Source: Planning for Sustainability, A Starter Guide
By: Alaya Boisvert, Pong Leung, Kim Mackrael, Chad Park and Mike Purcell; The Natural Step Canada; 2009
Reflection:
Those in the Sustainable Community Development program here at UWRF are familiar with The Natural Step (TNS). It’s a system/paradigm introduced in the first class we take. I don’t think it’s the only approach to sustainability, but it’s as good a place to start as any. Since I’m far more familiar with the concepts in this document, I’ll take this opportunity go give you what I see as the highlights of TNS.
The first is the four conditions a system must meet in order to be sustainable. I’ve hinted at and alluded to them in other posts, but it’s worth it to lay them out here:
In a sustainable society, nature is not subject to systematically increasing...
...concentrations of substances extracted from the earth’s crust,
...concentrations of substances produced by society,
...degradation by physical means,
and, in that society...
...people are not subject to conditions that systematically undermine their capacity to meet their needs
When considering these, I like to think of domestic analogies to put them in perspective. The first two state basically, if we make a mess of our house, we still have to live in it. If we make a big enough mess, it’s going to be toxic and kill us. The third is related. If we don’t take care of our house, it’s going to stop protecting us and, eventually, it will fall down. The last is perhaps the most oft-overlooked aspect of sustainability. We all have a survival instinct. It’s a lot stronger than we suspect. If it comes down to surviving today or worrying about sustainability tomorrow, we’re going to survive today, even if that means chopping down rainforests and dumping raw sewage into rivers.
The rest of the document lays out how you’d apply that to a given organization. The highlight of this is TNS’s ABCD Planning Process: Awareness, Baseline analysis, Compelling vision, Down to action. What I like about this is their emphasis on developing a vision and then working toward that vision. It seems this is backward from how changes normally occur and would prevent a lot of unintended consequences.
Perhaps the greatest strength of TNS is a combination of the above. You could pick apart the system conditions for sustainability, although they are so simple, and rooted so firmly in laws of nature that it would not be easy, and there are certainly other ways of implementing change than the ABCD approach, but taken an a system, from Business As Usual to a sustainable business, TNS is a straightforward path that does an excellent job of adapting to different situations. Now, if you’re a forward thinking organization with the foresight to hire a sustainability savant such as myself, that may not be such a big deal. But, if you’re new to the sustainability thing and want a relatively simple way to get there, TNS makes it about as straightforward as possible.
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Natural Step restated without the jargon:
ReplyDelete1. Don't take things out of the ground.
2. Don't create chemicals.
3. Don't interfere with natures systems.
4. Think of others.
(This is simplistic, but so is Natural Step.)
Regarding point 1. Why do we need to stop taking things from the earth? Nature cycles nutrients, minerals, and other forms of matter all the time. The issue isn't that we need to stop taking things from the earth's crust, we just need to do do in the way that nature does it.
Regarding point 2. Nature creates all kinds of chemicals. Everything from pollen to hormones play vital roles in nature. Why can't we do the same? Again, it isn't about not making chemicals, its about not making toxins.
Regarding point 3. I agree fully here. Human systems need to be integrated into nature in a way that does not disrupt it.
Regarding point 4. This always comes across as an after thought in this model. Frankly, to me, it is the achilles heal. If we don't meet the needs of all people, we will never get past the "economics first" argument. Without doing that you cannot solve environmental issues. And if I may be radical, if we don't strive towards human equality (not just equity), we're still going to end up with wars over resources. (i.e. countries "protecting" the interests of their society") I would move this to the top of the list.
NS is popular but it seems entrenched in a value system rather than based on science as they always argue.