13 Sustainability

The last topic in the holistic techniques group is sustainability. Sustainability is a popular concept for current management. The definition of sustainability varies but generally includes aspects of maintaining options for future generations, interaction between humans and the environment, and interdisciplinary collaboration to solve problems. In this chapter we define sustainability and provide examples of sustainable actions, present information on recent developments in the field, and examine successful applications of sustainable principles. We end with a case study of San Francisco, a city with a long history of sustainable practices.

DEFINITIONS AND OBJECTIVES OF SUSTAINABILITY

The concept of sustainability first appeared in the early 1970s and 1980s as a method for managing interactions between nature and society. Despite the intervening decades, sustainability has not yet become a rigorously defined term. Most definitions include human needs for survival and natural needs. The meaning of sustainability is variable in different contexts and to different people. The most established definition is the one that spans generations and time. By this definition, sustainability involves development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs (World Commission on Environment and Development 1987). However, there are many that hold to a perspective more focused on preserving nature. This view results in definitions that emphasize meeting fundamental human needs while preserving the life support systems of the planet (Kates et al. 2001). Some definitions include the equitable distribution of resources between present and future generations of all human beings (Weiss 1990), and the use of these resources in a way that will not jeopardize the continued persistence of the planet’s biodiversity and ecosystems (Chapin et al. 2010). Another dimension of sustainability is that it applies to human needs, and also results in a balance of nature and society (Castree 2017). A final definition for sustainability is one that espouses peace, freedom, better living conditions and a healthy environment (National Research Council 1999).

There are few common concepts across all definitions of sustainability. Definitions include aspects of an intergenerational nature (transference from one generation to another); level of scale (multiple scales are involved); domain (multiple domains participate including at the least economic, ecological, and socio-cultural); and interpretation (there are a multitude of interpretations of the meaning of sustainability) (Martens 2006). At its core, sustainability is a fundamentally holistic technique (Hani et al. 2003).

The sustainability concept is not new to resource harvesting, especially fisheries and forestry (Clapp 1998). From the early 1900s to the present, theoretical and empirical studies have been undertaken to identify maximum sustained yields (e.g., catches or harvest) for valuable resources that could be sustained at some level of effort (Nielsen 1976; Larkin 1977; Luckert and Williamson 2005). Yields were solely based on the biological properties of species and population processes, and were not subject to societal interactions or political influences. In practice, pure sustainable management rarely occurred and most fisheries and forest resources were commonly overexploited (Ludwig et al. 1993) due to societal, economic and industry pressures. In the 1970s, professional organizations of fishery managers adopted “optimum sustained yield” as the paradigm for management (Bennett et al. 1978). This philosophy recognized the role of non-biological factors in management decisions and became the start of sustainability as a union of economic, social, and public interest factors; a balance of forces linking the biotic resource and human needs. This was the start of sustainability becoming a union of economic, environmental, and social aspects. This concept has been termed the Three Pillars of Sustainability (Hansmann et al. 2012). Unfortunately, overexploitation continues to occur in many fisheries (Ye and Gutierrez 2017) and forested areas (Islam and Bhuiyan 2018).

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE SUSTAINABLE?

Sustainability focuses on natural features and human needs. The natural features include life support systems and biodiversity. Human needs target people, the economy, and community. Reducing the impact on the environment at the same time as increasing food, income, and health is a fundamental challenge (Table 13.1).

Table 13.1: What is to be sustained and what would be increased. Source: adapted from Parris and Kates 2003

There are many aspects to enacting sustainability. At the individual level, enacting sustainable practices can mean driving less, eating more locally-produced and more plant-based foods, setting the thermostat higher in the summer and lower in the winter, avoiding single use plasticware, reducing waste and more. At the corporate level it could mean switching to using recycled paper, striving for net-zero emissions from buildings, installing solar panels on rooftops, encouraging worker well-being, and more. At the regional, state and national scale, it can mean establishing policies and regulations to reduce pollution, encourage conservation, and shift the way people think about all aspects of life in a way that fully encompasses sustainable principles.

