3/4/2011

ES2

Environmental Planning and Management (EPM) Assessment: Local Strategies for Global Sustainability

By Omar Saeed

Omar Saeed MSc ESD ES2 Written Coursework

The Tool, the Criteria and Urban Sustainability (US)

Ecological Footprint (EF) analysis provides us with a way to calculate the level of resources consumed and the waste assimilated by a given population through a unique, land area measurement. Particularly, it attempts to document overshoot in consumption and waste assimilation (Mcmanus and Haughton, 2006). As defined by its creators (Wackernagel and Rees (1996), ecological footprinting accounts for the flows of energy and matter to and from any defined economy and converts these into corresponding land/water area required from nature to support these flows. The main body of analysis of EF in this paper is broken down into the assessment of EF against the 5 dimensions of US as outlined by Allen (2001); Social, Political, Economic, Physical and Natural and also 5 of my own criteria for US. The importance on US is supported by the founder of the EF, Mathias Wackernagel (1998), who stated that US is critical to overall sustainability because cities are where most important, political decisions are made, they contain the big businesses and many of the educational facilities of the surrounding area. The criteria I have derived are based on what I believe to be necessities for Environmental Planning and Management (EPM) to move towards US. The criteria are also used for assessing the tool and have been amended to fit in with the dimensions of US more thematically. They are as follows: 1) The ability to change peoples behaviour 2) The ability to affect a change at the policy level 3) The ability to change the way we plan and develop communities 4) The ability to measure human impacts on sustainability 5) The ability to be replicated to document progress

Omar Saeed MSc ESD ES2 Written Coursework

Does EF Have the Capacity to Influence Peoples Behaviour?

For a tool to help environmental planning and management move towards US, its ability to alter peoples behaviour patterns is a necessity. I will demonstrate EFs capacity to move EPM to US in the social dimension by discussing its ability as an awareness raising tool in planning. The case study is from based in an Austrian region called the Vulkan-Land. In this study, EFs social applications are presented through its use in local, multi stakeholder working groups which were open to the public. The outcomes that were derived from the working groups helped to define the regional energy strategy for the Vulkan-Land, building on social capital and providing the local community with an opportunity to consider their behaviour and attitudes towards the energy that they use. This gives EF a very strong foundation as an awareness raising tool which critics believe is its primary objective (Mcmanus and Haughton, 2006). The Vulkan-Land study reinforces criterion (1) (EF has the capacity to change peoples behaviour). Stakeholders involved in the working groups on the regional energy strategy became heavily motivated by the goal of reducing the areas EF when used in conjunction with other information (Narodoslawsky and Stoeglehner 2010). What this particular case study demonstrates overall is that EF is an excellent tool for social learning (Narodoslawsky and Stoeglehner 2010) which is central to helping the population move towards US. This strength stems from its simple application and quantitative output that professionals and non-professionals alike can analyse and interpret.

Can EF Affect a Change at Policy Level?

In 2002, the Greater London Assembly (GLA) calculated the Citys EF and produced a report called City Limits. This indicated that Londons EF was almost 50 times greater than its ecological capacity. Subsequently, the Mayor of London created the London Sustainable Development Commission (LSDC) soon after the report was produced.

Omar Saeed MSc ESD ES2 Written Coursework Although Moore, Nye and Rydin (2007) more or less assume that there is a cause an effect relationship between EF and the forming of the LSDC, the move could have been reactionary on political grounds only. However, it does suggest that the Mayor of London felt that the EF analysis would induce a social reaction of some sort which could have been the reason for the establishment of the new body. Assessing EF against criteria (2), this isnt enough to claim that the tool can affect a change at policy level as there is a good degree of uncertainty unless the Mayor had suggested this outrightly. The second case study in this section is of Cardiff City, Wales. A calculation of Cardiffs EF was made after a lengthy, two year data collection process between 2003 and 2005; part of a wider project named Reducing Wales Ecological Footprint.

