Computing for Sustainability

Update from Dad in Cambodia

Samuel Mann — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 08:26:28 +0000

Here’s an update from my Dad (John Mann) on the work he’s doing for Beaudesert Rotary building schools in the village of Chuor Ph’av, Cambodia (and now, it seems, Koh te Cho).

This post is my editing together of five emails – so, sorry Dad if I’ve mixed it up (here’s an earlier update).

Dear friends and family,

Its several months since I gave a good update on life in Cambodia. A lot has been happening. I’ll send you five emails and hopefully 23 photos. I’ll start with the personal stuff and then in email two I’ll tell you about an incredible discovery and what will become an equally incredible project. In subsequent emails there will be photos and news of the two schools in our village and some magical photos of school equipment….mmm how, you may ask can school equipment be magical?

Do you remember an early photo of a little girl sitting on a cow. Chanthai has been attending our first school for the morning session – 7am to 12.30 six days a week and every afternoon till nightfall she looks after her cow. Chanthai has no immediate family and owns nothing except this cow. She survives by rearing the calves and selling them.. She is 10 years old now.

I’ve added a photo of foundation work to this email. You may recall that a teacher/volunteer house is going in to the right of the two schools. It will have solar power. Our very first volunteer teacher arrives in January. A young Australian woman who will teach English. We have money to finish the house but I am still looking for money to equip the house - bedding, furniture, pots pans plates cups etc etc. If you can help with money please contact me (the house is for Cambodian teachers too if they need it).

We have almost completed the second of the two schools in our villages in Prey Veng province and the school house will be complete by early January.
The next five photos are about a project that I feel very excited about and I think you will be too in around about three minutes from now.

The mighty Mekong River starts in Tibet then journeys through China and Laos before heading due south right through the middle of Cambodia. At Phnom Penh the river bends to the south east and at the border with Vietnam it divides into the ‘Nine Dragon’ delta.

Half an hour south east of Phnom Penh the river is very wide and there’s an island – Koh te Cho – in the middle. Think about “the smell of napalm in the morning” in ‘Apocolypse Now’ and the bombing of Neuk Leung in ‘The killing fields’ … That’s our island… and I mean our island in the same way that our villages on Prey Veng have certainly become our villages. Koh te Cho has 1000 school age children. There’s an old tumble down school house trying to teach 400 children in two shifts but 600 children can’t go to school at all. 20 years ago the villagers tried to raise money for some classrooms by making and selling noodles but gave up. They got as far as the concrete pillars which are now sadly decayed.

We will build them a school on that precise site. The site that they wanted. Same as our second school it will have books computers solar power and we’ll help pay for the teachers. The Cambodian government will pay each of three teachers $1 a day and we will match it.

One photo shows me and the village leaders in the ferry that goes to the island. We see tiny fishing houses as we approach the coast.

There’s a huge reception for us at the dock and then lots of children come with mums and dads to the village square to discuss and plan and prepare. The photo with the old concrete stumps is the exact site.

When this school is complete, hopefully in a year from now it will be a VERY SPECIAL PLACE. An island in the middle of one of the worlds most iconic and tragic rivers with our school children at long last getting a chance in life.

This is the magic that will be our third school – KOH TE CHO – the island. Building will commence early in the New Year.

Every year in early November it’s the national water festival and around 900 boats with up to 70 oarsmen in each boat compete in a three day race on the Mekong in Phnom Penh. Our island Koh te Cho entered a boat with 70 oarsmen. There’s a photo of me with the island chief in front of the boat and another photo of me presenting the local equivalent of Red Bull for the team.

The next set of five photos is surely a lesson on how the world should value education. I think they are nothing short of amazing to a western eye.

Over the past two months we have been gradually buying all the equipment needed for the second school – our senior school. I stay in the house behind the truck in one of the photos. It’s the largest house for miles and it’s where I stored everything prior to taking them the one kilometre to the school. As you can see there’s books – over 1000 text books, teachers books, 1200 excercise books, four new computers, lots of sport equipment, art equipment and musical instruments. There’s 300 full uniforms including flip flops, (or thongs or jandals depending on where you come from). (solar installation will happen the day the building is completely finished.)

In the west we would simply expect that these things would somehow materialize and there would definitely be little or no fanfare. In these photos and in photos in next email you can see first the piling of everything in a truck and then the ceremonial procession past everyones house, there’s me and Chanthou our translator who is dressed in all her finery and great clowns and figures of huge cultural significance accompanying with drums and a lot of noise.

This next set has 5 more photos following directly from the procession of equipment to the school. You can see all the children lined up and clapping us into the grounds. In the last set email you’ll see all the elders and government dignitaries lined up on the school verandah. Here you can see the villagers have displayed everything for all to see and celebrate. The children are under cover of a marquee.

Here’s the 300 uniforms on the table.

Here’s a photo of Chanthou paying money to one of the teachers. Every six months we pay each teacher the $180 supplement. I like to place the actual money in real dollars into their hands. There are many many cases of money ending up in wrong places in Cambodia. I am very very strict and photograph as many transactions and purchases as I can.

