainability challenges (e.g., poverty, global climate change, food access, among others). We argue that educators can better prepare students to tackle such wicked problems by requiring they engage with locally based problems connected to large-scale systemic challenges. By discussing the design and outcomes of the course “Wicked Problems of Sustainability” from both the students’ and instructor’s perspectives, we seek to extend and enhance effective pedagogical strategies. As a laboratory for sustainability education and innovation we have developed a transdisciplinary, community-engaged, upper-division undergraduate course that engages students in participatory research on the inextricably linked dimensions of social sustainability. Collaborating with community partners to work across networks, disciplines, and institutions, students have the opportunity to ameliorate real problems in the local community. In doing so, the course confronts students and the instructor with a series of robust challenges from intensive collaborations, to logistical and time-management dilemmas, to real-world execution issues. This article details the obstacles associated with messy inquiry, participatory research, and community engagement and provides recommendations for overcoming them.
KEYWORDS: social sustainability, education, wicked problems, pedagogy, innovation, community
Introduction
Efforts at increasing our social sustainability
(SS)—at establishing systems, products, and services
designed to better the overall health and well-being of
all community members for the long-term—are
frequently stymied by the “wicked” nature of our
collective problems. For instance, poverty, climate
change, and food insecurity, as wicked social phe-
nomena, are dynamically complex, interdependent,
high-stakes dilemmas with no simple or evident
definition (let alone any simple or obvious solution).
These problems evolve with high levels of uncertainty
in situations where both action and inaction carry
serious and long-term consequences (Rittel & Webber,
1973; Salwasser, 2004; Brown & Lambert, 2013). The
need to act and act now must be grounded in a general
stance of epistemic humility and openness, a
willingness to return and reconsider, revise, and redo.
According to SS scholars, when addressing such
challenges we must be cognizant of how our actions
affect issues of justice and equity, infrastructure,
governance, and capital (Cuthill, 2010). For instance,
justice requires that we develop infrastructure and
employ capital so as to meet the basic needs of a
community. We should similarly govern so as to
ensure access, opportunity and capacity, health and
security, diversity and inclusion, as well as overall
well-being (Boström, 2012); and we should do so in
an inclusive manner across generations (Dujon et al.
2013). Yet our dominant educational practices in the
United States (focused on linear, disciplinary
progression) and common abstract pedagogical
strategies (focused on narrow problem solving) fail to
prepare students with the tools to collaboratively and
iteratively act on wicked problems (WP). Therefore, it
is imperative that educators do more to empower
students to become effective “change agents”
(Svanstrom et al. 2008).
With these concerns and commitments in mind,
this article describes lessons learned from a specific
undergraduate course entitled “Wicked Problems of
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Sustainability.” As a transdisciplinary, community-
engaged, upper-division undergraduate course at
Grand Valley State University, this course focuses on
fostering collaboration, integration, and problem-
solving by bringing interdisciplinary teams of students
together with community partners seeking to tackle
local sustainability problems.1 Topics in the course
range from WPs to design thinking, environmental
justice, food systems, policy, and citizen science (Lake
& Fauvel, 2015). Students study local SS challenges,
thus far having addressed issues of food insecurity and
urban farming in the inner city, sustainable funding for
local nonprofits, K–12 student-lunch policies,
sustainability education programs, local farmers’
markets, along with issues of food waste and access,
among a host of other projects.
The course was offered for the first time in the fall
of 2013, again the subsequent semester, and most
recently in the winter of 2015 (undergoing three
iterations and substantial revisions). Paralleling the
evolving nature of the course described, this article
evolved through deep and sustained dialogue among
the teaching apprentice (and a graduate of the
inaugural course), an alumna of the course’s most
recent iteration, and the designer and instructor. The
struggles emerging from each version of the course
confirmed both the need and value of working directly
with students to iteratively and collaboratively revise
its various dimensions. Through our experiences
researching, designing, teaching, taking, and assisting
in “Wicked Problems of Sustainability,” we address
the following two questions: How can we better tackle
SS challenges within undergraduate courses? What
pedagogical methods can help students respond to
interdependent, high-stakes systemic problems? In
answering these questions we show how the strategies
emerging from our collective experiences align with
and extend sustainability teaching practices
recommended in the literature. We ultimately
conclude that courses designed to address our social
sustainability problems can and must do more to foster
epistemic humility, “creative confidence” (Kelley &
Kelley, 2013), and “open-minded advocacy” (Shrader-
Frechette, 2002).
We begin by laying out the methods used to arrive
at our recommendations and then briefly describe the
nature and scale of wicked problems. We then
1 Grand Valley State University (GVSU) is a public university
committed to combining the ideals of liberal education with
practical, professional learning. Situated in the western part of Michigan, the main campus is located just outside of the Grand
Rapids metropolitan area in a rural farming community. Across its
summarize the underlying framework supporting the
course, its learning objectives, and the assignment and
assessment strategies found to be most valuable (for a
full list of assessments see Table 2). In place of an
exhaustive chronological description of course
content, we next highlight the value of the key
pedagogical strategies employed, specifically
detailing the importance of a problem-framing and
reframing process, the necessity for revision and
iteration, and the importance of asking students to
disseminate their work in the real world. Following
these recommendations, we candidly discuss the
obstacles involved in such a pedagogy and its potential
to contribute to tipping points in local sustainability
efforts. Finally, we offer possible measures for judging
the “success” of such courses. By providing a flexible
framework, a set of tools, and a diverse set of
perspectives on those tools, we ultimately hope to help
instructors and their students collaboratively tackle SS
challenges within their own fields and communities.
Methods
As a case study, this article analyzes the course
“Wicked Problems of Sustainability” using a holistic,
single-case design and a wicked-problems framework
(Yin, 2012; Lake et al., 2015). The authors—the
designer of the course, the teaching assistant, and a
recent student alum of the course—used qualitative
research methods to study the merit of the pedagogy
described. This included analyzing student findings,
reviewing student and community-partner surveys and
anonymous end-of-semester evaluations, observing
student interactions during course time and team
meetings, and conducting ethnographic interviews.2
Interviews with students and community partners were
largely unstructured, resulting from anecdotal
discussions during office hours, community-partner
meetings, and volunteer hours in the community.
Following discussions with students and community
members, we recorded comments by summarizing key
themes and consistent concerns. In addition, we
elicited student perspectives through various
assignments throughout the semester, a final synthesis
essay detailing student insights on the course, self- and
peer-assessments, and publication of student-team
action plans in an open-access ScholarWorks
main and satellite campuses, GVSU currently enrolls approximately
25,000 undergraduate students. 2 The findings are derived from reflections on normal classroom activity and are exempt from Internal Review Board oversight under
category one: normal classroom activities. In addition, students have
signed a release form agreeing to the publication of the findings.
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repository. The findings, described below, were then
compared to prominent themes emerging from a
review of the literature on wicked problems, social
sustainability, and pedagogical practices surrounding
change-agent skills. Aligned with recommendations
emerging from systemic-action research, this
collaborative, hands-on approach allowed the authors
to assess the different perspectives involved in this
course as the semester unfolded (Burns, 2014). Given
that interventions on local wicked problems are likely
to yield unforeseen or unintended consequences, these
emergent research practices encouraged reflection on
the effectiveness of the course in real time. As we
show next, opportunities for iterative interventions are
essential for ameliorating dynamic wicked problems.
Scaling Wicked Problems
Whereas simple problems are easily defined and
amenable to replicable, formulaic interventions,
complex problems often involve high levels of
uncertainty, undergo change over time, and require the
coordination of a wide range of expertise (Snowden &
Boone, 2007). As the intricacies increase, we see that
the problem is interconnected with many others, that
the stakes have risen, and that the level of
disagreement among stakeholders has intensified
(Brown et al., 2010; Brown & Lambert 2014). As we
move along this sliding scale, we reach a wicked level
of messiness, finding ourselves confronting “mega-
crises” like the healthcare quagmire in the United
States or the 2007–2008 housing crisis and subsequent
global recession (Alpaslan & Mitroff, 2011). At this
level, problems resist standard efforts designed to
yield final, ideal solutions (Rittel & Webber, 1973;
Norton, 2005). Table 1 illustrates this continuum of
complexity and wickedness along seven factors.
Juxtaposing Table 1 with SS literature shows that
efforts to move social sustainability forward have been
stymied by vague and fluid definitions of key terms,
differences in how various stakeholders measure
success, numerous unknowns, sporadic and
fragmented funding, and limited stakeholder support
(Factors 1, 2, and 3 in Table 1) (Cuthill, 2010;
Boström, 2012). Stakeholder values are not only
frequently in tension, they are often diametrically
opposed under the highest of stakes (Factors 4 and 5).
