SPSF 2024-6 Consumption/Consumerism & Social Inclusion
Book 2. Mulligan, M. (2018).
An Introduction to Sustainability: Environmental, Social and Personal Perspectives, Routledge
Chap. 3: Consumption and consumerism
- Global Footprint Network Calculate Yours!
- "Hyperconsumption": the 3rd phase in the dev. of "consumer capitalism" (p.35) from the late 1970s rapid expansion in the quantity of consumer goods. Costs: [environmental] depletion of the palanet's natural resources; reductions in biodiversity. [social] economic costs, loss of social connectedness. [personal] stress. Causes: Using products which claim to improve personal health and emotional wellbeing. "Cocooning" as staying at home
- Individualism as "generation of desires"
- "Ethical consumption," "voluntary simplicity," "relocalisation," &"collaborative consumption" (pp.41-45)
- Four Es model:
i) Ensuring that incentive structures and institutional rules favour more sus. behaviours;
ii) Enabling access to pro-environmental (& pro-social) lifestyle choices;
iii) Engaging people in initiatives to help themselves; and
iv) Exemplifying the desired change within governement's own policies and practices.
Book 3. Sachs, J.D. (2015).
The Age of Sustainable Development, Columbia Uni Pr
Chap. 7: Social Inclusion
Three dimensions of social inclusion:
- The first dimension of social inclusion addresses income and wealth inequality.
- The second addresses discrimination through legal channels: laws in many parts of the world continue to discriminate against some groups.
- The third involves discrimination through cultural and social norms.
Six ethical approaches to social inclusion: i) Virtue ethics, ii) Monotheistic religions, iii) Deontological ethics/"duty ethics", iv) Utilitarianism, v) Libertarianism, and vi) Human rights.
- The human rights philosophy holds that every human being on the planet has basic human rights that must be protected by the society. There are five basic categories of such rights: political, civil. economic, social and cultural rights. This approach says that societies must organize themselves, perhaps through taxation and provision of public services, to secure individuals' rights to health, education and means of livelihood. The human rights approach is the dominant framework of the current international system of nations. (cf. UDHR)
- The focus on meeting universal basic needs can be justified through the lens of human rights or through the lens of utilitarianism. We sometimes call basic need "merit good." Merit goods are those goods and services that should be accessible by all individuals in society irrespective of an individual's ability to pay. Health and education are both widely judged to be merit goods.
Divided Societies
- Social inclusion aims for broad-based prosperity, for eliminating discrimination, for equal protection under the laws, for enabling everybody to meet basic needs, and for high social mobility (p.232).
- Ethnic diversity is sometimes measured along linguistic lines...what is called ethnolinguistic fractionalization, a measure of similarity or difference in the spoken languages in a population. When fractionalization is high, inequality is often high as well, with some groups dominating others politically and economically.
- So too are the political responses, the extent to which power is used to reduce inequalities (e.g., through tax-and-transfer policies) or the extent to which power is used to exacerbate inequalities (e.g., through displacing indigenous populations from traditional lands). Inequality is therefore a legacy of power, history, economy, and individual differences, amplified or diminished through the power of the state (p.238).
Forces of Widening Inequalities
- One key factor is the rising gap in earnings between high-skilled and low-skilled workers. The returns to education have increased markedly, leaving those with less education behind. The rising earnings premium to education probably reflect the combined forces of globalization and technological changes, both of which have been to the disadvantage of less-educated workers.
- use of robotics, advanced data management systems, and other information technologies.
- the political system. In some political systems, government forces resist the widening inequality by providing extra help to lower-skilled workers, such as job training, tax cuts, or added family benefits. These countries may call on the higher-skilled workers to take on some extra societal responsibilities, such as increased tax payments to support the transfers to the lower-earning households.
Gender Inequalities
- UNDP GII (Gender Inequality Index)
- The gender pay gap in OECD countries
- The gender gap in education enrollment has been improved due to international campaigns. (continued to Chapter 8)
Japanese entry
SPSF 2024 3rd-3
What is Systems Thinking?
Before reading a book about systems thinking, we should draw the elements of reality and lines to connect them. We can find that one element affects a lot of others and some of them affect back the first element. One solution is not always good for everything.
The first chapter of the below book (Stroh 2015) is titled, "Why Good Intentions Are Not Enough." We are first obliged to understand the whole system. Difference between conventional and systems thinking (Loc.420) (underline added):
- Conventional Thinking: The connection between problems and their causes is obvious and easy to trace; Others are to blame for our problems and must be the ones to change; A policy designed to achieve short-term success will also assure long-term success; In order to optimize the whole, we must optimize the parts; and Aggressively tackle many independent initiatives simultaneously.
- Systems Thinking: The relationship is indirect & not obvious; We unwittingly create our own prob & have significant control or influence in solving them through changing our behavior; Most quick fixes have unintended consequences - They make no difference / make matter worse in the long run; In order to optimize the whole, we must improve relationships among the parts; and Only a few key coordinated changes sustained over time will produce large systems change.
Introducing Systems Thinking
An introduction
Business
Health care
WHO
SPSF 2024-4: Sustainability and Sustainable Development
Book 1. Thompson & Norris (2021)
Sustainability: What Everyone Needs to Know,, Oxford U Pr. https://amzn.to/3PXc31c
Chap. 5: Sustainable Development
What is development?
- Growth, expansion, or enlargement as an increase in welfare
- Difference between consumption and investment: Development occurs when the capacity for continuous generation of welfare is enhanced. (p.101)
- Welfare: How well a person/group is faring in life (health, mental outlook, meaningful choices, control over how their lives go, a sense of belonging...) - development as happiness, well-being...
- Capital: an investment increasing the capacity for producing welfare. .. Economicstss use the word depreciation as how capital decreases over time.
What limits the SD? - We can't continue producing the goods because the earth is finite and our needs won't last forever.
Is SD just equivalent to sus? - No, from the international definition and why it matters in a global context.
Book 3. Sachs, J.D. (2015)
The Age of Sustainable Development, Columbia Uni Pr https://amzn.to/2Sz5N2Z
Chap. 1: Introduction to Sustainable Development
- SD tries to make sense of the interactions of three complex systems: the world economy, the global society, and the Earth’s physical environment (p.2).
- The normative side of SD envisions four basic objectives of a good society: economic prosperity; social inclusion and cohesion; environmental sustainability; and good governance by major social actors, including governments and business (p.3).
- The definition of SD, Brundtland Comission (1987: 41)
development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs (Brundtland Commission, 1987:41)
Five kinds of concerns about the distribution of WB:
1) extreme poverty
2) inequality
3) social mobility
4) discrimination
5) social cohesion (p.10)
What is BAU for SD?