SUSTAINABILITY SCIENCE

Sustainability science has emerged as a distinct research program (Clark and Dickson 2003; Clark 2007; Barrett 2021). The aim of the program is to advance our understanding of the interactions between society and nature to manage the transition to an increased use of sustainable principles for managing the earth’s resources. The incorporation of sustainable principles in resource management is a big change for most societies around the world and, as such, pulls together a diverse array of disciplines (Aronson 2011). Scientists promoting sustainability have needed to engage in research ranging from complex systems theory to cultural and political ecology. Combining these different theoretical approaches is a big challenge because it requires scientists to get into policy and engage decision-makers and the public. The research itself must be focused on the character of nature-society interactions, on our ability to guide those interactions along sustainable trajectories, and on ways of promoting the social learning that will be necessary to navigate the transition to sustainable practices (Kates et al. 2001). Another dimension of sustainability science is to solve problems at the societal-ecological interface. Sustainability science is problem-driven and interdisciplinary oriented. The hope is that stakeholders with diverse experiences will discuss key questions, appropriate methodologies, and institutional needs, and that outcomes from these discussions will provide applications that lessen the human impact on the natural world and simultaneously support human needs (Kates et al. 2001). This is more in the realm of traditional science because it is narrower and problem-oriented. Sustainability science needs to be connected to a political agenda to engage national and state leaders as a priority issue. If applied, all of these aspects will help to manage nature-society interactions to successfully transition to a greater use of sustainable principles.

BEST PRACTICES FOR TRANSITIONING TO MORE SUSTAINABLE PRACTICES

Sustainability requires an enthusiastic agenda that brings together academics, agencies, and institutions that can take action, consider global and local perspectives, and derive information from the environment, society, and the engineering and health care sectors (Figure 13.1). Cash et al. (2003) performed historical analyses of environmental issues, from initial scientific discovery to high-level policy agenda. They used scientific input to assess how these issues were defined and framed, which options were considered, and what actions were taken. They discovered that for big policy ideas (e.g., green revolution, aquifer depletion on the central United States, El Ni o forecasting, ocean fisheries, and transboundary air pollution), it takes a decade or more to reliably evaluate the impact of science on policy (Cash et al. 2003). The impact of scientific information on policy and public action depends heavily on the perceptions of stakeholders and involves three key factors: salience, credibility, and legitimacy (Cash et al. 2003; Cash and Belloy 2020). Sustainability must be relevant to the people involved (e.g., salience). The arguments for focusing on sustainability must be supported by technical evidence (e.g., credibility). The discourse must be respectful, unbiased, and fair to divergent values and beliefs (e.g., legitimacy). The public, concerned about transitioning to a program that includes sustainability, must be convinced that without such a transition, they might lose valuable materials and experiences. Scientists and leaders must make the argument that they are trying to avoid future problems.

The act of mobilizing science for sustainability requires that the boundaries between knowledge and action be managed for salience, credibility, and legitimacy of the information produced. This is often termed “boundary work,” – work that is carried out at the interface between communities of experts and communities of decision-makers (Cash et al. 2003). The three functions that contribute most to boundary management are: communication, translation, and mediation. Communication requires active, iterative, and inclusive exchanges between experts and decision-makers. Communications experts can translate among scientists, decision-makers, and the public to overcome impediments. Translation involves linking knowledge to action and requires that participants understand each other. Mutual understanding between experts and decision-makers is often hindered by jargon, language, past experiences, divergent values, and presumptions about what constitutes a persuasive argument. Active mediation of conflicts makes the boundary between experts and decision-makers selectively porous (i.e., open to certain purposes but closed to others; for example, getting data to researchers but keeping politics out of the scientific process). The boundary-management functions summarized above (communication, translation, and mediation) can be performed effectively through various organizational arrangements and procedures. These functions can be institutionalized in boundary organizations mandated to act as intermediaries between the arenas of science and policy for the purposes of: 1) Organization for managing the boundary; 2) Responsibility and accountability to social arenas on opposite sides of the boundary; and 3) Provision of a forum in which information can be co-produced by actors from different sides of the boundary. Those groups that made a serious commitment to managing boundaries between expertise and decision-making effectively linked knowledge to action (Cash et al. 2003). Such groups invested in communication, translation, and mediation, and thereby more effectively balanced salience, credibility, and legitimacy in the information they produced.

CHALLENGES

Cash et al. (2003) also identified a number of challenges, particularly in the way different stakeholders viewed the process of moving toward more sustainable action. Mobilizing science toward sustainability requires performing tasks not conventionally associated with research, leading many scientists, not surprisingly, to see participating in knowledge systems for sustainability as at best uncomfortable and at worst inconsistent with real scholarship. Reciprocally, many managers and decision-makers view the process as at best an expensive time investment with uncertain returns and at worst a risk to their perceived autonomy and independence. The focus on multiple, interacting perturbations and stressors, attention to coupled human–environment systems, and place-based analysis in the context of large scale change demanded a recasting of the interactions between scholar and practitioner. Effective processes were characterized by multiple boundary organizations, or multiple organizations that performed specific functions in managing the boundaries of complex systems. Often, single individuals played key boundary-spanning functions, independent of their particular organizational affiliations, thus there was a need to harness the boundary spanning potential of individuals and organizations. The new ideas for projects being called for in many sustainability discussions needed to be viewed as truly radical; these were not just individual studies or projects, but ideas to shift whole professional careers.