For instance, while we fail to meet the most basic
needs of many across the globe, we simultaneously
encourage extreme, unsustainable consumerism and
opposed under the highest of stakes (Factors 4 and 5).
For instance, while we fail to meet the most basic
needs of many across the globe, we simultaneously
encourage extreme, unsustainable consumerism and
waste (Dujon et al., 2013). Aspirations for triple-
bottom-line “wins” often ignore unavoidable, on-the-
ground tradeoffs (Fitzpatrick, 2011).
Both the SS and WP literature warn readers: we
must give up on the idea that technological innovation
or expert intervention is enough (Factor 6 in Table 1).
Rather, inherently context-dependent and emergent SS
requires broad social inclusion, demanding that we
continuously uncover and weigh the merit of our own
and others’ assumptions, values, and goals (Fischer,
2000; Wynne, 2007; Hiedanpää et al. 2012; Dujon et
al. 2013).3 Furthermore, both SS and WP scholars
emphasize that the implementation of effective
processes in one region cannot simply be replicated in
Table 1 Contrasting Simple, Complex, and Wicked Problems.
FACTORS SIMPLE COMPLEX WICKED
1. Definition Easily defined Messy Chaotic
2. Variation Static and linear Dynamic and emergent Host of “unknowns”
3. Learning Process Replicable answers No “one” formula; no guarantees Cannot replicate; inherent tradeoffs
4. Values Alignment Tension Conflict
5. Stakes Low Higher Highest
6. Intervention Lay intervention Expert and technological intervention helpful
Technological innovation and expertise not enough
3 Both sets of literature also highlight current struggles to cooperate
regionally and globally, systematically and comprehensively.
Failure to cooperate means general lessons learned from local
efforts often go unreported.
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7. Solution Ideal resolution Ameliorative and adaptive responses possible
No ideal solution; impending crisis
Example Baking bread Space travel Global climate change
another (Factor 7). Since our social lives are
comprised of vastly differing habits, customs, and
laws, a flexible SS framework is necessary (Boström,
2012). We need new narratives; we need to consider
what processes and institutions will foster “mental and
emotional models for experiencing a good life for
everyone”; we need, that is, to expand our ethical
framework, develop a greater capacity for change, and
create broad participatory practices (Lorek et al.,
2012). Since actors seeking to develop more socially
sustainable systems and processes confront WPs,
Cuthill (2010) argues that we cannot fruitfully
segment our SS challenges into university disciplines.
Indeed, even a cursory overview of these fields
illuminates the urgent need for the recommendations
that follow, for “engaged scholarship, a collaborative
and integrative educational model, and more
transparent and participatory democratic” practices
(Lake & Fauvel, 2015). As we show next, the flexible
framework we developed for this course encourages
more comprehensive and iterative problem framing
from which more equitable student-with-community
actions are likely to emerge.
The Framework
Where to Begin? Issue-Framing, Re-Framing, and
Re-Re-Framing… As the course was focused on WPs, students
ultimately wrestled with and enacted various
definitions of sustainability. In general, students were
challenged to consider how we can live “in such a way
that there are enough resources to live well in an alive,
diverse, thriving environment—indefinitely”
(Jeavons, 2012).4 In large measure, the value of the
course came from not only studying, but also enacting,
these various definitions.
The overarching learning objectives of the course
asked students to:
1. Identify and apply the WP literature to the course
topic;
2. Study a complex local problem through different
disciplinary and value lenses;
4 As Werkheiser & Piso (2015) note, sustainability requires actors
who are willing and able to do the work of sustaining.
3. Facilitate deliberation with stakeholders on
possible action plans;
4. Synthesize research with deliberative conclusions
and propose action efforts;
5. Engage in local action; and
6. Disseminate the results.
These objectives build upon the five key
sustainability competencies synthesized by Wiek et al
(2011) as well as in Marzano & Kendall’s New
Taxonomy of Educational Objectives (2008). For
instance, the first and second objectives move students
quickly through their first three educational objectives,
requiring that they retrieve, comprehend, and analyze
the local issue through a WP lens. As authentic tasks
necessitating investigation into systems thinking and
anticipatory competencies, they align knowledge
acquisition with its use. In practice, these first two
objectives prevent narrowly framed, inflexible
problem definitions, which are likely to leave us blind
to multiple facets of the problem and mistaken about
the assumptions under which others are working
(Norton, 2005; Thompson & Whyte, 2011).
The third and fourth learning objectives—that
students present action plans, facilitate deliberation on
their merit with local stakeholders, and analyze their
conclusions—require that students specify their goals
and clearly articulate their values (metacognitive
objectives highlighted by Marzano & Kendall, 2008).
The fifth objective, specifying that students engage in
local action, entails experimental problem solving and
decision making. The final objective, that students
publically disseminate the results of their work,
encouraged the examination of the overall merit of
their efforts through both public forums and scholarly
presentations and publications. These systemic
engagement practices required issue framing and
reframing. They also inspired students to seek out on-
the-ground stories from community members, experts,
and other stakeholders, observe—if and when
appropriate—facets of the problem first-hand, and
share the insights gained, mind-mapping the
dimensions of an issue. Mind maps, like rich pictures,
soft systems modeling, and other tools, ask students to
visualize their understanding of complex issues as they
study them (Burns, 2014; Morris & Warman, 2015).
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In general, these practices furthered students’
collective understanding and, where possible, helped
them to integrate across perspectives. In recent years,
SS scholars have consistently argued that such
engagement work is the critical first step toward just
and equitable sustainable development (Ling et al.
2009; Cuthill, 2010; Dujon et al. 2013).
Through these objectives, students began to
acquire the framing and tools from which they could
reconstruct—or map—aspects of SS situations. For
example, the first two sections of the course asked
students to confront issues of access to local and
healthy foods for school-age children. The WP
framework required students to consider the varying
degrees of complexity. To begin, students explored the
wide-ranging list of individuals invested in and
affected by the problem that they were seeking to
address, as well as their conflicting perspectives,
implicit assumptions, and values. Students also
explored the uncertainties involved in the issue, the
high stakes, and the need for (and limitations of)
various forms of expertise. They sought out local
narratives, expert perspectives, and organizational
knowledge, speaking with school-age children,
teachers, and administrators, as well as nutritionists,
farmers, distributors, food-justice advocates, and, in
one case, a food-service director.
The action projects that emerged from the
learning outcomes fostered epistemic humility,
“creative confidence,” and “open-minded advocacy,”
building students’ capacity to “span boundaries”
(Shrader-Frechette, 2002; Kelley & Kelley, 2013;
Ramley, 2014). For example, after engaging
stakeholders from across these disparate perspectives,
one student team concluded that “it is in the deep
reality of a community that we…connect with one
another…and make progress with the messy, intricate,
wicked problems of that neighborhood” (Fernando et
al. 2015). Since epistemic humility, creative
confidence, and open-minded advocacy are essential
for effectively ameliorating our large-scale systemic
sustainability problems, intentionally encouraging
their development in students is critical (Kolb, 2003;
Alpaslan & Mitroff, 2011). For example, epistemic
humility is necessary for open listening across
differences, lifelong learning, stakeholder
5 Within the design-thinking process, creative confidence is defined
as “the ability to come up with new ideas and the courage to try them out” (Kelley & Kelley, 2013). 6 With a motto to “hear, create, and deliver,” design thinking is
biased toward action, encouraging “radical collaboration” (Miller, 2015). As a process, it “focuses on users and their needs, encourages
brainstorming and prototyping, and rewards out-of-the-box thinking
collaboration, and integrative outcomes. This stance
encourages individuals to begin with “the
particularities of a situation in order to get in sync with
it,” instead of beginning with “prescriptions” already
in mind (Frodeman, 2014).
Creative confidence, by contrast, can prevent the
move from naïve optimism into apathetic cynicism
that often accompanies education on wicked
problems.5 To foster this confidence, students
considered how their own education, experience, and
skill sets were valuable to their team and their
community work. Open-minded advocacy promotes a
more widely inclusive search for information-at-play,
motivates public engagement, and encourages careful
reflection on the uncertainties at hand (Shrader-
Frechette, 2002).
Scholars and practitioners have developed a
number of methods and facilitation techniques to
encourage these mind-sets. One such method is
“design thinking,” an iterative, project-based, and
collaborative problem-solving process that seeks to
move students from a predetermined state of mind
about the situation that they are confronting, toward a
more open stance of perplexity.6 The process begins
with empathetic listening, and this—as one student
team wrote in their analysis—was integral to their
efforts to “come alongside those already working with
the community.” It was their community engagement
that ultimately led them to see “the transformative
power of this [nonprofit gleaning] initiative” and “to
find a means to support their efforts” (Cook et al.
2015). Ethnographic interviewing, mind-mapping,
and stakeholder mapping (among many other
processes recommended within this method) helped
students wrestle with (instead of avoid) the
complexities of WPs.