Chap. 2: An Unequal World
GDP per capita is really not a comprehensive measure of economic development, because there are many other important indicators of WB that it does not precisely capture, including the health and education of the population (p.45).
Urban-Rural Inequality: It is important to start by clarifying the definition of "urban." Interestingly, there is no official international definition of what it means to be an urban area (p.51).
Income Inequality Within Countries: The lowest inequality ... tends to be in western Europe and especially in Scandinavia, with a Gini of around 0.25. In comparison with Scandinavia, the US is shaded green (Fig. 2.5), as the US is quite unequal in income distribution, with a recent Gini of 0.45 (p.56).
Practicing SD means both understanding the nature and sources of inequality and setting the goal of a high degree of social inclusion in economic development (p.59).
Measuring WB: UNDP's Human Development Index.
Subjective WB: e.g. World Happiness Report, Social Capital (the quality of the social environment and community), physical and mental health play a very important role.
Convergence or Divergence?: a narrowing of the gap between a poor country and a richer country? The poorer country is becoming even poorer? ... One of the crucial goals of SD is that all of today's low-income countries... should make that transition successfully through convergence to at least middle-income status (p.67).
Japanese entry
SPSF 2023-28: Sustainability
Book 1. Thompson & Norris (2021)
Sustainability: What Everyone Needs to Know,, Oxford U Pr. https://amzn.to/3PXc31c
Chap. 9: Sustainability - What everyone needs to ask
- Starting small: Check Social Ecology model below
- Consumption: Mulligan's Chap 3
- Greenwashing: Remember the woskhops with Swedish companies
- Why isn't everyone concerned about sustainability? (p.230)
- If indiciduals who are struggling to make ends meet do not spend much time or money on helping to protect ecological or social systems.
- The wealthiest members of society are least likely to be negatively affected by damages to ecological or social systems.
Book 2. Mulligan, M. (2018).
An Introduction to Sustainability: Environmental, Social and Personal Perspectives, Routledge https://amzn.to/3wLgMcu
Chap. 6: Sustainability models & concepts
- Nested model of sus. Fig. 6.1
- Adding a fourth dimension Fig. 6.2
- Social ecology model Fig. 6.3
- from efficiency to redesign
- Systems Thinking, key steps:
- Start by mapping the inflows & outflows of the system as a whole.
- Look for reinforcing & balancing feedback loops operating within the system.
- In looking at how the system functions, step away from linear thinking about cause & effect to focus on unintended consequences which may seem out of proportion to the apparent causes or triggers.
- Look for both resistances which reduce expected outcomes or escalations which amplify expected outcomes.
- Remember that there can be unexpected delays between causes/triggers & their consequences.
- Remember that no system is self-enclosed (bounded) and it interacts with a host of other unbounded systems.
- Remember that an apparently functioning system can be pursuing inappropriate goals or encouraging uncritical addictive behaviour.
- Consider if the espoused goals/aims of the system remain fresh and relevant or have been eroded by malfunction or loss of relevance.
- Ecological Thinking
- Working across scales from the local & the global
SPSF 2023-23: Wicked Problems
Book 2. Mulligan, M. (2018).
An Introduction to Sustainability: Environmental, Social and Personal Perspectives, Routledge https://amzn.to/3wLgMcu
Chap. 4: Global Challenges as wicked problems
The chapter focuses on:
- Understanding the key causes of human-induced global climate change and some of its emerging consequences.
- Broadening our understanding of how we can mitigate climate change impacts while also learning how to adapt to changing climates.
- Considering how we can use the onset of human-induced climate change to rethink unsustainable assumptions, values, and practices.
- Deepening our understanding of what it means to live in entrenched poverty and examine why global poverty elimination stategies have had limited success.
- The need to extend our empathy and responsiblity for the wellbing of all humans and non-human forms of life living on our planet now and the future.
"Wicked problems": The identification of "wicked problems" as ones which defy any "true-or-false" solutions, partly because they are commonly symptoms of other problems, was first advocated by planning theorists Horst Rittel and Melvin Webber (1973).(p.51)
i) no definitive definition of the problem; ii) no true or false solutions, only relatively good or bad responses; iii) seen as symptoms of other interacting problems; iv) unique so there can be no template to follow in responding; v) responses are one-shot efforts cannot be replicated; & vi) responses include many stakeholders with a wide range of values and priorities.
- Global Hunger Index (p.61)
- Human Development Index (p.64)
- Poverty in the "Developed" World (p.65)
- Shifting the Emphasis to Adaptive Capacity (p.66)
Book 1. Thompson & Norris (2021)
Sustainability: What Everyone Needs to Know,, Oxford U Pr. https://amzn.to/3PXc31c
Chap. 8: Sustainability in Science, Education, Religion, and the Arts
Rittel and Webber identified ten characteristics of wicked problems: (p.190)
- Wicked problems have no definitive problem definition.
- There is no way to tell when research on a wicked problem is complete.
- Solutions to wicked problems are not true or false but good or bad.
- One cannot be sure that one is making progress on a wicked problem, or that it has been solved.
- Wicked problems defy attempts to learn by trial and error.
- The number of possible responses to a wicked problem is effectively infinite.
- Every wicked problem is essentially unique.
- Every wicked problem is embedded within other wicked problems.
- Whether the solution of a wicked problem is good or bad depends on the perspective one takes.
- The planner has no right to be wrong.
...When people disagree on what the problem is, it is difficult, if not impossible, to be sure that one is making progress, because the criteria for progress will be in the eye of the beholders...
There is a difference between complex problems and wicked problems. Systems with many components behaving in intricate and difficult to predict ways present extremely challenging problems for scientific researchers... Although this problem has a very high degree of complexity, it is not wicked.
Attempts to ameliorate or manage a wicked problem usually involve risk-taking and impose costs on some parties. Getting involved in a wicked problem will also have an impact on the situation, changing the initial conditions or structure of the problem and preventing a do-over. As such, any attempt to intervene in wicked problems is fraught with ethical responsibilities. Researchers and policymakers must consider which parties are most at risk from attempts to improve the situation and determine the fairest distribution of costs and benefits.
Discussions
- What benefits can come from thinking of big global challenges as "wicked problems" rather than as problems to be resolved?
- What is meant by the term "adaptive capacity"?
SPSF 2023-1: What is sustainability?
- Book 1. Thompson & Norris (2021)
- Chap. 1: What is sustainability?
- Book 2. Mulligan, M. (2018).
- Chap. 1: Introduction
- Chap. 2: Biography of a concept
- G. activity
- Japanese entry
Book 1. Thompson & Norris (2021)
Sustainability: What Everyone Needs to Know,, Oxford U Pr. https://amzn.to/3PXc31c
Chap. 1: What is sustainability?