Source: www.cardiff.gov.uk

Cardiff City Council (CCC) was able to see the advantage of using EF as a political tool because it appeared to offer a way of bridging the gap between local and global sustainability (Collins and Flynn, 2007). Further to that, CCC policy officers felt that EF data could be used to inform other policy makers on the Citys ecological impact and develop policy accordingly. Cardiffs policy did not radically change because of the EF study but the tool encouraged those at the policy level to engage with issues of sustainability through a more integrated mind-set (Collins and Flynn, 2007) which is slightly more of an achievement in the social dimension of US. Cardiffs EF study also helped to identify structural inefficiencies at council level such as the miscommunication between departments whose actions contributed to negative ecological impacts for each other. A further result of the study was the construction of a report on the Cardiffs EF and an outline of the key policy recommendations necessary for Cardiff to reduce its EF. Analysed against the criterion (2), EF has not managed to affect a change at policy level but has informed policy makers on how to make more rounded, integrated decisions regarding sustainability of the City (Collins, 2005). To reflect analytically on criterion (2), it would have been more appropriate to ask whether EF can contribute to better informed policy decisions on US. I say this because the case study implies that policy makers awareness of the importance of reducing Cardiffs EF has increased but the policies themselves have not altered because of it.

Omar Saeed MSc ESD ES2 Written Coursework To contrast this view of EFs capabilities at policy level, the work of Allen (2001) is very poignant. According to Allen (2001), political sustainability requires democratisation and participation of the local civil society in decision making processes; EF has achieved this with a degree of success in the Vulkan-Land. The local population were actively pursued to increase public engagement in the development phase of the strategy; stakeholders had the opportunity to review different energy strategy scenarios and make judgements on the approach they felt was most appropriate and the strategy was developed as such. The Vulkan-Land study demonstrates that it is the will of the policy makers themselves that provide the path for EF to be used as a tool to achieve political sustainability. In the dimension of political sustainability, EF actually needs policy makers to open the door so that it may walk through. Without this initial enthusiasm at policy level, EF will struggle to make an impact. When preparing for a regional energy strategy, Narodoslawsky and Stoeglehner (2010) note that a rough EF calculation based purely on the supply and demand of energy in the region itself can be motivational for local environmental decision makers to alter their processes towards sustainable, local energy sources. A board of decision makers for planning

strategies can consist of economic, political, environmental and social minds. Therefore, not all of the stakeholders involved will have a great deal of knowledge about the EF theory and calculation. Work in the Vulkan-Land showed that EF analysis helped to outline that

savings made on energy consumption quantified themselves as economic savings too. This ability to integrate different sectors gives EF a political quality in that it can appease stakeholders with different aims.

EF:

Does

it

Misinform

or

is

it

Misunderstood?
This section relates to the physical and natural dimensions of US and whether EF can correctly assess ecological impacts in a global environment. To begin, the methodological make-up of EF is examined, focusing on issues with the tools data. For those that deal with the tool, EF has the basic problem of the way it crudely splits land into categories of productive and non - productive (McManus and Haughton, 2006). To be capable of measuring environmental impacts, EF needs to be more detailed so that other

Omar Saeed MSc ESD ES2 Written Coursework factors such as differences in ecosystems can be addressed, making the EF calculation more accurate. To use an example adapted from McManus and Haughton (2006), if a nature reserve containing many rare species of animal had a major road built through it, its EF might still be smaller than that of a big city. However, taking into account the depletion of biodiversity that these species supplied, the EF does not correctly represent the ecological impact being created by the infrastructure. Another issue that questions EFs ability to measure natural sustainability is its failure to address water issues in its calculations. As EF looks at the impacts of land use, water is largely not included and McManus and Haughton (2006) clearly make the point that in many developing countries, aquaculture can be critical to livelihoods so the impact on this resource needs to be taken into account. According to Allen (2001), economic sustainability should be interpreted as a region being able to derive all its production and consumption within its own environmental limits. At present, there is no definitive answer as to whether EF is able to measure the economic sustainability of any given region with true accuracy. This criticism is further substantiated by McManus and Haughton (2006) and Acrewoods (2011); EF is not currently capable of fully acknowledging all ecological impacts within an urban context. For example, the

