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‘Cosmo-Localization’: Can Thinking Globally and Producing Locally Really Save Our Planet?

February 6, 2018

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‘COSMO-LOCALIZATION’: CAN THINKING GLOBALLY AND PRODUCING LOCALLY REALLY SAVE OUR PLANET?

Fablabs, makerspaces, emerging global knowledge commons… These are but some of the outcomes of a growing movement that champions globally-sourced designs for local economic activity. Its core idea is simple: local ownership of the means to produce basic manufactures and services can change our economic paradigm, making our cities self-sufficient and help the planet.

Sharon Ede, urbanist and activist based in Australia has recently launched AUDAcities, a catalyst for relocalising production in cities. She shared her insights on the opportunities of making cities regenerative and more sustainable as well as the limits of cosmo-localization.

TECHNOLOGY, AS WE ALL KNOW, IS NOT NEUTRAL. MAKING THE TRANSITION TO SELF-SUFFICIENT CITIES NEEDS A CULTURAL SHIFT, NOT JUST A TECHNOLOGICAL ONE. SO, HOW DO WE DESIGN OPEN-SOURCE TOOLS THAT FOSTER A CHANGE IN BEHAVIOURS AND ARE INCLUSIVE?

Technology will go where cultural, social and economic values direct it. A cultural shift will include open source tools, and the kinds of processes we need to create those – but a cultural shift will require much more.

Governments can and do play a significant role in shaping culture through policy and regulation, and contrary to popular belief about where innovation originates, the state is not only a key entrepreneurial actor but also has a huge opportunity to reinvent itself as the ‘partner state’ – where government responds to the contributory democracy we are seeing emerge as a force that does with, not for or to, the communities it serves.The technology, and who owns it, is just a manifestation of what we value.

THERE HAS BEEN A LOT OF DEBATE ABOUT THE REAL BENEFITS OF LOCAL PRODUCTION, ESPECIALLY THAT LAST-MILE DELIVERY IS MORE HARMFUL TO THE ENVIRONMENT THAN THE BENEFITS IT BRINGS. IN YOUR EXPERIENCE, WHAT IS THE ECOLOGICAL FOOTPRINT OF A PRODUCT THAT HAS BEEN GLOBALLY DESIGNED AND LOCALLY MANUFACTURED?

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Earth Overshoot Day and Not-For-Profit Enterprise

August 14, 2015

Earth Overshoot Day and Not-For-Profit Enterprise

In 2015, 13 August is Earth Overshoot Day. The day marks the estimated calendar date when humanity’s demand on the planet’s ecological services (which produce renewable resources and assimilate wastes) outstrips what the Earth can supply. This means that for the rest of the year, we are taking more than is regenerated, operating in Overshoot. Last year, Earth Overshoot Day was August 19th. We first went into Overshoot in the late 1970s, and since then the day has crept ever earlier on the calendar. This means we are using the ecological resources of just over 1.5 Earths.

Meeting the challenge of providing for all humanity’s needs within the limits of what our Earth can provide will require a radical restructuring of the global economy. In this post I will discuss how a post-growth economy based around not-for-profit enterprise can help us get to One Planet Living.

Before we get into that, though, what is Earth Overshoot Day all about? It’s based on the concept of Ecological Footprinting, which is both a science-based sustainability metric and also a sustainability communication tool developed by the Global Footprint Network. You can read the methodological details here, but the basic idea is that the Ecological Footprint is the amount of productive space needed to provide the ecological resources and absorb the waste of an individual, a city, a business, a country or the whole world, expressed in global hectares.  An Ecological Footprint is made up of cropland, pasture, fishing grounds, forest, land built-up with buildings or infrastructure and the land needed to absorb carbon emissions, with this last one usually accounting for at least half the footprint.

 

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If everyone lived in an ‘ecovillage’, the Earth would still be in trouble

July 4, 2015

If everyone lived in an ‘ecovillage’, the Earth would still be in trouble

We are used to hearing that if everyone lived in the same way as North Americans or Australians, we would need four or five planet Earths to sustain us.

This sort of analysis is known as the “ecological footprint” and shows that even the so-called “green” western European nations, with their more progressive approaches to renewable energy, energy efficiency and public transport, would require more than three planets.

How can we live within the means of our planet? When we delve seriously into this question it becomes clear that almost all environmental literature grossly underestimates what is needed for our civilisation to become sustainable.

Only the brave should read on.

The ‘ecological footprint’ analysis

In order to explore the question of what “one planet living” would look like, let us turn to what is arguably the world’s most prominent metric for environmental accounting – the ecological footprint analysis. This was developed by Mathis Wackernagel and William Rees, then at the University of British Columbia, and is now institutionalised by the scientific body, The Global Footprint Network, of which Wackernagel is president.

This method of environmental accounting attempts to measure the amount of productive land and water a given population has available to it, and then evaluates the demands that population makes upon those ecosystems. A sustainable society is one that operates within the carrying capacity of its dependent ecosystems.

While this form of accounting is not without its critics – it is certainly not an exact science – the worrying thing is that many of its critics actually claim that it underestimates humanity’s environmental impact. Even Wackernagel, the concept’s co-originator, is convinced the numbers are underestimates.

According to the most recent data from the Global Footprint Network, humanity as a whole is currently in ecological overshoot, demanding one and a half planet’s worth of Earth’s biocapacity. As the global population continues its trend toward 11 billion people, and while the growth fetishcontinues to shape the global economy, the extent of overshoot is only going to increase.

 

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Sustainability Metrics, Growth Limits, and Philanthropy

June 25, 2015

Sustainability Metrics, Growth Limits, and Philanthropy

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As the metrics of sustainability become ever more robust and sophisticated, it is ever more apparent to many of us who study those metrics that industrial civilization, as currently configured, is unsustainable.

Ecological footprint analysis tells us that we are presently using 1.5 Earths’ worth of resources annually. We are able to do this only by drawing down renewable resources at a rate that exceeds their ability to regenerate; in other words, by stealing from the future.

Planetary Boundaries analysts have identified nine crucial parameters that define a safe operating space for humanity within the global ecosystem. We are currently operating outside that safety zone with regard to four of the boundaries. Exceeding just one boundary far enough, long enough, imperils both human society and the ecosystem on which it necessarily depends.

The most widely discussed of those boundaries is the planetary carbon budget. As we all know only too well, the CO2 content of the atmosphere now exceeds 400 parts per million—up from the pre-industrial level of 280ppm—and we appear to be well on our way to 450, 550, or even 650ppm, while climate scientists have determined that 350 ppm is the safe limit.

Those numbers, plus extinction rates, rates of ocean acidification, rates of topsoil erosion, and rates of deforestation, are the metrics of sustainability that tend to be most frequently discussed by environmentalists, and the alarming numbers being reported for these indices are certainly sufficient to support my opening assertion that current industrial society is unsustainable. However there are two other important metrics that have fallen out of fashion, largely because many people assume they measure society’s health rather than its vulnerability. One is human population growth. We all love humanity, but how much of it can the Earth support? World population stands at about 7.3 billion, and is on course to reach between 9 and 11 billion later this century. Yet a growing human population makes all those previously mentioned ecological perils—including climate change, deforestation, loss of biodiversity, and soil degradation—harder to address.

 

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