Big systems: composed of smaller-scale practices that affect one another.
Sustainability reflects a judgment about whether a process/practice should continue.
Where to start?
More than the environment?
Achievable?
Resilience?
Further reading
Fashionable?
Q1. Why are there some limits on what can be achieved by global summits such as Rio+20 and Kyoto Protocol? Do you support the international systems based on nation-state sovereignty ?
Q2. Can you pick up one example of possible “greenwashing” in your consumption? How do you live with them?
Q3. Do you agree that we are now in the Anthropocene? Explain the reasons why you agree/disagree.
Book 2. Mulligan, M. (2018).
An Introduction to Sustainability: Environmental, Social and Personal Perspectives, Routledge https://amzn.to/3wLgMcu
Chap. 1: Introduction
"Our Common Future" as the Brundtland Report, named after three-times Norwegian prime minister Gro Harlem Brundtland. The section 3, para 27, shows the definition of sustainable development - development sustainable to ensure that it meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs - followed by the poverty issue. The definision is humna-centered.
Successes & Failures since 1987
- Failures >>> successes: esp. envirnmental issues
- The triple bottom line model (p.4, Fig. 1.1) by John Elkington, an Enligh planner and psychologist in 1994: Social - Environmental - Economic.
Working between the Global and the Local
- global issues as "wicked problems" to be discussed in Chap.4
- Rachel Carson: the mother of the modern environmental movement. "Silent Spring"
Bringing in the Personal
- Social Ecology model (p.7, Fig. 1.2): shifting economic thinking into the social sphere in order to make way for naming the "personal" as a major sphere for acting on sustainability challenges
- Social Ecolody model helps to bring the personal into view and this has strong pedagogical merit... Bringing sus. back to the personal scale can also help to counter some of the despair we may feel when we contemplate global trends and challenges.
Chap. 2: Biography of a concept
Early Influences: Spaceship Earth & "Limits to Growth",
- by the lead author Donella Meadows, who also wrote about the systems thinking (ST). SPSF 3rd-year seminar uses ST for a project for sustainable futures.
- Stockholm 1972, Rio 1992, MDGs 2000, Johannesburg 2005, Rio+20 2012, SDGs 2015, Stockholm+50 2022.
Herman Daly's sus principles:
- Limit the human scale to that which is within the Earth's capacity
- Ensure that technological progress is efficiency increasing rather than throughput increasing
- For reviewable resources, harvesting rates should not exceed regeneration rates and waste emissions should not exceed the assimilative capacities of receiving environments.
- Non-renewable resources should be explored no faster than the rate of creation of reviewable resources. (p.27)
Successes & Failures at a global level
- ozone hole
- human-induced climate change
G. activity
Greenwashing? "Home" & "Experts" G.
Japanese entry
24. SPSF 2022-14: Sustainable Development Goals,
Book 1. Sachs, J.D. (2015).
The Age of Sustainable Development, Columbia Uni Pr
Chap. 14: SDGs
I. SDGs
1972 - UN Conf. on the Human Environment in Stockholm
1992 - the Rio Earth Summit
2012 - Rio+20 Summit
- the single most urgent task in all of the interconnected challenges of SD is the tasks that the world did take on in the year 2000 with the adoption of the MDGs: the fight against extreme poverty. Extreme poverty is the most urgent priority because it is a matter of life and death for at least 1 billion people.
- SDSN is the idea that the world needs not only new goals, political motivation, and will, but also a new era of intensive problem-solving in SD challenges that include health, education, agriculture, cities, energy systems, conservation of biological diversity, and more. The SDSN is a network of universities around the world...
Wedding Cake Model: Structured SDGs
A New Take on the Sustainable Development Goals - Johan Rockström
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wu8xvzIPRhM
II. Goal-Based Development
- The evidence from the MDGs is powerful and encouraging. In Sep. 2000, the UNGA adopted the MDGs... Did they make a difference? The answer seems to be yes. There has been a marked acceleration of poverty reduction, disease control, and increased access to schooling and infrastructure in the poorest countries of the world... How did they do this? Why do goals matter? There are many answers to this question:
- goals are critical for social mobilization: the world needs to be oriented in a direction to fight poverty / to help achieve SD.
- peer pressure in and out
- mobilizing epistemic / knowledge communities: with networking for practical pathways.
- mobilizing stakeholders
- What have been the accomplishments and weaknesses of the MDGs? Probably the biggest accomplishments have been in the area of public health. Three out of the eight MDGs are about health.
- SD agenda is even bigger and harder than MDGs. SDGs have included not only the continuation of the fight against extreme poverty but also the integration of that goal with several others, including social inclusion and environmental sustainability.
- There are two specific tools that will be important for translating SDGs into reality.
- backcasting: Rather than forecasting or guessing what will happen in 2040, we set the target for a certain date and analyze the problems from the target to the present - backward in time - to chart a course between today and the future. How can we get from here to there?
- technology road-mapping: It asks deep questions about the pathway from today to the future goal. What are the technological barriers to overcome between now and 2030? (p.493)
The final point that will be absolutely crucial is that the SDGs will be a multistakeholder process.
III. Financing for SD
- Economists teach us a lot about where the right boundaries are. There are a few crucial reasons why the private sector approach, which would ideally be the universal one if it actually solved problems, does not solve many critical problems in particular and important cases. The first case is when the challenge is fighting extreme poverty. Markets are basically designed to ignore the poor...
- aid can work and that it is vital in certain circumstances. It is especially vital when people are very poor and facing life-or-death challenges... The desperately poor are not consumers who will create an immediate profit... And so the poor need help through other means.
IV. Principle of Good Governance
- Four major dimensions of SD. There are the traditional three - economic development, social inclusion, and environmental sustainability. But those three requirements in all cases the underpinning of a fourth dimension: good governance.
- Good governance: accountability, transparency, and participation through public discourse, public deliberations, and hearings on regulations.
V. Is SD Feasible?
- There is an underpinning of ethics in all these ideas. When we talk about moving to global SDGs, were are also talking about the need for and possibility of shared goal ethics. It is heartening that many of the world's religious leaders have come together and declared that the world's religions share a common ethical underpinning that could underpin a shared commitment like SDGs, including the Golden Rule; the commitment to "first, do no harm;" and the standards of good governance, including human rights, accountability, transparency, and participation.
Book 2. Mulligan, M. (2018).
An Introduction to Sustainability: Environmental, Social and Personal Perspectives, Routledge
Chap. 2: Biography of a concept
- Timeline: Spaceship Earth to "Limits to Growth"
- Stockholm 1972, Rio 1992, MDGs 2000, Johannesburg 2005, Rio+20 2012, SDGs 2015, Stockholm+50 2022.