Taken together, these learning outcomes provided
students with opportunities to integrate their
experiences with their education and then—in
collaboration with others—apply their findings in the
community. Such goals better prepare students to take
on the role of an integrator and “boundary spanner”
(Ramley, 2014) while aligning with outcomes
identified as essential within the sustainability
literature (Svanstrom et al. 2008).7 Collaborative,
project-based learning and participatory action are the
that takes ‘wild ideas’ and transforms them into real solutions”
(Morris & Warman, 2015). According to Tim Brown (2009), it requires that we willingly embrace “competing constraints” and
consider what is desirable, feasible, and viable. 7 Svanstrom et al. (2008) argue skill building, attitude development, integration across the disciplines, and systems thinking are essential
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means by which students met these objectives and
iteration was the path by which their projects unfolded.
To support them in developing these skills and mind
sets, we designed a host of scaffolded activities,
practices, and projects. Table 2 provides a
comprehensive overview of course assignments. The
table aligns these assessments with both the course
learning objectives and the sustainability
competencies promoted within the literature.
Iteration Iterative methods are, the WP literature confirms,
essential to effectively addressing wicked problems,
since any conclusion is likely to be partial and any
action implemented to have unintended consequences
(Norton, 2005; Ramley, 2014). That is, intervention
efforts are, at best, partially wrong and, at worst,
entirely mistaken. Engendering this fallibilistic and
flexible mindset has been particularly challenging. We
have found that students often begin the semester with
a plan of action in mind and are reluctant to subject
this initial vision to critique and revision. For example,
seeking to help a local nonprofit gleaning initiative
promote their cause and transport their produce in the
winter of 2015, one team posited the creation of a
mobile food bus, simultaneously expressing
apprehension about sharing this vision with their
community partner and thereby exposing it to
criticism. However, this critique was ultimately
essential to their plan. The team had not fully
considered simple, real world constraints nor the
potential drawbacks of their initial idea: a bus would
be difficult to maneuver through the initiative’s target
neighborhood; it also requires a special license to drive
and a special parking space. After overcoming their
aversion to criticism, the team was able to integrate the
expertise of the nonprofit, ultimately allowing them to
create a more practical and implementable proposal: a
mobile food cart. With the WP recommendations and
this narrative in mind, we advocate that courses
support students work on real world problems through
iterative feedback loops, providing them with ample
to sustainability efforts. They provide educators with a long list of skills valuable to this work, including tenacity, commitment,
passion, assertiveness, and persuasiveness. These skills are
juxtaposed alongside the development of patience, emotional intelligence, empathy, self-awareness, curiosity, resiliency,
competency, and optimism.
8 These processes also tend to foster a broader understanding of what
counts as legitimate knowledge, requiring that students not simply
conduct traditional academic research, but also seek out diverse narratives by listening to community-member stories and
institutional perspectives. Students in the second iteration of the
course, for instance, ultimately shifted their efforts after receiving
opportunities to revise. As students seek to address
WPs, it is helpful to emphasize that various levels of
initial failure are to be expected and revision rewarded.
There are, in fact, a number of methods to
encourage collaborative and iterative problem solving,
including strategic doing, Kolb’s experiential learning,
Brown & Lambert’s collective learning for
transformational change, and design thinking. These
processes generally require students to consider what
they could do, then what they should do, what they will
do, and when they will do it.8 The processes encourage
visualizing, enacting, and testing various problem
definitions and interventions, ultimately inspiring a
wider range of creative ideas. Since iteration is a
particular challenge, and since it requires consistent
opportunities to learn-by-doing, we next discuss how
we incentivized reflective action throughout the
semester.
Reflect, Act, then Reflect and Act Again As students’ action plans emerged, they shared
their plans with key stakeholders and begin to
implement—and thus test—aspects of their ideas. For
instance, with their revised vision of a mobile food cart
in mind, this group of students sought out engineering
faculty to discuss the merit of various cart designs.
Weekly “seven-seven” commitments to help students
move through an iterative and action-oriented learning
process included conducting traditional research,
interviewing community stakeholders, canvassing the
neighborhood, attending community events,
prototyping their team plan, crafting promotional
media services, devising K–12 curricula, designing
community events, and so forth. Team members
returned to the next class session to discuss the results
of their actions and to strategize about the most fruitful
next steps. These seven-seven requirements turned big
ideas into concrete, manageable weekly actions
subject to real-time reflection. In essence, these
commitments took the demand for cautious action that
“preserves options for continual course correction”
direct feedback from school-age children about the origin of their food. Asking elementary school children to talk about and illustrate
their understanding of the food cycle led to the insight that local
school children often do not realize that food comes from the land. These insights shifted the nature of the curriculum students wanted
to design (Haapala et al., 2014). For example, one team in the third
iteration of the course researched crowdfunding methods and best practices for their nonprofit partner, ultimately putting together a
how-to pamphlet on crowdfunding. When the students shared their
work at the final dialogue event, several nonprofits and community members in the audience expressed interest in gaining access to their
findings, recommending the team widely disseminate the pamphlet
(Cook et al., 2015).
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seriously (Cohen, 2014). The weekly movement
among collaborative brainstorming, action, and
reflection also motivated the teams to rapidly
prototype their ideas within the limitations of one
semester, encouraging accountability and
counteracting procrastination. Since a single semester
is a relatively short period for addressing the
objectives outlined in the methods and framework
section, the use of practical, weekly accountability
measures increased the quality of the projects that
were ultimately submitted.
Where to End? Community Dialogue At the end of the semester, students shared their
efforts with a wide array of stakeholders from across
the university and the community. This exercise
bridged the divide between the production of ideas and
their use, helping to develop the partnerships necess-
Table 2 Course Assessments.
Assessments Description Objectives Competencies
Point-of-view Presentation
Articulate how experiences, disciplinary training, skills, and values contribute to one’s perspective on issue.
Study different disciplinary and value lenses
Systems-thinking (ST), Normative, Interpersonal
Team Charter Align vision, goals, and roles; communication plan; conflict resolution strategy.
Integrate disciplinary and value lenses
Anticipatory, Normative, Strategic, Interpersonal
Team Guide (Agenda and Notes)
A system for collaboration, capturing ideas, integrating information.
Reflect on actions; analyze and integrate findings
ST, Anticipatory, Normative, Strategic, Interpersonal
Seven-seven Commitments
Weekly team-member action commitments and reflections.
Collective action and reflection, accountability, time management
Anticipatory, Normative, Strategic, Interpersonal
Midterm Essays demonstrating comprehension and application of issues.
Identify and apply WP literature
Anticipatory, Normative, Strategic
Community-Partner Presentation and Dialogue
Draft visions detailing: What is at stake? What could and should be done? How it could be done?
Disseminate ideas and revise findings
ST, Anticipatory, Normative, Strategic, Interpersonal
Team Evaluations Evaluate collaborative efforts in relation to charter; revise policies and actions
Reflection, feedback, and improvement
Normative, Strategic, Interpersonal
Team Poster Presentation
Visualize and talk about action efforts, elicit feedback
Present findings and facilitate deliberation.
ST, Anticipatory, Normative, Strategic, Interpersonal
Team Project Analysis
Formally summarize efforts, open-access publication
Disseminate findings ST, Anticipatory, Normative, Strategic, Interpersonal
Synthesis Paper Synthesis of the course Reflect on lessons learned
ST, Anticipatory, Normative
-ary for sustainable change (Lake & Fauvel, 2015).
Students presented their work and elicited feedback by
1) framing the issue that they were seeking to address,
demonstrating that they had a comprehensive
understanding of its wicked dimensions, 2)
highlighting the research they conducted, and 3)
describing the work they chose to pursue and the
reasons for it (making clear their team values and
goals). They also detailed 4) the concerns they had, 5)
the constraints they faced, and 6) the resources they
needed. By inviting a wide range of community
stakeholders and experts, students could then elicit
feedback that was critical to the future implementation
of their projects. In general, we found that this final
dialogue event was rewarding on a couple of fronts,
creating a celebratory space for students’ work and
fostering networks essential for effective and
collaborative local action.
The Challenges and Rewards Community-engaged project-based courses on
WPs are likely to confront students and the instructor
with a series of robust challenges, from intensive
student-team and community-partner collaborations,
to logistical and time-management problems, to real-
world execution issues. Course outcomes indicate that
students often struggled 1) to identify and define
problems through integration across epistemological,
political, and ethical divides, 2) to reach out to and talk
with real-world stakeholders, and 3) to execute action
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plans once established. These obstacles are detailed
next.