SUSTAINABILITY NEEDS TO BE PRACTICED WORLDWIDE

Unsustainable activities are degrading the planet’s ability to support humans (Chapin et al. 2011). The switch to sustainability could secure the Earth into the future. Nearly a quarter of the world’s human population is living in poverty (Human Development Initiative 2018), and sustainability should address this problem. Additionally, about 10% of people worldwide lack a secure connection to electricity (International Energy Agency 2019). Globally, energy generation produces a lot of emissions which change our climate (Davis et al. 2010). Hunger and malnutrition are widespread and food production should be addressed to feed the world’s human population. We need to rethink food production, and move away from our heavy reliance on oil and fertilizers to make agriculture more sustainable (McKenzie and Williams 2015). Global governance is necessary, one which embraces a platform of trust between regions and nations.

GLOBAL AGENDA FOR SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT

To address global challenges, all United Nations member states (193 countries) committed in 2015 to make progress toward achieving seventeen United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (Figure 13.2). They created a document called the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which provides a shared blueprint for peace and prosperity for both people and the planet, now and into the future (United Nations 2021a). At the core of the agenda are the seventeen SDGs which provide a call for action by all countries – developed and developing – in a global partnership. The SDGs recognize that ending poverty and other deprivations must go hand-in-hand with strategies that improve health and education, reduce inequality, and spur economic growth – all while tackling climate change and working to preserve our oceans and forests (United Nations 2021b).

The SDGs themselves are the following (Figure 13.2): 1) No poverty; 2) Zero hunger; 3) Good health and well-being; 4) Quality education; 5) Gender equality; 6) Clean water and sanitation; 7) Affordable and clean energy; 8) Decent work and economic growth; 9) Industry, innovation, and infrastructure; 10) Reduced inequalities; 11) Sustainable cities and communities; 12) Responsible consumption and production; 13) Climate action; 14) Life below water; 15) Life on land; 16) Peace, justice and strong institutions; 17) Partnerships for the goals (United Nations 2021b).

Many of these goals interact with other goals to various extents (Figure 13.3). For instance, clean water and sanitation (goal 6) strongly relates to responsible consumption and production (goal 12) and benefits can be harnessed for both goals (e.g., co-benefits) by addressing these issues. Conversely, climate action (goal 13) and life below water (goal 14) have significant tradeoffs for one in tackling the other, and these will need to be addressed going forward.

Each SDG has a set of targets and related indicators with differing numbers of targets (from 5-19) for each goal depending on its complexity. Targets are the concrete actions that each SDG is striving to achieve. For example, let’s examine the SDG Climate Action: take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts. Its five targets are: 1) Strengthen resilience and adaptive capacity to climate related hazards and natural disasters in all countries; 2) Integrate climate change measures into national policies, strategies and planning; 3) Improve education, awareness-raising and human and institutional capacity on climate change mitigation, adaptation, impact reduction and early warning; 4) Implement the commitment, undertaken by developed-country parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, to a goal of jointly mobilizing $100 billion annually by 2020 from all sources to address the needs of developing countries in the context of meaningful mitigation actions and transparency of implementation, and fully operationalize the Green Climate Fund through its capitalization as soon as possible; and 5) Promote mechanisms to increase the capacity for effective climate change-related planning and management in least developed countries and small island developing States, including focusing on women, youth and local and marginalized communities.

A single target can have multiple indicators. Indicators are the metrics used to determine if a target was met. The indicators relating to each of the Climate Action targets, respectively, are: 1) Number of deaths, missing persons and persons affected by disaster per 100,000 people; number of countries with national and local-disaster risk-reduction strategies; and proportion of local governments that adopt and implement local-disaster risk-reduction strategies in line with national-disaster risk-reduction strategies; 2) Number of countries that have communicated the establishment or operationalization of an integrated policy/strategy/plan which increases their ability to adapt to the adverse impacts of climate change, and foster climate resilience and low greenhouse gas emissions development in a manner that does not threaten food production; 3) Number of countries that have integrated mitigation, adaptation, impact reduction, and early warning programs into their primary, secondary and tertiary curricula; and number of countries that have communicated the strengthening of institutional, systemic and individual capacity-building to implement adaptation, mitigation and technology transfer, and development actions; 4) Amount of United States dollars mobilized per year, starting in 2020 accountable towards the $100 billion commitment; and 5) Number of least-developed countries and small island developing States that are receiving specialized support, and the amount of that support, including finance, technology and capacity-building, for mechanisms that raise capacities for effective climate change-related planning and management, including focusing on women, youth and local and marginalized communities.