- Herman Daly's sus principles:
1) Limit the human scale to that which is within the Earth's capacity
2) Ensure that technological progress is efficiency increasing rather than throughput increasing
3) For reviewable resources, harvesting rates should not exceed regeneration rates and waste emissions should not exceed the assimilative capacities of receiving environments.
4) Non-renewable resources should be explored no faster than the rate of creation of reviewable resources. (p.27)
Chap. 6: Sus. models & concepts
- Nested model of sus. Fig. 6.1
- Adding a fourth dimension Fig. 6.2
- Social ecology model Fig. 6.3
- from efficiency to redesign
- Systems Thinking, key steps:
1) Start by mapping the inflows & outflows of the system as a whole.
2) Look for reinforcing & balancing feedback loops operating within the system.
3) In looking at how the system functions, step away from linear thinking about cause & effect to focus on unintended consequences which may seem out of proportion to the apparent causes or triggers.
4) Look for both resistances which reduce expected outcomes or escalations which amplify expected outcomes.
- Remember that there can be unexpected delays between causes/triggers & their consequences.
- Remember that no system is self-enclosed (bounded) and it interacts with a host of other unbounded systems.
- Remember that an apparently functioning system can be pursuing inappropriate goals or encouraging uncritical addictive behaviour.
- Consider if the espoused goals/aims of the system remain fresh and relevant or have been eroded by malfunction or loss of relevance.
- Ecological Thinking
- Working across scales from the local & the global
Discussions (Group)
A. Discuss why the SDGs is more challenging than the MDGs.
B. What is the potential use of technologies for sustainable futures?
A healthy economy should be designed to thrive, not grow | Kate Raworth
Japanese entry
22. SPSF 2022-13: Biodiversity & Ecosystem Services, Energy & Society
- Book 1. Sachs, J.D. (2015).
- Book 2. Mulligan, M. (2018).
- Data Activities & Discussions
- Japanese entry
Book 1. Sachs, J.D. (2015).
The Age of Sustainable Development, Columbia Uni Pr
Chap. 13: Saving Biodiversity & Protecting Ecosystem Services
I. What is Biodiversity?
Ecosystem services affect human well-being:
- provisioning: providing food, freshwater, wood, and fiber for building structures and clothing, and biomass for fuels
- regulating services: controlling the basic patterns of climate, disease transmission, and nutrient cyclings such as water, nitrogen, and oxygen
- supporting services: nutrient cycling and soil formation
- cultural services: enhancing human values, aesthetics, and religion. The textbook does not contain "preserving services", maybe because 1 to 4 came from the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (2005).
The relationship between ecosystem services and human well-being is illustrated in Fig. 13.1 (p.450).
Language in Danger: Diversity in cultures
II. Biodiversity Under Threat
- Humanity is now taking as much as 40-50 percent of all of the photosynthesis on the planet. We are commandeering the world's basic food supply - the output of photosynthesis - not for all species, but only for ourselves. (p.454)
III. Oceans and Fisheries
- aquaculture itself threatens the environment in many ways. The cultivation of fish in the managed fish farms can lead to spread of disease, excessive nutrient flows of many kinds, and threats to wild fish populations when farm fish escape into the wild. In short, aquaculture can be highly desirable if it is operated in a responsible manner, but that is a complex challenge given all the things that can go wrong. (p.461).
IV. Deforestation
- James Lovelock, creator of the Gaia theory of the interconnectedness of the world's ecosystems and the regulatory processes of those ecosystems at planetary scale, emphasized that when we degrade one ecosystem we impede or undermine the functioning of ecosystems in other parts of the planet. Lovelock said about eh deforestation of the tropical rain forests: "No longer do we have to justify the existence of humid, tropical forests on the feeble grounds that they might carry plants with drugs that cure human disease ... Their replacement by cropland could precipitate a disaster that is global in scale (Lovelock 1991: 14)."
V. International Dynamics
- The three multilateral environmental agreements of the Rio Earth Summit were reviewed twenty years later at the Rio+20 Summit. At that time Nature magazine conducted an in-depth analysis of what had happened under the various treaties and created a report card for each.
Book 2. Mulligan, M. (2018).
An Introduction to Sustainability: Environmental, Social and Personal Perspectives, Routledge
Chap. 5: Energy & Society
- Sun is the ultimate source of energy... At the same time, systems theory recognizes that energy is a fundamental component of all complex systems, including those designed and maintained by humans (p.71).
- direct connections between energy use and indicators of social development (p.74).
- Environmental & social costs of complex food production systems
- renewable energy sources
Data Activities & Discussions
- Deforestation
i) Go to the global forest change map: https://earthenginepartners.appspot.com/science-2013-global-forest
ii) Which countries have experienced high deforestation?
iii) Which countries have experienced high reforestation? - Share your narrative story about biodiversity and the planetary boundaries. Find something common among the stories and differences based on cultures.
Japanese entry
Japanese entry (FYI. Chap 12: Climate Change)
20. SPSF 2022-11: Resilient Cities & the Urban Challenge
- Book 1. Sachs, J.D. (2015).
- Additional Content: Covid-19 and urban life
- Book 2. Mulligan, M. (2018).
- Data Activity
- Japanese entry
Book 1. Sachs, J.D. (2015).
The Age of Sustainable Development, Columbia Uni Pr
Chap. 11: Resilient Cities
I. The Patterns of Urbanization Around the World
... factors that are distinctive about cities: 1) cities have high concentrations of the population; 2) industrial and services activities dominate city economies; 3) the average output per person in urban areas is often two or three times higher than in rural areas of the same country; 4) cities are the locus of tremendous amounts of innovative activities; 5) cities are trading centers; 6) major cities are generally coastal or at the estuaries of great rivers; 7) cities are places of rapid population growth; 8) cities are places of glaring inequality; 9) cities enjoy enormous advantages of economies of scope and scale; and finally 10) cities face major challenges of “urban externalities”–pollution of air and water, traffic congestion, the transmission of diseases, and crime and violence to name a few. Tokyo has a so large population that QOL is not always high.
The UN Population Division forecasts that by 2030, urban areas will be an estimated 60 % of the world's population (United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division (DESA Population Division). 2012. “World Urbanization Prospects: The 2011 Revision. p.3).
II. The Patterns of Urbanization Around the World
When most of us live in cities, we must make them sustainable. The answer is threefold: sus. cities are economically productive, socially (& politically) inclusive, and environmentally sustainable.
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Urban productivity: Cities must be places where individuals can find decent, productive work, and businesses can produce and trade efficiently. The basis for success is a productive infrastructure.