You Think You Know, But You Don’t Know Confirming the value of experiential learning, it
was not until students put the theories and methods
surrounding WPs into practice that they began to
viscerally appreciate the nature of social issues. The
process of engaging in collaborative, local action
made it quite clear why society is struggling to
progress on complex, interdependent problems of
sustainability. To foster collaboration among diverse
perspectives, students were placed in five-person
interdisciplinary teams representing at least three
different majors and two different colleges from across
the university. For instance, one of the teams was
comprised of students majoring in natural resource
management, sociology, environmental studies,
education, and entrepreneurship. Not only were
students joined with one another, they were also
partnered with a nonprofit organization seeking to
address local sustainability challenges. While early
collaborative partnerships were helpful in providing
context for brainstorming and implementing action
plans, with no similar previous educational
experiences, most teams struggled to begin.
Through this confusion, students realized that
addressing their collective problems required that they
first address each other. Furthermore, effective
collaboration requires more than understanding the
relevant disciplinary perspectives of each team
member; it entails that they acknowledge one
another’s positionality: the values, personalities,
motivations, learning preferences, and organizational
practices each individual brings with them. Thus,
initial point-of-view presentations, team charters, as
well as commitment to in-class team time, a team
guide, and evaluations all helped students to foster
normative and interpersonal competencies that experts
say are needed for this work (Marzano & Kendall,
2008; Ferkany & Whyte, 2011).
Returning to the “Glean Ride” example illustrates
this point. In being forced to revise their initial vision
from a mobile food truck that could collect and
distribute freshly gleaned produce to target
neighborhoods in the city, the team concluded that,
“our most exciting idea...simply was not a viable
option… given the overall cost to operate and to
insure, as well as the need for a special operator’s
license and location for parking” (Dorking et al.,
2015). They discovered it was imperative to
understand the perspectives of project stakeholders in
order to make real-world progress. Coming to know
one another and their community partners was
ultimately crucial to the development of trust and
camaraderie, which was necessary for uncovering
assumptions, working effectively across disciplinary
and personality differences, building networks in the
community, integrating across differences, and
prioritizing local action (O’Rourke & Crowley, 2013).
Motivating Action and Reflection Collaborative and interdisciplinary teamwork was
also effective because students entered the class with
vastly ranging motivations and commitments to the
issues engaged in the course. For instance, they
studied the wicked dimensions of economics, politics,
food, culture, the environment, sustainability, and
water in addition to immersing themselves in various
democratic practices, technologies, science and ethics,
policy issues, network analyses, and collaborative
problem-solving processes. As assignments escalated
and the semester unfolded, a lack of ownership, a fear
of creativity, and a reluctance to “act” was noted
across a number of student teams. Upon reflection,
their motivation seemed contingent upon an
understanding of 1) the content of the course, 2) the
local issue being addressed, and, most importantly, 3)
how the content and the issue are relative and
important to each of us. That is, while students were
exposed to literature clearly exemplifying the urgent
need to address WPs and to a host of tools for
ameliorating these issues, making sure they invested
time in reflecting upon the material’s relevance proved
difficult. Verifying these insights, research shows that
respecting student perspectives, demonstrating the
practical relevance of their learning, and integrating
student experiences into the course tends to motivate
transformational learning (Wlodkowski, 2008). Thus,
instructors should emphasize the wider social
relevance of the issues, but also consistently connect
(and reconnect) students to the systemic issues they
are seeking to ameliorate.
Learning in the “Real World”: Working with the
Community Rather than developing ideas and concepts in the
classroom setting and then attempting to “apply” them
in the community (a one-way flow of knowledge
production to action), in our class students were
partnered with a community organization from the
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beginning.9 Forming these relationships early
encouraged a “working with” model, grounding
students’ efforts in the context of the local situation.
This option better fosters reciprocity as well as more
comprehensive and socially aware action plans (Lake,
2014).
While at first intimidating to co-develop new
ideas with community leaders, doing so can lead to
more realistic and comprehensive plans as well as
deeper learning than is likely when plans are seeded
within the classroom’s narrow confines. These early
partnerships can be effective because nonprofit
directors and community leaders can articulate a
number of areas in which they could use help, frame
initial visions for effective interventions, and make the
issues the course addresses very real, contextualizing
the work and its value. For instance, one community
partner, hoping to develop a self-sufficient farm to
foster sustainable and healthy farming practices and
communities in western Michigan, said he could use
help developing partnerships with other organizations,
assessing the community’s needs, and creating
business plans that incorporate stakeholders’
perspectives. This initial list of possible entry points
provided a broad structure from which students could
then brainstorm. While community-partner prompts
for aid narrow the scope of possible action plans, broad
recommendations from local stakeholders can still
give each student team ample freedom to formulate a
plan of action that aligns with their own hopes, values,
and goals.10
Following Through: Learning-by-Doing In trying to develop and implement an integrated
plan of action, teams experienced both constructive
and destructive collaborative processes. Increasing
both the number of stakeholders involved in the
project (e.g., the professor, the nonprofit director,
community members, local experts) and the creative
license afforded to students increased their collective
anxiety, leading to worries that ideas were “off the
mark.” With conflicting goals and amorphous
objectives, “success” becomes a tricky and daunting
target. Noting this very issue, scholars suggest that
9 For example, in the last iteration of the course, both community
partners served as directors of newly established nonprofits in Grand
Rapids, working on initiatives to address problems with the local food system. Through these partnerships, students focused on food
justice and literacy, nutrition education and health, equity, food
access, and waste. 10 The inaugural course did not provide student teams with
community partners, nor did it provide students with a framework
for possible community actions. Without any scaffolded framing,
overcoming fear, denial, and resistance is key to
effectively managing WPs (Alpaslan & Mitroff,
2011).
While resistance may be common, it is also
troubling. The classroom can be an incredibly
effective and safe space for practicing collaboration on
WPs, requiring students to tackle their fear of failure
head-on before they move to engaging their own
professional realm. To some extent, team structures
and deliberative processes help them acclimate to the
messy nature of this work. By selecting a team leader,
breaking up larger tasks into manageable and
measurable weekly actions, and coordinating regular
meetings, students experience tangible progress.
An anonymous end-of-semester survey confirmed
that these facilitation techniques were effective at
encouraging self-efficacy. For instance, when asked
whether the community partnerships helped them
understand how the issues of the course applied to
real-world problems and situations, every student
answered affirmatively. They all also confirmed that
the participatory engagement requirements helped
them to recognize that issues can be viewed from
multiple perspectives, improved their communication
and collaborative skills, and increased their awareness
of cultural differences. All but one student confirmed
that community work enhanced their ability to
evaluate real-world programs and processes. Finally,
all but two of the eighteen respondents also agreed that
the community partnerships were valuable, that they
were more likely to participate in community work
because of this course, and that they would enroll in
another course requiring similar participatory
practices on real-world problems. Given the often
overwhelming and depressing, intractable nature of
our SS challenges (i.e., that they can often be
categorized as wicked), we suggest these responses are
a limited but powerful affirmation of the practices
recommended within these pages.
Defining Success: Contributing to “Tipping Points” Given the enduring and dynamic difficulties
surrounding these problems, there is a tendency to
question the ultimate merit of this experiential,
students struggled to decide how to intervene in the community and
were largely unable to move beyond formulating and publishing
more abstract and idealistic future plans for action. Nevertheless, one team’s vision became an experiential and community-engaged
food course for local middle-school students after a team of students
in the subsequent semester read the initial published plan, sought out a local middle-school teacher interested in the proposal, and co-
designed and implemented it (Lake & Fauvel, 2015; Bell et al.,
2013).
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community-engaged pedagogy at numerous points
throughout its three iterations. However, the nature of
WPs encourages us to question traditional
perspectives on what counts as effective. According to
service-learning expert Barbara Jacoby (2010), we can
judge the outcomes of community-engaged courses by
considering whether students have 1) grown “to
understand the interdisciplinary nature of problems
and solutions,” 2) learned “about the complexity of the
social fabric,” and 3) come to see “how they can be
part of the solution instead of part of the problem.” The
pedagogical strategies and methods employed in the
course moved students along a sliding scale toward all
three of these goals.
In addition, the course offered students the
opportunity to influence local issues and to meet real
needs, to develop community partnerships, and to
establish networks potentially valuable to their life
after graduation. On this front, such courses can be an
additional factor in moving toward local tipping points
by drawing in “supporters”; they can contribute to
what becomes a “critical mass,” replacing “the
dominant attractor of the status quo” (Burns, 2014).
These long-term potential of these efforts should not
be easily discounted or quickly dismissed. Tipping
points depend on using an iterative and participatory
process of reflective action subject to “real time”
assessment and adjustment and “rooted in
relationships” (Burns, 2014). In our view, the
pedagogical strategies recommended here are
consistent with these aims.