Additionally, the United Nations tracks events, publications, news, and actions related to each SDG. The United Nations also bridges a variety of needs in reaching SDGs by supporting policy analysis; capacity development; inter-agency coordination; stakeholder engagement, partnerships, communication, and outreach; and knowledge management (United Nations 2021c).

ASSESSING PROGRESS TOWARD SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS

Global progress toward SDG fulfillment is monitored by 231 unique socio-ecological indicators spread across 169 targets. The United Nations Global Sustainable Development Report 2019—The Future is Now: Science for Achieving Sustainable Development (Messerli et al. 2019) concluded that, despite initial efforts, the world is not yet on track for achieving most of the SDG targets (Figure 13.4).

Good health and well-being (Goal 3) and Quality education (Goal 4) are closest to meeting some of their targets. No poverty (Goal 1), Zero hunger (Goal 2), Quality education (Goal 4), Clean water and sanitation (Goal 6), Affordable and clean energy (Goal 7), and Industry, innovation and infrastructure (Goal 9) are within 5-10% of meeting some of their targets. The majority of the SDGs are greater than 10% from meeting their targets. Disturbingly, some aspects of Zero hunger (Goal 2), Reduced inequalities (Goal 10), Responsible consumption and production (Goal 12), Climate action (Goal 13), Life under water (Goal 14), and Life on land (Goal 15) have been trending away from their targets (Messerli et al. 2019). In 1999, the National Research Council stated that it will take two generations to adopt a serious sustainability need (National Research Council 1999) and that seems to be playing out over perhaps an even longer time scale (Tibbs 2011).

Some positive news is that cross-national flows of information, goods, capital and people have all increased dramatically in the last few decades, underpinning a world that is more interconnected than ever (Figure 13.5). These flows overlap and interconnect and link the development of nations and regions across North and South, global and local, current and future. The flows produce many benefits. For example, through remittances, finances are transferred from richer parts of the world to poorer ones, and use of the Internet can give small entrepreneurs and artisans access to the global marketplace.

Conversely, the flows can also propagate negative impacts, such as deepening inequalities, unfair competition, resource depletion and environmental pollution and destruction (Messerli et al. 2019).

CASE STUDY: SAN FRANCISCO – SUSTAINABLE CITY

San Francisco adopted a plan to become a sustainable city in 1997. The plan, which later became a City document, was drafted by a community collaboration in which City staff contributed on equal footing with members of other sectors of the community including representatives from the City Planning Department, the Bureau of Energy Conservation, the Recreation and Parks Department, and the Solid Waste Management Program, businesses, environmental organizations, elected officials, and concerned individuals. In all, nearly 400 people worked on the plan. The plan was aimed at changing long-standing environmental practices and consisted of goals, actions, and objectives to be achieved. The aim of the plan was to “begin to fulfill our responsibility to our own futures and that of our children” (Sustainable City 2021).

Although there was remarkable unanimity among the plan drafters about the basic attributes of a sustainable society, as would be expected in any exercise of this size and scope, participants did not always agree on the best strategy for achieving goals. Some felt strongly that the plan did not go far enough and contained too many compromises; others felt that it had gone too far and was unrealistic.

Nonetheless, the document provided the rough game-plan that was necessary for a concerted effort to achieve a sustainable society, an effort that had been orchestrated by as broad a cross-section of the community as possible.

Sustainability can be divided into manageable sections with specific strategies proposed for action. Topics addressed in the plan were divided into two main categories: 1) Specific environmental topics and 2) Topics that span many issues. Specific environmental topics included: air quality, biodiversity, climate change, energy, food and agriculture, hazardous materials, human health, ozone depletion, parks and open spaces, solid waste, transportation, and waste and wastewater (Sustainable City 2021). Topics that spanned many issues included: the economy and economic development, environmental justice, municipal expenditures, public information and education, and risk management (Sustainable City 2021).