-
Social inclusion: Cities can be places that create high social mobility, or that widen the divides between the rich and the poor. Schools can unify them as a strong public system.
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Environmental sustainability: Cities are places of high population density and highly vulnerable to environmental ills. i) Mitigation to reduce their own "ecological footprint" and ii) adaptation as preparedness and resilience to changing environments.
V. Planning Sustainable Development
Sustainable cities are green and resilient. They are green in the sense that they have a low ecological impact, low GHG emissions per capita, and a pleasant and healthful environment for people to live and work in, including safe and clean air, accessible parks, and ways for people to remain active and healthy through walking...Sustainable cities are resilient because they recognize and plan ahead for the shocks they may experience in the future (p.387).
Additional Content: Covid-19 and urban life
What is your comment on this content from today's world?
Book 2. Mulligan, M. (2018).
An Introduction to Sustainability: Environmental, Social and Personal Perspectives, Routledge
Chap. 15: The urban challenge
- cities bring the environmental and social dimensions of sus. into sharp relief because social wellbeing is ultimately linked to environmental health.
- A range of debates continues to rage over the benefits and pitfalls of the urban form. One argument is that "economies of scale" come into play both in supplying city-dwellers with food, water, shelter, energy and other essentials and also in dealing with waste streams.
- Urbanization exceeds sus. in the world
- Peripheral Growth in Tokyo?
- Urban "Slums"
- Neglected Hinderlands (wasted wetlands)
Data Activity
The world's fastest-growing cities
Explore the table on the world’s fastest growing cities and urban areas from 2006 to 2020 on the following website: http://www.citymayors.com/statistics/urban_growth1.html
1) At what rate is the fastest city growing?
2) How many of the top 20 fastest growing cities are in high‐income countries?
3) Approximately, what proportion of the 20 fastest growing cities is in Africa?
Japanese entry
16 & 18. SPSF 2022-8: EFA, ESD, & post-Covid-19 to 2050
- Book 1. Sachs, J.D. (2015).
- UNESCO "Futures of Education" report
- Data Activities & Discussion
- Education for Sustainable Development
- Japanese Entry
Book 1. Sachs, J.D. (2015).
The Age of Sustainable Development, Columbia Uni Pr
Chap. 8: Education for All
Life Cycle Approach to Human Development
- Economic development depends on investment... the most important investment in that countries make is in their own people, especially investment in their children...Economists speak of investments in "human capital," just like investments in the physical capital of roads and bridges.
- The concept of human development includes two related ideas:
- the important fact that the abilities and health of an individual depend on cumulative process, of good health and access to health care, living in a safe environment, education, building skills, and on-the-job experience (SDSN Thematic Group on Early Childhood Development, Education and Transition to Work 2014). The Future Of Our Children: Lifelong, Multi-Generational Learning For Sustainable Development
- the individual "life cycle": An individual's capacities, health, and productivity at any stage of the life cycle depend on the choices that are made at earlier stages of that life cycle (National Scientific Council on the Developing Child/National Forum on Early Childhood Policy and Programs [NSCDC/NFECD 2010]).
Early Childhood Development (ECD)
- Research over the past twenty years has shown the startlingly important effect of early childhood, especially during the first three years, when the brain develops in many dynamic and important ways...Inequalities of childhood development start at a very young age. By age six or seven, a child raised in an unsafe environment will already have huge disabilities and liabilities relative to those children fortunate to be raised in a safe and secure environment (pp.256-257).
- This pattern suggests that poverty will repeat itself from one generation to the next... Yet here is where government can play a crucial role. Government programs and financing can help children of impoverished families to get a decent start. Part of the issue is money... Societies that fail to invest in preschool are likely to have lower social mobility and a greater gap in lifetime attainment between children born to high-income and low-income households (p.259).
The Rising Returns of Education and the Supply Response
- There are clearly bottlenecks on the supply side...Tuition costs are extremely high and continue to rise. Just when society ought to be helping young people to make an investment in higher education, very high tuition costs are holding back the supply response to a clear demand.
Social Mobility
- Education is a path to a more productive life as a citizen and an income earner, but we've noted that it can also be an amplifier of social inequality...More equal societies, which generally also have a strong role of government in providing ECD and access to quality education at all levels, end up with greater intergenerational mobility.
The Role of Higher Education in Technological Advance
- Higher education plays a key role in the two kinds of growth (endogenous growth and catch-up growth) we discussed in chapters 3 and 4.
- Universities are also critical for a third basic activity: helping society to identify and solve local problems of SD. Every issue with which were are grappling requires locally tailored solutions, often based on sophisticated management systems. .. America has long promoted its universities for this kind of problem-solving. One of the pioneering steps in the US was the Morrill Act, a major piece of legislation passed in 1862.
UNESCO "Futures of Education" report
【UNESCO報告書（概要版）】
https://bit.ly/UNESCOFuturesofEducation
Introduction
- The survival of humanity, human rights, and the living planet are at risk
- The need for a new social contract for education
- Redefining the purposes of education
Part I: Between past promises and uncertain futures
Chap.1: Towards more equitable educational futures
- Incomplete and inequitable expansion of education
- Persistent poverty and rising inequality
- A web of exclusions
Chap.2: Disruptions & emerging transformations
- A planet in peril
- The digital that connects and divides
- Democratic backsliding and growing polarization
- The uncertain future of work
Part II: Renewing education
Chap.3: Pedagogies of cooperation & solidarity
- Reimagining pedagogical approaches
- Pedagogical journeys at every age and stage
- Renewing the mission of higher education
- Principles for dialogue and action
Chap.4: Curricula & the evolving knowledge commons
- Participation in the knowledge commons
- The enabling role of higher education
- Principles for dialogue and action
Chap.5: The transformative work of teachers
- Recasting teaching as a collaborative profession
- The life-entangled journey of teacher development
- Public solidarity to transform teaching
- Universities’ ongoing relationships with teachers
- Principles for dialogue and action
Chap.6: Safeguarding & transforming schools
- The irreplaceable role of schools
- The necessary transformation of schools
- Transitions from school to higher education
- Principles for dialogue and action
Chap.7: Education across different times & spaces
- Steering educational opportunities towards inclusion and sustainability
- Expanding ‘when’ education happens
- Broadening the right to education
- Principles for dialogue and action
Part III: Catalyzing a new social contract for education
Chap.8: A call for research & innovation
- A new research agenda for education
- Expanding knowledge, data, and evidence
- Innovating educational futures
- Principles for dialogue and action
Chap.9: A call for global solidarity & international cooperation
- Responding to an increasingly precarious world order
- Towards shared purposes, commitments, norms and standards
- Cooperation in knowledge generation and the use of evidence
- Financing education where it is threatened
- The role of UNESCO
- Principles for dialogue and action
Data Activities & Discussion
A. UNESCO & OECD Data (Group)
Go to https://www.education-inequalities.org/
i) Is there any countries in which female students have graduated more than male from primary school?
ii) Generally speaking, which do male or female students go more to higher education? And why? (Cross check the ii) results with this: https://data.oecd.org/eduatt/enrolment-rate.htm
iii) Choose "Location" disparities and explain what you find in "Higher education attendance."