Using a separate metric culled from the literature
on WPs, we recognize a similar need for judging the
relative success of student efforts. In this metric, we
can weigh the value of such courses by reflecting on
how students’ final analyses 1) comprehensively
frame the issue they seek to address and 2)
acknowledge the inherent conflicts and uncertainties
in their work. We should also consider 3) who is
involved in—and left out of—the planning process, 4)
what types of evidence are examined, 5) whose
perspectives are influenced, and 6) how reality has
been (or could be) changed because of student efforts
(Turnpenny et al. 2009). Judging the effectiveness of
the pedagogy on either rubric leads to the conclusion
that this course is not just about the application of
particular methods, but is more broadly about
character building. According to Frodeman (2014),
11 As one commentator on this work at a recent conference noted, it
may often be the case that our efforts to stymie many of our public crises are stalled by “wicked” people (those who hold narrow, self-
serving agendas; unexamined, convenient assumptions;
action efforts require “openness to new perspectives, a
willingness to admit the inadequacies of one’s own
point of view, to be wrong and to play the fool, and
generosity in interpreting the position and motives of
others.” Using the terms proffered here, effective
collaboration on sustainability challenges fosters
change-agent skills and encourages a host of real-
world competencies, ultimately requiring epistemic
humility, creative confidence, and open-minded
advocacy.
Conclusion
Participatory skills and virtues (like team
building, active listening, collaboration, and
integration) must be fostered to empower more
effective and just co-action on WPs. In fact, we
suggest a failure to foster these skills and virtues is at
the core of many current social struggles.11 The
university should and could be a prime place for
practicing such skills. The personal stakes and risks of
working to ameliorate our collective shortcomings are
likely to increase post-graduation, as students move
fully out into the “real world.” When traditional
coursework occurs in isolation from other courses and
from students’ larger lives we forego key opportunities
to integrate and test the knowledge and skills that they
learn. The traditional model of education encourages
an ever narrowing of focus, specialization but not
integration, leaving students with dangerously
incomplete perspectives and a host of unexamined
assumptions.
Empowering students to take responsibility for
aspects of our WPs forces us to confront the current
educational paradigm. Given the nature of our shared
SS challenges, educators can and should play a vital
role in helping students come to terms with, and
practice, failure. College, as a stepping stone from
childhood into adulthood, offers one of the last
relatively risk-free environments in which to learn-by-
trying. Thus, we recommend pursuing pedagogies that
incentivize wrestling with real-world issues without
predefining the problems or routing the plan of action
in advance.12
Since courses studying SS challenges are
addressing WPs, they present a prime opportunity for
encouraging students to “work with” others across a
diverse span of interests—even when these interests
contradictory and incomplete knowledge; as well as who lack
participatory virtues and skills), not WPs. 12 The authors also believe universities should do more to provide
the space, opportunity, and incentives for instructors to pursue
messy, community-engagement practices in their courses.
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seem to be at odds—to foster change. By integrating
recommendations from the literature on WPs,
experiential and community-engaged learning, and
processes and methods designed to deal with our
challenges (like strategic doing and design thinking),
SS instructors can offer students opportunities to
engage and affect real problems in the community.
The strategies recommended, from mind-mapping, to
ethnographic interviewing, to facilitation techniques,
and seven-seven action commitments, help students
develop the skills and foster the virtues necessary for
collectively tackling our high-stakes public problems.
These skills and virtues include—but are not limited
to—epistemic humility, creative confidence, and
open-minded advocacy. In the end, courses designed
to respond iteratively to place-based SS challenges
have the unique opportunity to foster not only the
capacities necessary for tackling our large-scale social
dilemmas, but also the disposition to try.
Acknowledgement
We would like to thank Sarah King for her insightful
feedback on a previous draft of this article as well as
all the Wicked Problem students that have come
before.
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ARTICLE
Systems of access: A multidisciplinary strategy for assessing the social dimensions of sustainability
Christopher Wolsko1, Elizabeth Marino1, Thomas Joseph Doherty2, Steve Fisher3, Amanda S. Green4, Briana Goodwin5, Ryan Reese1, & Andrea Wirth6
1 Graduate and Research Center, Oregon State University‒Cascades, 650 SW Columbia Street, Bend, OR 97702 USA (email: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]) 2 PO Box 3174, Portland, OR 97212 USA (email: [email protected]) 3 886 53rd Street, Unit E, Oakland, CA 94608 USA (email: [email protected]) 4 Environmental Studies Department, Davidson College, Davidson, NC 28035 USA (email: [email protected]) 5 Strand Agriculture Hall, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR 97331 USA (email: [email protected]) 6 UNLV Libraries, University of Nevada‒Las Vegas, 4505 Maryland Parkway, Mailstop 7012, Las Vegas, NV 89154 USA (email:
The concept of access to natural resources has been a specific concern of economists and ecologists and is a distinct component in recent models of social sustainability. Using a series of conceptual and empirical examples, this article extends the notion of access broadly to social institutions and sociocultural norms. We argue that access may be usefully construed as an analytic tool that has direct applicability to many sustainability issues as it allows for cross-disciplinary and public engagement. Here the concept of access, linked to Amartya Sen’s theory of capabilities, also makes visible the multi-scaled and interconnected social processes that influence the material world and from which certain individuals and communities are excluded. This article examines access as a set of culturally appropriate and equitable engagements that promote social sustainability with a series of four examples: access to actions necessary to reclaim a polluted river; access to restorative natural environments; access to information and research findings; and access to decision-making processes. Insights from these examples are integrated within the wider discourse on sustainability. KEYWORDS: social sustainability; access; power; sociocultural norms; equity; public discourse
Introduction
When scholars from a variety of disciplines
gather to discuss the social dimensions of
sustainability they inevitably encounter chall-
enges finding relatable concepts, terminology,
scope, and methods of assessment. Depending on
the vantage point of the discipline and the
individual researcher, social sustainability can be
conceived of as the health and well-being of an
individual psyche (psychology), the individual
attainment of basic needs (economics,
engineering), the well-being of the self within a
healthy social context (public health), the well-
being and health of a cultural group or commun-
ity (anthropology), or the larger social system
itself as robust and long-lasting (sociology,
economics), among others. This article is an
explicit attempt of a diverse group of social
scientists to identify similarities in theoretical and
empirical approaches to social sustainability with
the goal of improving the clarity of cross-
disciplinary and public discourses.
Comparing research across our disciplines,
one concept emerged, around which multiple
disciplinary methods of assessment remained
coherent and legible. That notion is the idea of
“access.” Across disciplines, we find that access
acts as a common theme of engagement within
which multi-scaled systems of inquiry can
evolve, and around which compounding systems
of inequity and unsustainability can be discussed.
For the purposes of this article, we define access
as the ability to influence processes and lay claim
to resources that create, alter, or maintain social
systems (including social institutions and
sociocultural norms) across scales.
Access has been previously used as a starting
point to critically analyze social systems and
complex problems, and with great success. It has
been more than thirty years since Amartya Sen
(1981) identified “famine” not as the absolute
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lack of food available in a given community or
geographical space, but as the “result of [one’s]
inability to establish entitlement to enough food.”
From this premise, Sen reconceptualized ideas of
poverty, famine, and even drought as the “lack of
access” to the resources necessary to sustain
oneself and one’s quality of life. In other words,
those entitled to food did not die of starvation and
malnutrition, even under conditions of
insufficient water and the deterioration of crops.
Conversely, those without entitlements to food—
entitlements enacted and maintained through
social and economic systems—did die of
starvation and malnutrition.
Furthering the argument, Sen insisted that the
entitlements framework is not necessarily about
entitlement/access to objects (food) or income
(wealth), but rather that it exists to point out a
prerogative to capabilities, decisions, and actions
that realistically allow one to achieve goals. Who
has the capability to earn a livable wage? Who
has the capability to work enough hours, at a high
enough salary, to provide food for one’s family
during times of drought? Who is ultimately free
to pursue that which has value (Sen, 2001, 2005)?
Sen’s observations corroborated research
from 1980s disaster literature that even extreme
natural disasters are experienced as such because
of the social constructions of vulnerability that
take place prior to and during a hazardous event
(see Hewitt, 1983; Oliver-Smith, 1996, for
reviews). In this conceptualization, hazardous
events are not threatening in and of themselves,
but are made dangerous when they come into
contact with vulnerable communities. Disasters,
therefore, are social constructions created by
flows of power, lack of access to systems of
protection, and political marginalization over
time, which can result in significant harm to
vulnerable communities (Oliver-Smith, 1996;
Oliver-Smith & Hoffman, 2002; Cutter et al.
2003).
Both of these literatures articulate the
processes that render human injustice in some
communities while sparing others. Sen’s (2005)
argument largely applies on the individual scale,
or in reference to the capabilities of people based
on personal differences, while the disaster
literature is widely used to assess community-
and city-scale vulnerabilities and sociocultural
trends that underpin disaster outcomes (Cutter et
al. 2003, 2010). This article encompasses both of
these research traditions, but expands the notion
of access to the sustainability literature and
broadens the concept of access to point out the
complex, intersecting, and multi-scaled flows of
power, decision-making, and other social
systems, processes, and cultural norms that carve
out vulnerable geographies, vulnerable
communities, and vulnerable individuals. We
argue that it is the sum of these limits to access
that ultimately inhibits social sustainability.