Each topic had specific goals associated with the issue. We will describe the plans for two of these topics here: biodiversity, and water and wastewater. San Francisco is a heavily urbanized city, which nonetheless has a rich variety of plant and animal communities. Thus, the strategy to increase biodiversity had five goals: 1) To achieve a greater understanding of biodiversity, its importance, how it is threatened, and how to protect and restore it; 2) To protect and restore remnant natural ecosystems; 3) To protect sensitive species and their habitats and support their recovery in San Francisco through reintroductions of extirpated species and habitat management; 4) To maximize habitat value in developed and naturalistic areas, both public and private; and 5) To collect, organize, develop and utilize current and historic information on habitats and biodiversity. The following indicators were used to assess progress toward biodiversity goals: 1) Number of volunteer hours dedicated towards managing, monitoring, and conserving San Francisco’s biodiversity; 2) Number of square feet of the worst invasive species removed from natural areas; 3) Number of surviving indigenous native plant species planted in developed parks, private landscapes and natural areas; and 4) Abundance and species diversity of birds, as indicated by the Golden Gate Audubon Society’s Christmas Bird Counts.

A water policy that creates sustainable water use balances the needs for protection of the environment and public health, while not compromising the ability of future generations of San Franciscans to procure water to meet their basic needs. A sustainable water policy also creates a shift from the traditional view of water as a commodity managed solely for the convenience of humans to a more balanced effort to maintain the water needs of the entire ecosystem, of which humans are only a part. San Francisco is fortunate in having a source of high quality drinking water which comes from the headwaters of the Tuolumne River in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. The Tuolumne River is captured behind O’Shaughnessy Dam and diverted to San Francisco via the Hetch Hetchy system. The strategy to increase water and wastewater sustainability had fifteen goals: 1) To maximize recovery and reuse of resources from wastewater; 2) To maximize water conservation and minimize water use and waste; 3) To minimize storm water flows into the combined sewer system; 4) To eliminate contaminants in supply and receiving waters; 5) To discharge only wastewater that does not impair receiving water; 6) To ensure a sustainable and adequate water supply; 7) To maximize protection of public health by providing safe drinking water and the safe handling of wastewater; 8) To ensure fair and effective permit and enforcement procedures; 9) To create a water and wastewater policy that reflects true environmental costs and benefits; 10) To restore and enhance ground-water supply; 11) To achieve long-term enhancement and restoration of local marine and fresh-water habitats; 12) To create an inclusive community of environmental stewards; 13) To repair, replace and upgrade infrastructure; 14) To include alternative water, wastewater and storm water policies; and 15) To create drinking water and wastewater standards that protect local and regional natural resources and public health. The following indicators were used to assess progress toward water and wastewater goals: 1) Per capita water consumption measured by the San Francisco Water Department; 2) Mass of pollutants in wastewater; 3) Mass and frequency of combined sewer overflows; 4) Recycled water use; and 5) Acres of habitat restored.

To begin to achieve these goals San Francisco created a new Department of the Environment, held meetings for public comment, sought and gained endorsement of the plan by City leaders, and began the long process of creating a healthy society that respects the needs of all its members, and the needs of the natural systems of which they are a part. They created various projects to plant trees on public schoolyards, ban plastic bags (in 2007), shift public transportation in the city toward zero emissions, and encourage residents to conserve water (Djoulakian 2015). On several of these issues, San Francisco was the first city in the nation to enact such projects or policies.

How well did San Francisco do? According to a 2011 Siemens/Economist Intelligence Unit study released at the Aspen Institute in Munich, San Francisco is North America’s greenest city, beating out other sustainable cities such as Vancouver, New York, and Seattle (Roggenbuck 2011). San Francisco took one of the top five spots for the categories of energy use, water quality, and air quality; second place for building standards and transportation; and first place for waste management (Figure 13.6) (Roggenbuck 2011). However, biodiversity was not among the categories for which San Francisco was highly ranked.

What factors account for this success? First, political will and supportive voters were needed to pass sustainable legislation, and San Francisco had both. Voters passed, by wide margins, measures such as the 2001 Proposition H, which set the stage for community choice aggregation (Hess 2005), and the 2003 Proposition K, which continued a sales tax to fund socially and environmentally motivated transportation projects (County of San Francisco 2011). Additionally, San Francisco became the

first United States city to mandate solar and living roofs on most new construction (Sustainable City 2018). Second, San Francisco’s experience with alternative energy helped it become a leader in solar energy use, and the city has completed a number of successful solar projects (Figure 13.7). Finally, the city has strong environmental planning due in part to its robust sustainability plan (Diamond 2011). San Francisco continues to work toward its goals and increasingly become more sustainable each year.

SUMMARY

The transition toward the inclusion of sustainability principles in ecological conservation is a challenge and faces many hurdles. Efforts have to address multiple scales, interests, and shortcomings to eliminate impacts to natural environments and maximize human benefits. The transition to the incorporation of holistic, sustainable principles in managing the earth’s resources is anticipated to take many decades because different ways of thinking have to be adopted across the world. However, the United Nations SDGs are inspiring, and progress is being made every day toward the achievement of these targets.

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