(iv) If you have extra time, read the NEET graph: https://data.oecd.org/youthinac/youth-not-in-employment-education-or-training-neet.htm
(FYI) Resource 1. GEM UNESCO
(FYI) Resource 2. SDG 4:
(FYI) Resource 3. Covid-19 & Ed. Do you think urban life is convenient?
Education for Sustainable Development
UNESCO 2020 ESD a roadmap #ESDfor2030
Learning to know, do, live together, to, and transform oneself & societies.
How SD differs from sus.?
from ESD to Sustainable Ed. or Deep ESD
Japanese Entry
12 & 14. SPSF 2022-7: Social Inclusion, Risk & Resilience
- Book 1. Sachs, J.D. (2015).
- Three dimensions of social inclusion:
- Divided Societies
- Forces of Widening Inequalities
- Gender Inequalities
- Data Activities & Discussion
- Japanese entry
Book 1. Sachs, J.D. (2015).
The Age of Sustainable Development, Columbia Uni Pr
Chap. 7: Social Inclusion
Three dimensions of social inclusion:
- The first dimension of social inclusion addresses income and wealth inequality.
- The second addresses discrimination through legal channels: laws in many parts of the world continue to discriminate against some groups.
- The third involves discrimination through cultural and social norms.
Six ethical approaches to social inclusion: i) Virtue ethics, ii) Monotheistic religions, iii) Deontological ethics/"duty ethics", iv) Utilitarianism, v) Libertarianism, and vi) Human rights.
- The human rights philosophy holds that every human being on the planet has basic human rights that must be protected by the society. There are five basic categories of such rights: political, civil. economic, social and cultural rights. This approach says that societies must organize themselves, perhaps through taxation and provision of public services, to secure individuals' rights to health, education and means of livelihood. The human rights approach is the dominant framework of the current international system of nations. (cf. UDHR)
- The focus on meeting universal basic needs can be justified through the lens of human rights or through the lens of utilitarianism. We sometimes call basic need "merit good." Merit goods are those goods and services that should be accessible by all individuals in society irrespective of an individual's ability to pay. Health and education are both widely judged to be merit goods.
Divided Societies
- Social inclusion aims for broad-based prosperity, for eliminating discrimination, for equal protection under the laws, for enabling everybody to meet basic needs, and for high social mobility (p.232).
- Ethnic diversity is sometimes measured along linguistic lines...what is called ethnolinguistic fractionalization, a measure of similarity or difference in the spoken languages in a population. When fractionalization is high, inequality is often high as well, with some groups dominating others politically and economically.
- So too are the political responses, the extent to which power is used to reduce inequalities (e.g., through tax-and-transfer policies) or the extent to which power is used to exacerbate inequalities (e.g., through displacing indigenous populations from traditional lands). Inequality is therefore a legacy of power, history, economy, and individual differences, amplified or diminished through the power of the state (p.238).
Forces of Widening Inequalities
- One key factor is the rising gap in earnings between high-skilled and low-skilled workers. The returns to education have increased markedly, leaving those with less education behind. The rising earnings premium to education probably reflect the combined forces of globalization and technological changes, both of which have been to the disadvantage of less-educated workers.
- use of robotics, advanced data management systems, and other information technologies.
- the political system. In some political systems, government forces resist the widening inequality by providing extra help to lower-skilled workers, such as job training, tax cuts, or added family benefits. These countries may call on the higher-skilled workers to take on some extra societal responsibilities, such as increased tax payments to support the transfers to the lower-earning households.
Gender Inequalities
- UNDP GII (Gender Inequality Index)
- The gender pay gap in OECD countries
- The gender gap in education enrollment has been improved due to international campaigns. (continued to Chapter 8)
Book 2. Mulligan, M. (2018).
An Introduction to Sustainability: Environmental, Social and Personal Perspectives, Routledge
Chap. 7: Risk & Resilience
- We have much to learn from the capacity of non-human ecosystems to absorb changes and still persist (Holling 1973).
- Personal and social costs of risk aversion:
- risk aversion has less cultural influence in non-western societies: people who live with significant levels of risk on a daily basis may well be more resilient than those who have been led to believe that risk can be managed out of existence (p.108). Beck (1992) argued that the response within western societies has been:
a) to externalise risk through the implementation of management plans;
b) to individualism risk by using legal processes to settle questions of responsibility; &
c) for authorities to minimise risk by suggesting that risk can be adequately managed. (p.110)
- individuals can become more resilient by developing their self-esteem, problem-solving skills, emotional awareness and social support networks (Ungar, 2012)... personal resilience has argued that the experience of a relatively good outcome in risk experience is a major factor in building personal resilience (Rutter 2012)
- Insights from Ecology: The focus is on the interaction between all the components of a particular ecosystem... An ecological framework highlights our human dependence on a host of non-human elements while the sociological concept of resilience, pioneered by Holling, reminds us that all systems involve complex interactions and interdependencies (p.112)... it is not diversity for its own sake that is important but rather enough "functional diversity" to allow for changes in how the system functions if and when conditions change.
- Human resilience (Walker and Salt 2006):
i) Avoid inflexible hierarchical structures by decentring the distribution of resources, knowledge and power - and by encouraging lateral connections.
ii) Introduce modularity to ensure that malfunctions within the system do not paralyse other parts of functions.
iii) Create physical spaces and allow w time for people to think creatively about their roles and functions or even the purpose of their work.
iv) Ensure good monitoring of performance and effective communication of monitoring outcomes.
v) Give all people time to think and reflect on what they are doing and ensure that people can learn from each other's experiences.
vi) Take advantage of com technologies to create "multiscale networks and connectivity" to share knowledge and create agile support networks.
vii) Seek a balance between conservation and innovation; remembering that some old ideas and practices may have enduring relevance. (p.115)
Data Activities & Discussion
A. Age at first marriage (Group)
- Go to https://www.gapminder.org/tools/ and plot the age at first marriage for women against income.
- What was the average age at first marriage in Sweden, China, and Niger in 2005?
- Which countries had low age at first marriage among the countries had above $20,000 income in 2005?