In the remainder of this article, we show that
the concept of access has wide applicability to a
range of issues falling under the rubric of the
social dimensions of sustainability. While access
to natural resources has been a specific concern
of economists and ecologists (Hardin, 1968;
Berkes et al. 1989; Ostrom, 1999; Ostrom, et al.
2002) and has been discussed as a distinct
component of recent models of social
sustainability (Cuthill, 2009; Dempsey et al.
2011; Vavik & Keitsch, 2010), here we extend
the concept broadly, arguing that access is a far-
reaching analytic tool with direct applicability to
many sustainability issues.
To best articulate our arguments, we start
with a poignant example of the sociocultural
construction of vulnerability due to obstacles to
access in the community of El Salto, Mexico.
Second, we apply our conceptualization to better
understand how culturally appropriate access to
green spaces is a form of equitably distributed
health benefits. Third, we assess the state of
access to information as an investigation into the
culture of information and research,
conceptualizing “open access” in information and
research as an emerging embodiment of social
sustainability. Finally, we look at the
development of a wave-energy test site to
understand access to decision-making processes
as contestations among individuals, communities,
and stakeholders. We chose the examples listed
above because they illustrate how access interacts
substantially with the social dimensions of
sustainability and because they highlight the wide
applicability of the concept across geographic
spaces, social circumstances, and research
disciplines. We conclude with a discussion of
how the concept of access can make visible the
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multi-layered obstacles to social sustainability
that exist across scales and can act as a common
language for researchers to speak to one another
and engage the public.
Un Salto de Vida
The Santiago River runs through the
community of El Salto in the Mexican state of
Jalisco. Its toxicity level is unknown, but it is
generally accepted by local residents that the
river is intocable, or untouchable. On January 25,
2008, Miguel Àngel Lopez Rocha, a young
school boy, fell from the banks of a canal close to
its confluence with the Santiago River while
playing with friends and was submerged in river
water. Rocha was quickly retrieved, but allegedly
died eighteen days later of arsenic poisoning.1
Community activists of El Salto, best
exemplified by 24-year old Atawalpa Sophia,
protested in the wake of Rocha’s death for
changes to the way industries in the Guadalajara
region near El Salto handle environmental waste.
Sophia wants the river cleaned of the
contaminates that are locally believed to cause
cancer and other sickness, but considerations
about how to detoxify the river lead to a rabbit
hole of social, economic, political,
environmental, and legal obstacles. This example
provides us with a profound illustration of a
“wicked” problem, marked by the social and
situational complexities that lead to an
entanglement of power, inequity, neoliberalism,
and environmental degradation that define many
of the world’s greatest challenges (Rittel &
Webber, 1973; Blanco, 1994; Head, 2008;
McCall & Skrtic, 2009). Here, the industrial
corridor that lines the Santiago River has grown
substantially in and around Guadalajara since
implementation of the North American Free
Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1994.
Environmental protection is mandated, yet while
it is generally accepted that the river acts as a
waste dump for industry, between 2005 and 2011
no fines were imposed on any of the more than
300 industrial facilities in the region for being out
of compliance. Protests from community
1 This determination is premised on research by co-author Steve Fisher.
members themselves, aligned under the name Un
Salto de Vida, went completely unheard north of
the Mexican border, where a majority of the
manufacturing firms that line the river are based.
This news story, in fact, is in the process of being
broken to an American public as we write (Fisher
& Jaacks, 2015), decades after the contamination
began and seven years after Miguel Rocha died
of exposure to toxic levels of arsenic.
The social dimensions of sustainability
encompass the social, political, and cultural
infrastructure that must be in place to both
prevent and mitigate “wicked” problems. Where,
then, can we locate the systemic cracks in
institutional and other social processes that enact
sociocultural and political obstacles to
community-driven desires for change? As stated
earlier, we think the lens of access is a useful way
to frame this and other sustainability issues.
In the case of El Salto, Sophia lacks access to
the large-scale political power that has enabled
Guadalajara to become a friendly locale for
American firms. Sophia and her community also
lack access to the justice system, meant to enforce
the environmental regulations that do exist. They
lack access to research and biomedical
information that could substantiate their claims
about the disastrous health effects of the river, to
a source of uncontaminated water for drinking
and irrigation, and to a safe, natural place for
recreation and communal gathering. In the wake
of environmental abuses, the community lacks
access to broad public attention and media
exposure. Finally, the community also lacks
access to defining the sociocultural norms of
decision-makers which currently underlie
neoliberal economic assumptions about what is
best for the region. Sophia does, however, have
access to her community and the relationships of
solidarity that she has created within it. Finally,
she has access to journalist Steve Fisher, which
enables the beginning of a conversation about the
ecological and social sustainability of the
Santiago River, and provides potential links to the
world of decision-makers outside of her
community.
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Access to Restorative Natural Environments
In El Salto, individuals suffering from
pollution and poor health embody the
community’s inability to access change through
formal institutions; however, the inability to
access and alter sociocultural norms that underpin
economic models of growth and urbanization is
equally in play. In the field of ecopsychology,
furthermore, many scholars argue that the
cultural norms of neoliberalism and the
imperative for economic growth not only
compromise the health of ecological systems, but
also undermine the health of human communities
(Ryan et al. 2007; Kasser, 2009). This may occur
through a variety of mechanisms. Perhaps most
centrally, individuals who have higher
materialistic value orientations, or who place a
higher priority on financial success, not only
engage in an array of less friendly environmental
behaviors (Sheldon & McGregor, 2000; Brown &
Kasser, 2005), but also experience a range of
negative psychosocial consequences, including
having shorter, more conflictual interpersonal
relationships, engaging in fewer prosocial and
more antisocial activities (for a review, see
Kanner et al. 2007), and display lower levels of
psychological well-being (Dittmar et al. 2014).
Additionally, the highlighting of financial
success, image, status, and fame in
advertisements has been shown to harm viewers’
self-esteem (e.g., Kasser, 2005).
Heightened consumer behavior, increased
immersion in mass media, and reduced time spent
in nature also tend to mutually reinforce one
another. For example, individuals in the United
States and Japan spend a shrinking percentage of
time engaging in, and enjoying the documented
health benefits of, nature-based recreation
(Pergams & Zaradi, 2008). In conjunction with
this trend, individuals devote an increasingly
large percentage of time to electronic media
indoors: the average adult in the United States
devotes approximately five hours per day to
watching television, and an additional 2.5 hours
on non-work related viewing of smartphones,
tablets, personal computers, and other screen
devices (often using more than one device
simultaneously) (Nielsen, 2014). The sedentary
nature of such viewing greatly harms health and
leads to premature mortality (Owen et al. 2010).
In familial contexts, greater television usage also
predicts an increase in children’s levels of
consumer behavior, which then contributes to
poorer relationship quality with parents (Schor,
2004).
In the context of widespread urbanization,
consumerism, and indoor immersion in electronic
media—of reduced access to natural
environments—it is not coincidental that we now
see a robust emerging literature demonstrating
extensive mental, behavioral, and physical health
benefits of exposure to natural environments.
“Exposure to natural environments” or “exposure
to green spaces” has been operationalized in
numerous ways, including having designated
parks in one’s neighborhood (Mitchell &
Popham, 2007), having plants and other natural
features in and around the house (Wells & Evans,
2003), gardening or participating in horticultural
programs (Wichrowski et al. 2005), viewing
nature through windows or in photos (Ulrich,
1984; Berman et al. 2008), experiencing higher
levels of biological diversity in local parks (Fuller
et al. 2007), and walking outdoors (Hartig et al.
2003).
The empirical health benefits of exposure to
nature are extensive, including increased capacity
for directed attention and reduced mental fatigue
(Tennessen & Cimprich, 1995; Kaplan, 2001),
improvements in cognitive functioning for
individuals with attention deficits (Cimprich &
Ronis, 2003; Taylor & Kuo, 2009), increased
positive emotional experiences (Fuller, et al.
2007; Van Herzele & de Vries, 2012), reduced
anxiety and depression (Gonzalez et al. 2009),
reduced stress along with stress-related illness
(Leather et al. 1998; Wells & Evans, 2003; Van
den Berg et al. 2010), improved recovery from
surgery (Ulrich, 1984; Park & Mattson, 2009),
lower disease morbidity (Maas et al. 2009), and
lower mortality, including mortality related to
income deprivation (Takano et al. 2002; Mitchell
& Popham, 2008). In addition to directly
facilitating psychological and physiological
health (e.g., via stress reduction), natural
environments also have indirect positive effects
on health by providing attractive locations for
physical activity (Kaczynski & Henderson, 2007;
Hartig, 2008) and for enjoying higher quality
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social interaction and social support (Coley et al.