distance that people from a given region have to travel to obtain water is not included in the calculation. Hypothetically, this means that if all local people had to travel by car to one or two water pumps but the populations waste assimilation and resource consumption was otherwise low, the EF of that region might be large and unrepresentative of social conditions. Further ramifications of this issue include its impact on EFs ability to change the way we plan and develop our communities (Criterion 3). If planners chose EF as the sole decision making tool for the EPM process and the above was true, regional strategies for energy reduction could prove to be incorrectly constructed and misrepresent where the largest ecological impacts really are. EFs capacity to contribute to natural sustainability through successful management of the pressures of waste produced by societies (Allen, 2001) is not its strong suit. EF fails to recognise the differences in assimilative capacities of land in separate areas (McManus and Haughton, 2006). This could mean that an area where inhabitants have to source much of their food from abroad because of their homelands limited ecological capacity to yield edible produce could have a high EF because of its infertile land.

Omar Saeed MSc ESD ES2 Written Coursework Lenzen et al (2003) indicated that EFs capacity as a tool for analysing sustainability in EPM is low because it does not denote where exactly these ecological impacts are occurring or the level of impact which they are having. In order to measure human impacts on US (criterion 4) the EF calculation needs to contain far more ecological data then it currently does. In turn, this should avoid incorrectly informing planners and decision makers about the specific resource or waste area that most desperately needs a strategy to reduce consumption.

EF Gets Physical: The Case of BedZED

Allen (2001) defines physical sustainability as the capacity and aptitude of the urban built environment and techno-structures to support human life and productive activities. To

assess whether EF can achieve this dimension of urban sustainability, the case of the Beddington Zero Energy Development (BedZed) (a residential development in the United Kingdom) will be used.

The BedZED Development. Source: www.dwell.com/articles/ed-mazria-conversation.html

Omar Saeed MSc ESD ES2 Written Coursework Without going into too much detail regarding the physical make up of BedZED, it was built as a development that would help residents reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions (GHG) by intelligent design (Chance, 2009) including insulation, water, transport and urban agriculture. As a measurement of the residents progress with their GHG reductions, the average EF (5.32 global hectares/person) of the BedZED area (Sutton) was used as a benchmark to work from. This indicates the confidence that planners behind BedZED had in EF as a tool for EPM in the physical and social dimensions of US.

Consistent monitoring and evaluation was carried out using EF as a tool to assess BedZEDs progress and achievements. This supports criterion 5 (the ability to be replicable) which is needed to document progress.

The overall results at the time Chance (2009) published the report showed that the average BedZED resident had an EF of 4.67 global hectares which was lower than the average EF for a resident of Sutton. However, according to Chance (2009), if all people in the world lived like this, we would still need 2.6 planets to sustain us.

Although Chance (2009) stresses what can be achieved through BedZED with more hard work, this mostly concerns its potential. However, through the evaluation of BedZED, EF was used very well as an indicator of the potential that design and infrastructure have to reduce energy consumption and waste assimilation. Therefore, without the design problems that BedZED currently faces (Chance, 2009), the integration of EF within planning and evaluation could make it a very effective tool for EPM.

Is EF a Friend of Foe of EPM?