- Did you know any reasons Jamaica's average age was the highest?
- Approximately, in what year did almost all Western European countries rise above an age at first marriage of 26? What are the results of your analysis?
B. Human Rights (Group)
- Go to http://indicators.ohchr.org/ to find the status of Brazil, China, Japan, and the USA.
- When did these countries sign the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women?
- When did they ratify the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights?
- What are the results of your analysis of the two questions?
Japanese entry
10. SPSF 2022-5: Ending Extreme Poverty
Book 1. Sachs, J.D. (2015).
The Age of Sustainable Development, Columbia Uni Pr
Chap. 5: Ending Extreme Poverty
- A widely used definition of extreme poverty is the World Bank's poverty line, where extreme poverty lies at or below an income of $1.25 per day. The WB's definition is surely too narrow. It would be better to define the extreme poverty line according to the ability of individuals to meet basic material needs (SDSN 2012b), which are food, clean water, sanitation, shelter, clothing, access to health care, access to basic education, and access to essential services such as transport, energy, and connectivity. These are the minimum needed for survival and human dignity (p.138).
- Th poverty rate has steeply come down... in MDGs time(p.140-142).
Africa: electricity & population control
- The absence of electrification has been a huge chronic barrier to Africa's development and another aspect of Africa's poverty trap (SE4All 2012). Without electricity, productivity is very low. Low productivity means very low output per person, which in turn means low income and thus poverty. Poverty means low tax collections by government, and therefore the inability of the government to invest in the electricity needed to lift the region out of poverty.
- The Internet grid and mobile telephony are spreading without the need for public financing due to variable profitability and lower fixed costs than power generation. ICTs have already given a huge boost to Africa's development, and will continue to do so as they facilitate access to health care, education, banking, and other services.
- A final challenge that Africa must surmount is the very high fertility rate.
South Asia: food & women
- The first Green Revolution called for a massive increase in fertilizer use and some of that fertilizer has polluted India's rivers and coastlines. The first Green Revolution did not pay heed to long-term climate change, which was not yet recognized. The second Green Revolution (or Evergreen Revolution) will need to develop crop varieties that are resilient to heat waves, droughts, floods, and other shocks that will rise in the future as part of the consequences of human-induced climate change (p.168).
- One of the noteworthy ways that rural women have been empowered in recent decades has been through microfinance institutions, a new method of small-scale lending that is well adapted to the needs of impoverished rural women...One of the notable features of female empowerment, sometimes in the context of the self-help groups, is that it has given young women that incentive to marry later and reduce their total fertility. A mother in the labor force who earns her own income knows through experience and thorough knowledge from her peers that having fewer children will not only enable her to spend more time at work to earn a higher income but will also enable the household to invest more in each of her children so that he or she will have a chance for a better life (pp.167-169).
Official Development Assistance (ODA)
- The problem with the poverty trap, however, is that a country may be too poor to get on the ladder by itself... Yet they simply lack the cash flow (p.170)
- Two main ways to break a poverty trap (i.e. government's critical investments & ODA from donor countries)
- ODA became a basic pillar of the global community around 1970 (OECD 2010). Only five countries among the donors typically reach the targeted threshold of 0.7 percent of national income: Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands. cf. Top DAC are: US, UK, Germany, France, and Japan.
- The most effective kinds of development assistance build capital - such as paved roads, an expanded power grid, and more clinics and schools - or capacity, such as training and salaries for teachers and health workers, or social investments such as health care delivery (p.174).
Data Activities & Discuss
A. Official Development Assistance (Group)
Use the World Bank Indicator database (https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/) to answer the following questions.
- In 2019, what 3 countries received the highest amount of net ODA in constant 2019 US$?
- What percent of their GNI did that represent for each of these 3 countries in 2018?
B. What are positive and negative sides of ODA? (Group & Class)
- Positive - from economic backgrounds
- Negative - from cultural backgrounds
The Ages of Globalization: Geography, Technology, and Institutions (English Edition)
- 作者:Sachs, Jeffrey D.
- 発売日: 2020/04/23
- メディア: Kindle版
8. SPSF 2022-4: Why some countries developed / stayed poor & Consumption/consumerism
Book 1. Sachs, J.D. (2015).
The Age of Sustainable Development, Columbia Uni Pr
Checklist of economic diseases:
- Poverty traps
- Bad economic policies
- Financial insolvency
- Physical geography
- Poor governance
- Cultural barriers
- Geopolitics
There are two main ways to break a poverty trap:
- The government can borrow, make critical investments and count on future economic growth to repay debts, or
- Foreign and international actors can provide temporary private or official development assistance (ODA) to finance urgent needs and then scale down assistance as growth occurs.
The Role of Culture - Demography, Education, and Gender
... When a place is poor, it has the reputation of being lazy... This happened with Japan in the late nineteenth century. When Japan was still poor (around 1870), European observers condemned the Japanese for their alleged laziness. When Japan boomed, Europeans and Americans complained that Japanese culture led the Japanese to work too hard (p.121).
A critical step towards breaking this cycle is to help young girls stay in school: they to be more oriented toward the workforce, marry later, and have fewer children.
Book 2. Mulligan, M. (2018).
An Introduction to Sustainability: Environmental, Social and Personal Perspectives, Routledge
Chap. 3: Consumption and consumerism
- Global Footprint Network Calculate Yours!
- "Hyperconsumption": the 3rd phase in the dev. of "consumer capitalism" (p.35)
- Individualism as "generation of desires"
- "Ethical consumption," "voluntary simplicity," "relocalisation," &"collaborative consumption" (pp.41-45)
- Four Es model:
i) Ensuring that incentive structures and institutional rules favour more sus. behaviours;
ii) Enabling access to pro-environmental (& pro-social) lifestyle choices;
iii) Engaging people in initiatives to help themselves; and
iv) Exemplifying the desired change within governement's own policies and practices.
Data Activities
A. Suitability for Malaria Transmission (Class)
Go to the Map Room of the International Research Institute for Climate and Society at Columbia University: http://iridl.ldeo.columbia.edu/maproom. Select the "Climate and Health" section, and then the "Climate and Malaria" section.
- What are the necessary conditions suitable for malaria transmission?
Coincidence of precipitation accumulation greater than 80 mm, average temperature between 18°C and 32°C, and relative humidity greater than 60% - In which countries it is possible to be infected with malaria for all 12 months? (Hint: Look into the seasonal climatic suitability for malaria transmission.)
Democratic Republic of Congo, Congo, Equ. Guinea, Cameroon, Kenya, Madagascar
B. Discussion (Group)
“Malaria cannot be an impediment to economic development; the United States and Europe had malaria in the past and eliminated it as incomes increased. Therefore, arguing that malaria hinders development is incorrect.” Discuss why you agree or disagree with this statement.