1997; Shinew et al. 2004).
Additionally, active engagement with nature
has been shown to contribute to a coherent,
meaningful sense of connection with the natural
world, which in turn is positively associated with
a variety of mental health indices (Wolsko &
Lindberg, 2013; Zelenski & Nisbet, 2014). In
specific cultural contexts, the mental and physical
health benefits of this existential connection with
the natural environment are due to a life in nature
that is not only recreationally enjoyable, but is
also pragmatically imbued with rich sociocultural
value, for example through the spiritual, social,
economic, and physical ramifications of
subsistence practices in indigenous communities
(Izquierdo, 2005; Wolsko et al. 2006; Labun &
Emblen, 2007).
While this literature on exposure to nature
and health is encouraging, the distribution of
natural spaces favors ethnically and racially
privileged communities (Wolch et al. 2014).
Certain ethnic minority and low socioeconomic
status communities, already suffering from
numerous mental, physical, and behavioral health
disparities, also tend to live in neighborhoods
with less access to green space and greater
exposure to environmental toxins (Adler &
Newman, 2002; Heynen et al. 2006). Even when
access to natural spaces is available, the
normatively sanctioned manner of access is
frequently directed by affluent, ethnically and
racially privileged voices (Kessel et al. 2009).
Byrne (2012), for example, explored the
perceptions of barriers of a Latino community’s
access to parks in Los Angeles. Many research
participants reported that they felt unwelcome or
out of place, and some also felt discriminated
against based on their way of using a park, which
favored a large gathering over quiet hiking. Byrne
concluded that there appears to be a “dominant
nature narrative,” which he termed “white
nature,” that may serve as a barrier to some
communities accessing parks for fear of being
judged and/or discriminated against. Butler and
Richardson (2015) reported similar findings in
their investigation of national park use by black
South Africans. In particular, many of the
participants indicated feeling unwelcome and
stated perceptions that they were unsure what “to
do” in national parks.
While we understand the research on nature
and wellness to date to be valuable, it is
paramount for researchers and institutions (e.g.,
parks and recreation departments, urban planning
commissions) to begin identifying how their own
conceptualization of recreational engagement
with the natural world may influence outcomes
for diverse communities. Much of the literature to
date focuses on access to green spaces as a means
to reduce stress and facilitate the restoration of
mental processes, largely through “appreciative”
and often solitary recreational experiences in
nature (see Wolsko & Lindberg, 2013), which
might conflict with the worldviews of some
communities, especially those that have been
historically oppressed. Multicultural competency
in environmental health-related research and
policy decisions can be promoted through
dialogue, consensus, and community-based
participatory methods to formulate meaningful
research questions and to determine relevant
outcomes and policy decisions for specific
communities. Thus, access issues in this case
revolve not only around access to green spaces,
but also on the ability of specific communities to
access and alter the sociocultural norms of
acceptable behavior within such places.
Access to Information
Increased access to information and
knowledge, underpinned by universal
literacy, is an essential pillar of sustainable
development (IFLAI, 2014).
Education is a critical component of social
sustainability, alongside healthcare, housing, and
food access (Cuthill, 2010). Education inherently
relies on access to information, an essential
component of information literacy. In fact, the
International Federation of Library Associations
and Institutions (2011) provides specific
recommendations for governments, which stress
how access to information is critical to a global
society, lifelong learning, and individual well-
being, stating that “Media and Information
Literacy is a basic human right...and promotes
greater social inclusion.” Such access is essential
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for individuals to be information literate and, by
extension, to fully participate in conversations
and decisions about issues that affect their lives.
While the Internet has increased global
access to information of all types, a significant
portion of research-based information remains
unavailable to many people. Research literature is
often reserved for those affiliated with
organizations that pay for access, a model held
over from a pre-Internet, print-based information
society. And even though not every individual
can benefit directly from research publications,
the widespread communication of such work is
critical for ensuring that scientists, students,
politicians, stakeholders, and other engaged
individuals can use the best information
available.
Recent shifts in scholarly publishing are
creating a more openly accessible
communication system that encourages the use of
research findings by non-traditional audiences
(those outside academia and other research
institutions). Authors, libraries, organizations,
governments, and publishers are making “open
access” to information a priority. Open Access
(OA) in this context refers to scholarly research
that is made freely available to anyone with an
Internet connection and is free to use, adapt, and
redistribute so long as the original “authors
[retain] control over the integrity of their work
and the right to be properly acknowledged and
cited” (Chan et al. 2002). It should be noted that
open access to natural resources (e.g., Schlager
& Ostrom, 1992) is quite distinct from the
conceptualization of open access to information
discussed here. The genesis of OA to scholarly
research derived from a number of interrelated
concerns, including the consideration of
information as a public good, the recognition that
the current subscription-access model is
unsustainable given decreasing library budgets,
and authors’ interest in communicating their
research to both their peers and a wider audience.
Even traditional publishers, while slower to
embrace OA as a publishing model, are
increasingly making open access an option for
their authors, typically by asking authors to pay
an article-processing charge either in a fully open
format or a hybrid journal in which some content
resides behind a paywall and some is free (e.g.,
Springer’s Open Choice option). The number of
publishers that embrace OA (only) is growing in
number and, in some fields, these journals have
the highest rankings (e.g., PLOS).
Researchers (used here to refer to anyone
seeking access to scholarly information) have
long been stymied by requests to pay for access
to online journal articles. Even scholars and
students at research institutions that provide
subscription-based access are frequently
frustrated by complicated systems that require
authentication (Schonfeld, 2015). However, the
barriers for access to those unaffiliated with
research institutions are much higher because the
only route to research literature for most is by
costly payment.
The United States, the United Kingdom,
Australia, South Africa, and many other countries
acknowledge the inequalities in access to
research and the problems associated with the
subscription model. These issues are currently
being addressed through policies developed by
funding agencies (governmental and otherwise).
For example, in the United States, the White
House’s Office of Science and Technology
Policy (OSTP) (2013) issued a directive to
federal agencies that “[s]cientific research
supported by the Federal Government catalyzes
innovative breakthroughs that drive our
economy. The results of that research become the
grist for new insights and are assets for progress
in areas such as health, energy, the environment,
agriculture, and national security.” In other
words, access to research fuels more research,
creativity, innovation, and empowerment. With
OA, a small business can have the same
information as a large corporation, and an
informed citizenry can have access to the same
science covered by news media and cited by
policy-makers. The OSTP directive requires
agencies to develop plans to ensure that the
published results and data generated by research
they fund is available to everyone (typically after
a brief embargo period).
Education, which is inherently dependent on
accessing information, is essential to an informed
and engaged society, whether it be for access to
current healthcare information or to accurate
climate-change research. One argument against
public distribution of scholarship is that
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individuals without disciplinary training will not
understand, and therefore be unable to benefit,
from access to research literature. However, the
“public” includes medical practitioners and
others who can improve their practice through
enhanced access (O’Keeffe et al. 2011; NIH,
2014). One example of the general demand for
access is the “We the People Petition” (2012) to
“[r]equire free access over the Internet to
scientific journal articles arising from taxpayer-
funded research,” which gathered over 65,000
signatures (at a time when only 25,000 were
required for a response from the White House),
underscoring that access to scholarly information
is something people do indeed view as a right.
Like the examples before, examining access here
serves as an analytic tool to assess the ability of
multiple publics to acquire a resource (in this case
research and other information); and the ability to
change the status quo—the social and economic
norm of publication companies making large
profits from publishing the research literature.
Access to Decision-Making Processes
Access to healthy ecosystems, restorative
natural environments, and educational
information can be enhanced only when engaged
stakeholders are given meaningful access to
decision-making processes. However, who has
access, how one establishes and protects the
“right” to access, and who gets counted as a
“stakeholder” are often profoundly contested
matters. Our final example illuminates how
access becomes contested due to different claims
of ownership and in terms of the degree to which
one has a stake in development plans.
These access issues are examined in the
context of a 2011–2012 effort by the Northwest
National Marine Renewable Energy Center
(NNMREC) and Oregon Sea Grant (OSG) to
carry out a community-based process to choose
the site for North America’s first full-scale, grid-
connected wave-energy test facility (called the
Pacific Marine Energy Center–South Energy Test
Site, or PMEC-SETS). The siting process,
developed by NNMREC and OSG and
independently evaluated, included stakeholder
engagement along the Oregon coast and
ultimately sought proposals to host the site from
two communities—Reedsport and Newport.