It is difficult to make a complete assessment on EFs ability as a tool for moving EPM towards US. By no means is EF effective in all the dimensions of US but this is where the reality of EF lies. Primarily, EF is a social tool for raising awareness (Mcmanus and

Haughton, 2006; Narodoslawsky and Stoeglehner, 2010) about the ecological impacts that human behaviours are creating. It is there to inform us just how far we are overshooting in our consumption and waste creation in the hope that poignant, intelligent and easy to process measurements such as 3.6 planets will help people at all levels realise their

Omar Saeed MSc ESD ES2 Written Coursework unsustainable ways of living. It does this with relative success through websites that anyone with an Internet connection and half an hour can fill out to get a rough idea of their impact on the environment take http://calculator.bioregional.com/# for example. However, it is worth noting that this level of accessibility does not apply to everyone and this entry point may be less accessible for those living in the Global South. Unfortunately, people have oversold the tool, claiming that it has abilities which it clearly does not. In turn, this seems to have led to the interested parties criticising its overall capability in EPM for not making an impact in dimensions of US that it was never meant to. There certainly needs to be a more global consistency regarding the level of detail of the data collected for EF calculations. More consideration needs to be given to situations where a given population is not able to lower its footprint without endangering its health, for example. With more detail, sensible strategies should be able to be formed for EPM so that EF can indicate where exactly the real drivers of consumption are located. An integration of EF with a tool such as the Resources and Energy Analysis Programme (REAP) tool could make the primary more robust as a tool for EPM. REAP attempts to track materials, carbon dioxide emissions and the Ecological Footprint through the economy by industrial sector, geographical area and socio-economic group, (Paul, 2008). However, it is important to remember that as EF gets more detailed, the margins of error increase but this is the problem with quantitative analysis that is constrained by the data from which it is created. Politically, EF seems capable in the EPM process. In Cardiff and the Vulkan Land, EF had the ability to raise awareness in policy makers of ecological overshoot but no more than that. However, with the limitations of EF that have been discussed, it actually appears to make sense for policy makers to approach EF with caution. The EF is not the one stop shop tool for EPM - far from it in fact. It should only be used as part of an overall process which contains other EPM tools currently used. However, its ability in the social dimension of US is glorious and this should be channelled into raising awareness of the rather dangerous ecological situation that we are currently in. 2,749 Words.

Omar Saeed MSc ESD ES2 Written Coursework

References
Acrewoods, (2010). Ecological Footprinting: Methods and Limitations. Available from www.acrewoods.net/environment/ecological-footprinting 2011]. Allen, A., (2001). Urban sustainability under threat: The restructuring of the fishing industry in Mar del Plata, Argentina. Development in Practice 11 (2) pp. 152 -173. Chance, T., (2009). Towards sustainable residential communities; the Beddington Zero Energy Development (BedZED) and beyond. Environment and Urbanization 21 (2) pp. 527 544. Collins, A., Flynn, A. & Netherwood, A. (2005). Summary Report. Cardiff: Cardiff City Council Collins, A., Flynn, A., (2007). Engaging with the Ecological Footprint as a Decision Making Too: Process and Responses. Local Environment 12 (3) pp. 295 -312 Lenzen, M., Lundie, S., Bransgrove, G., Charet., L. & Sack, F., (2003). Assessing the ecological footprint of a large metropolitan water supplier: lessons for water management and planning towards sustainability. Journal of Environmental Planning and Management 46 (1), pp. 113 141. Mcmanus, P., Haughton, G., (2006). 113 127. Moore, S., Nye, M., & Rydin, Y., (2007). Using Ecological Footprints as a Policy Driver: The Case of Sustainable Construction Planning Policy in London. Local Environment 12 (1) pp. 1 15. Planning with Ecological Footprints: a Cardiffs Ecological Footprint [Accessed 8th February

sympathetic critique of theory and practice. Environment and Urbanization, 18 (1) pp.

Omar Saeed MSc ESD ES2 Written Coursework Narodoslawsky, M., and Stoeglehner, G., (2010). Planning for Local and Regional Energy Strategies with the Ecological Footprint. Paul, A., (2008). Environmental Accounting for People and Places: REAP.

Stockholm Environment Institute. York: SEI Publications. Wacknernagel, M., Rees, W., (1996). Our Ecological Footprint: Reducing Human Impact on the Earth. Canada: New Society. Wackernagel, M., (1998). Environment 3 (1) pp. 7 - 25 The ecological footprint of Santiago de Chile. Local