Sustainability

Lorrae van Kerkhoff Fenner School of Environment and Society

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What do you think engineerscan contribute tosustainability?

http://dilbert.com

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Sustainable development

Development that meets the needs of the present, without compromising the

ability of future generations to meet their own needs.

WCED, 1987. Our Common Future. OUP.

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Limits to resources

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Sustainable development

Environment

EconomySociety

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Sustainable development

Environment

Economy

Society

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“The future we want”

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“The currently observed changes to the Earth System are unprecedented in human history. Efforts to slow the rate or extent of change – including enhanced resource efficiency and mitigation measures – have resulted in moderate successes but have not succeeded in reversing adverse environmental changes. Neither the scope of these nor their speed has abated in the past five years.”

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Technology and sustainability

Paul Ehrlich Julian Simon

“It cannot be overemphasized that no changes in behaviour or technology can save us unless we can achieve

control over the size of the human population.”

1969. The Population Bomb.

Are we now "in crisis" and "entering an age of scarcity"? …almost without exception, the relevant data - the long-run economic trends - suggest precisely the opposite… that natural resources have been becoming less scarce over the long run, right up to the present.1998. The Ultimate Resource II: people, materials and environment.

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“Technology offers a continually, if unevenly, expanding domain of increasing human

control and power in the world, and in the process technology continually transforms

the natural and social worlds.”

Allenby and Sarewitz, 2011. The Techno-human Condition. Cambridge MA, MIT Press.

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Which technology is currently contributing

MOST to sustainability?

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http://blog.microsecommerce.com/index.php/uncategorized/eye-on-the-industry-the-next-wave-in-the-mobile-boom-are-you-ready/

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Why the i-phone?

Level I: it’s a phone

Level II: it’s a new technology network

Level III: it’s transforming livelihoods for poor farmers

Allenby and Sarewitz, 2011. The Techno-human

Condition. Cambridge MA, MIT Press.

http://www.intomobile.com/2008/08/27/wireds-iphone-3g-data-speed-survey-shows-wireless-networks-as-weak-point/

http://www.hindustantimes.com/photos-news/photos-india/dailylifeindia/Article4-731375.aspx

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Is it?

Really?

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Level III technology: Earth system

“… a complex, constantly changing and adapting system in which human, built and natural elements all interact in ways that produce emergent behaviors which may be difficult to perceive, much less understand and manage.” (Allenby and Sarewitz, p.63)

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Level III technology: Earth system

Co-evolutionary

Technological clusters

Transformative

Unpredictable

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Sustainability

Technology is key

But has a wide range of unpredictable consequences

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Sustainability – implications for technology

Flexibility, learning, nimbleness:- No ‘solutions’- Option spaces, scenarios: prepare for the

unexpected- Reduce technological lock-ins- Continual <aggressive> learning- Do not confuse economic efficiency with social

and ecological efficiency