When examining access to decision-making
processes, it is essential to first identify the
stakeholders in the process. Freeman defines a
stakeholder as “any group or individual who can
affect or is affected by the achievement of the
organization’s objectives” (1984). In contrast to
Freeman’s broad definition, Clarkson (1995)
defines stakeholders as those who may be put at
risk by a manager’s decision. The point here is
not to determine which definition is the more
correct, but rather to illustrate that identifying
stakeholders can be a contentious process.
In the context of the Oregon coastal regions
in which we (Goodwin and colleagues) have
examined access to decision-making processes,
oceans formally fall under the Public Trust
Doctrine, “the legal concept that the government
holds the common water resource in trust for the
public and regulates the commons in the public
interest” (Scanlan, 2006). Under Freeman’s
(1984) definition, the stakeholder list for ocean
management would include all citizens of the
United States. Using Clarkson’s (1995)
definition, the stakeholder list would be more
explicit. For example, commercial fishermen,
who have made significant investments in their
businesses, would be primary stakeholders
because placing a wave-energy development in
prime fishing grounds would put them at risk for
declining income. Likewise, if a nearshore wave-
energy facility were placed in sight of a luxury
hotel, the owner could be vulnerable to losing
business due to diminished views.
Considering the potential impacts of ocean-
management decisions on “stakeholders” and the
legal requirement to allow public comment on
those decisions, an effective decision-making
process has to contend with multiple challenges.
One is creating reasonable access, or the
capability of stakeholders to participate in
decision-making processes (Sen, 2005). Another
is wrestling with who among the public is
considered a “stakeholder” in the first place.
With regard to the first challenge, we see that
access to decision-making processes can be
hindered in multiple ways. Not having access to
comprehensible information can hinder a
stakeholder’s ability to engage in a decision-
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making process (Bryson et al. 2013; Dalton,
2006). Additionally, the ability to participate can
be stifled when the avenues for involvement are
not accessible. Specifically, relying on electronic
means of input severely limits access by ethnic
and racial minorities and those with lower levels
of education and socioeconomic status
(Mossberger et al. 2006). Furthermore, physical
access to a process can be hampered by the
location and timing of public deliberations (Tuler
& Webler, 1999; Bryson et al. 2013). For
example, holding a meeting in a place
inaccessible by public transportation is likely to
limit attendance. Similarly, scheduling a meeting
during a standard workday precludes
stakeholders who work at that time.
Regarding the problem of delineating
stakeholders, Mitchell et al. (1997) proposed a
theory of stakeholder salience to explain “the
degree to which managers give priority to
competing stakeholder claims.” Stakeholder
salience is based on the stakeholder’s perceived
power, legitimacy, and urgency. Power is defined
as “the ability...to bring about the outcomes
[stakeholders] desire” (Salancik & Pfeffer, 1974),
legitimacy is “a perception or assumption that the
actions of an entity are desirable, proper, or
appropriate” (Suchman, 1995), and urgency is
“the degree to which stakeholder claims call for
immediate action” (Mitchell et al. 1997). The
amount or type of attention paid to a stakeholder
is generally based on these attributes. Definitive
stakeholders are those who possess all three
attributes, and they often, but not always, receive
the most consideration from managers, and are
therefore most likely to gain access to decision-
making processes.
Viewed through this lens of stakeholder
salience, our research (Goodwin and colleagues)
indicated that commercial fishermen were
definitive stakeholders in the PMEC-SETS
process, as they possessed power, legitimacy, and
urgency. However, the priority given to the
commercial fishermen marginalized other
members of the local community. In interviews
conducted by Goodwin and colleagues, one
participant reported that commercial fishermen
“put some pretty serious constraints on the
locations that they’d ‘allow’” and other
participants were not comfortable enough to
make alternative recommendations. Another
participant recognized the importance of the
commercial fishing industry, but said, “the
fishermen do not own any ocean areas or
bottom…these places are instead owned by the
public and should be treated as such.”
This example demonstrates that access as
such is not necessarily a “good” in and of itself,
but that legitimate access to decision makers and
decision-making processes will be continuously
contested. Investigating these processes of
contestation is also a vehicle for understanding
social sustainability. As in our other examples,
we find that access to the sociocultural norms that
underpin social processes, in this case the process
of defining the term “stakeholder,” is paramount.
Conclusion
As noted in the introduction, using access as
an analytic tool to investigate issues of social
sustainability brings to mind Sen’s theory of
capabilities. However, as our examples have
shown, explicitly identifying whether or not an
individual or group has access to governance
systems, sociocultural norms, and decision-
making processes extends the implications of that
perspective. Sen (2005) defines capabilities as,
“the opportunity to achieve valuable
combinations of human functionings—what a
person is able to do or be.” Because the locus of
his investigation is necessarily on the individual,
Sen (2005) continues, “they [capabilities] fall
short of telling us enough about the fairness or
equity of the processes involved, or about the
freedom of citizens to invoke and utilize
procedures that are equitable.”
In all four examples presented above,
individuals and communities must do just that—
to instigate change or to promote the social
dimensions of sustainability they must
simultaneously negotiate multiple sociocultural,
political, and institutional systems or processes.
In these cases, access—the ability and means to
catalyze change in or maintenance of social
systems, which have material and social
consequence—is limited by various obstacles and
in diverse ways. In the cases of access to research
findings (literature) and to green space, both
actual goods and/or services may be limited for
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certain individuals and groups, along with access
to processes that may alter the sociocultural
norms that prioritize, for example, the profit
motives of publishers and the preferred outdoor
recreational experiences of dominant cultural
groups. More insidiously in the case of El Salto,
norms that exclude the well-being and desires of
marginalized groups pose complex obstacles to
access, with serious material and social
consequences.
As in the equitable management of common-
pool resources, in some instances it may be in the
interest of social sustainability to limit access,
while in other cases social sustainability rests
directly on opening up processes of decision-
making and development. Recent work by Klain
et al. (2014) shows the political and cultural
challenges involved in striking this balance of
access in the context of marine-resource
management. In the El Salto example and in the
development of a wave-energy test facility, there
is public debate surrounding what constitutes
equitable and legitimate access to decision-
making processes. The persistent discourse over
“who has the most to lose” in the development of
the wave-energy project remains unresolved.
Some of the examples that we have described
help inform parts of others. Limits to the open
access of information and research affect
Atawalpa Sophia’s ability to gather information
that could help her community understand the
biochemical makeup of the river, which in turn
could be used to access public, political, and legal
support. Conversely, increasing access to
information and experts via the Internet provides
opportunities for Sophia to meet and engage with
journalists and filmmakers. While arsenic
poisoning and the public health consequences of
living along a polluted river have reasonably
garnered the most attention from community
members in El Salto, lack of access to green
spaces might have longer-term consequences to
mental and physical well-being that community
members have yet to address.
Most helpfully, framing the issue of social
sustainability around access allows us to use
common language to talk about the
interrelatedness of our research. The notion of
access, unlike the concept of capabilities, gives us
an analytic platform from which we can assess an
individual’s or a community’s ability to evoke
change in and across social, economic, and
ecological systems. The term is distinct from
conceptions of empowerment in that it locates the
analysis and prospective changes within the
systems themselves instead of in vulnerable or
historically disenfranchised communities. The
tool is also distinct from notions of participation,
because “access” allows us to discuss both
material capital and social capital using the same
analytic concept. Because access can be deployed
across material, social, and ecological systems
and because it can assess both individual- and
community-level engagement, it becomes
particularly helpful for discussions of
sustainability.
From a pragmatic perspective, talking about
access is a way to articulate complex analyses
using a simple term from the vernacular that had,
and has, meaning outside of research traditions.
In this case, the access concept allows for
immediate engagement among researchers and
has the potential to facilitate involvement outside
of academic circles. We anticipate that using the
common term, “access” will make it possible to
discuss critical research on social sustainability
with the public, and across publics in a
comprehensible way while maintaining
situational complexity. In other words, we can
talk immediately with the public about the ability
or inability of individuals and communities to
access systems of power and change without
having to translate academic jargon. This
increase in transparent communication is in line
with the focus of participatory action research on
improving the accessibility of language used to
convey research findings and was a specific goal
of our collaborative effort (see also Kemmis &
McTaggart, 2006).
Finally, using access as a mechanism for
understanding sustainability also shifts focus
away from goods and/or steady-state social and
ecological systems and refocuses the broader
sustainability discourse on processes of change
(see Dillard et al. 2012). This approach is in line
with current social science research across
multiple topics, such as in the study of
environmental migration (see Marino, 2013). The
world, writ large, is in a state of flux and
uncovering who has access to systems of change,
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and systems in stasis, is a vital social science
contribution to the sustainability discourse.
Authors’ Note
Co-authors Doherty, Fisher, Green, Goodwin,
Reese, and Wirth are listed alphabetically, as they
contributed equally to this manuscript.
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