Japanese entry
6. SPSF 2022-3: A Brief History of Economic Dev. & Wicked Problems
Textbook
Book 1. Sachs, J.D. (2015).
The Age of Sustainable Development, Columbia Uni Pr
Chap. 3: A Brief History of Economic Development
- Economists have given a name to this kind of growth: endogenous growth. "Endogenous" means something that arises from within a system, rather than from the outside. Endogenous growth means economic advancement that emerges from the internal workings of the economy.
- ...the growth of a "lagged" country that for whatever reasons of history, politics, and geography lagged behind as the technological leaders charged ahead... Catch-up growth can be considerably faster than endogenous growth. Technological leaders have tended to grow at around 1-2 percent per capita, while the fastest catching-up countries (e.g. South Korea and China) have enjoyed ... 5-10 percent per annum.
- The failure to recognize the fundamental differences between endogenous growth and catch-up growth has led to all sorts of confusion in the discussion of economic development... The first is based on innovation; the second on rapid adoption and diffusion of existing (though mostly foreign) technologies (pp.79-81).
Japan was one leader in this process, and it developed a wonderful metaphor: the flying geese model. When geese fly in formation (Fig. 3.5), one goose flies in front, and then in back are others (p.95).
Book 2. Mulligan, M. (2018).
An Introduction to Sustainability: Environmental, Social and Personal Perspectives, Routledge
Chap. 4: Global Challenges as wicked problems
"Wicked problems": i) no definitive definition of the problem; ii) no true or false solutions, only relatively good or bad responses; iii) seen as symptoms of other interacting problems; iv) unique so there can be no template to follow in responding; v) responses are one-shot efforts cannot be replicated; & vi) responses include many stakeholders with a wide range of values and priorities.
- Global Hunger Index (p.61)
- Human Development Index (p.64)
- Poverty in the "Developed" World
Data Activities
A. Agriculture, Industry and Services (Group)
Go to the World Bank database (http://data.worldbank.org/country ) and look up the following indicators: Agriculture, value added (% of GDP); Industry, value added (% of GDP); Services, etc., value added (% of GDP). Use the graph tool on the website to learn about these indicators for each of the income groups (low, middle, high income).
- Which income group is highly dependent on agriculture?
- Which income group is highly dependent on industry?
- Which income group is highly dependent on services?
Japanese entry
4. SPSF 2022-2: An Unequal World & Biography of a concept
Textbook
Book 1. Sachs, J.D. (2015).
The Age of Sustainable Development, Columbia Uni Pr
Chap. 2: An Unequal World
GDP per capita is really not a comprehensive measure of economic development, because there are many other important indicators of WB that it does not precisely capture, including the health and education of the population (p.45).
Urban-Rural Inequality: It is important to start by clarifying the definition of "urban." Interestingly, there is no official international definition of what it means to be an urban area (p.51).
Income Inequality Within Countries: The lowest inequality ... tends to be in western Europe and especially in Scandinavia, with a Gini of around 0.25. In comparison with Scandinavia, the US is shaded green (Fig. 2.5), as the US is quite unequal in income distribution, with a recent Gini of 0.45 (p.56).
Practicing SD means both understanding the nature and sources of inequality and setting the goal of a high degree of social inclusion in economic development (p.59).
Measuring WB: UNDP's Human Development Index.
Subjective WB: e.g. World Happiness Report, Social Capital (the quality of the social environment and community), physical and mental health play a very important role.
Convergence or Divergence?: a narrowing of the gap between a poor country and a richer country? The poorer country is becoming even poorer? ... One of the crucial goals of SD is that all of today's low-income countries... should make that transition successfully through convergence to at least middle-income status (p.67).
Book 2. Mulligan, M. (2018).
An Introduction to Sustainability: Environmental, Social and Personal Perspectives, Routledge https://amzn.to/3wLgMcu
Chap. 1: Introduction
- Fig. 1.1 "Three sectors" model: Social - Environmental - Economic (p.4)
...to balance economic development policies and practices with equal concern for environmental impacts and social outcomes. .. While environmentalists worry that many of the ideas associated with the overarching concept of sus. articulated in the Brundtland Report are very human-centred... global climate change is indeed a "wicked problem" that cannot be resolved with particular, short-term, responses.
- Fig. 1.2 Social Ecology model - Social - Environmental - Personal (p.7)
... to bring the personal into view ... Bringing sus back to the personal scale can also help to counter some of the despair we may feel when we contemplate global trends and challenges.
Chap. 2: Biography of a concept
- Timeline: Spaceship Earth to "Limits to Growth"
- Stockholm 1972, Rio 1992, MDGs 2000, Johannesburg 2005, Rio+20 2012, SDGs 2015, Stockholm+50 2022.
- Herman Daly's sus principles:
1) Limit the human scale to that which is within the Earth's capacity
2) Ensure that technological progress is efficiency increasing rather than throughput increasing
3) For reviewable resources, harvesting rates should not exceed regeneration rates and waste emissions should not exceed the assimilative capacities of receiving environments.
4) Non-renewable resources should be explored no faster than the rate of creation of reviewable resources. (p.27)
Data Activities
A. Levels of Urbanization around the world (Group)
Using the country profiles database from UNDESA, Population Division, World Urbanization Prospects at http://esa.un.org/unpd/wup/Country‐Profiles/, answer the below question.
Question: Before the Industrial Revolution, urban dwellers likely accounted for only 10% of the population. Which of the following countries was closest to this pre‐industrial revolution value of urbanization in 2010: Brazil, Burundi, Cambodia, Japan, Viet Nam, Estonia, and the United States?
B. The OECD Better Life Index (Group)
The OECD has created its own index of wellbeing. Information is available at
http://www.oecdregionalwellbeing.org/.
- Explore the website and explain what the Better Life Index is.
- What indicators are used to quantify each of the topic involved in the design of the Better Life Index?
- Choose 3 countries and compare their Better Life Indices; highlight the differences as well as common points.
C. GDP per capita vs HDI (Class)
To complete the exercise below, compare GDP per capita and HDI for countries around the world using the two following data sources:
- HDI ranking in 2018: http://hdr.undp.org/en/data
- GDP per capita ranking in 2018: https://www.cia.gov/
- Plot the GDP per capita rank against the HDI rank. Set the axis in reverse order such that the countries with the highest rank appear in the upper‐right corner of the graph. Name the axes.
- Can you identify a pattern?
- Are there any outliers—countries that do not conform to this pattern?
- Do you think the use of GDP per capita as an indicator for development is justified? Why or why not?