There’s also a photo of the two schools side by side. Foudations for the school house are in to the right of the buildings. There will also be water tanks for rain collection as well as a second toilet block.

A photo of happy looking adults next to school equipment includes the state (provincial) Premier next to me and a whole array of leaders elders and teachers. Two of the most significant people for me are the older man leaning forward and the younger man behind the computers who is looking away – these are Warn and his father and they are our main builders. They are good men.

We gave out uniforms and there’s a beautiful photo of four children the next morning about to set off for school at 6.30am. Beautiful for several reasons – these are very same cildren you’ve been looking at for the past two years and look at them today. I didn’t comb their hair. Just look at the pride! One girl found a watch and a bangle. I cried when I saw these children. It was a good moment.

And a personal story:

I receive a great many enquiries about Nang.

There are 2 photos of Nang - one in a yellow dress and one in purple (I bought the dresses for her). A quick recap is that 3 years ago I was told there’s a ‘crazy’ girl to avoid in the village who doesn’t wash or care for herself. I saw it was epilepsy and I made an instant decision to take her to Phnom Penh for a CAT scan and work out a medicine regime. She had no father. I bought her clothes and taught her to care for herself. I look after Nang’s epilepsy and on January 7 this year I gave her away at her wedding. Her husband is an almost subsistance rice farmer but he is kind to Nang.

She had one miscarriage in March and a very small baby is now due on December 2. I am worried. There is virtually no medical care and I control her medicine by phoning a doctor who has never seen her and I buy her tablets from a market stall. The baby will need vitamin k as soon as she is born (I took her to phnom penh for an ultra sound and that’s where she will have the very underweight baby.) …I’ll tell you what happens.

PS. If you are a praying sort of person, please pray for Nang…otherwise…fingers crossed.

Congratulations everyone involved in the Sustainable Habitat Challenge

Samuel Mann — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 03:22:40 +0000

I had the honour of being the warm-up act at the Sustainable Habitat Challenge Awards dinner on Friday (see ODT list of winners). It was a fantastic night, and not just because of the wine, music and train ride.

The projects described were fabulous. Although I appreciated the “alternative” buildings, the ones I enjoyed the most were more ordinary – the ones that engaged large teams in building more sustainable houses. These houses might not be revolutionary, but are a big step in the right direction, and I’m sure we’ll see these students going out into the workforce knowing that better building is achievable. Next year, let’s make sure that this is the baseline for all the buildings built by carpentry students nationwide (hopefully alongside another “sustainable” house to continue to push the envelope).

I enjoyed the student engagement beyond the building disciplines. I especially liked the interaction between the landscape architecture students and the design students that resulted in the cheeky Manu Pango Peg (after the landscape folks insisted on not having a washing-line).

I enjoyed the stories of wider student and community engagement – the judges telling stories of wading through hordes of people from the wider community come to see and learn from the houses.

I was impressed that the wider professions got involved. The Housewise challenge led by Housing NZ was extremely worthwhile, and I hope this small team gets noticed within their corporate body. This team now has a more important challenge: 1 house retrofitted, 69,000 to go (and then get these noticed as a beacon for the other 1.7 million). Similarly, I enjoyed talking with the Director of Engineering from IPENZ Charles Willmot about the direction they are taking.

But what impressed me most of all, was that for the first time ever, I was able to have more than half the room still standing at the end of my series of questions. More than half the room agreed with this statement (and many of the others were excused as not being directly involved in teaching).

9. I am currently integrating Education for Sustainability into my teaching.

This fact alone makes me very proud to have been associated with Shac from the beginning. It makes me very proud that Otago Polytechnic led this amazing initiative. Well done Tim, D’Arcy and Nic – you’ve done good. Very good. Shac shows again the huge impact of the handprint of education in preparing sustainable practitioners, and of Otago Polytechnic’s leadership role in this. Let’s hope we can do it again.

Two speakers from Shac Symposium

Samuel Mann — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 21:35:15 +0000

I’m at the Shac Symposium today. This is the final act of the Sustainable Habitat Challenge (for this round at least). Nine teams from around the country have developed housing that is “simple, affordable, efficient, adaptable and desirable. Sustainable, in a word”.

Early in the development of Shac I went to the Solar Decathlon and we learnt a lot from that trip, especially about the engagement of students, and about importance of communication. Shac, though, is quite a different beast. While the Decathlon houses could be described as Formula 1, the houses we have are real. Two of the speakers reinforced this difference for me last night.

Susan Krumdieck presented sustainability on a survival spectrum: Safety/Security/Sustainability. She talked about the need for adaptability, the most important of these being of changing what we think and expect.

David Trubridge presented an interesting talk on design as a cultural experience. He is critical of swapism – swapping one technology for another without addressing the underlying issue, and of eco-design (despite being a practitioner in this area). He treads a line between design as fashion flimsy and design as an expression of the connections between people and their environment. He promotes the importance of craftsmanship.

He repeated Susan’s message of “enough”. The problem is not one of supply to meet demand, it is, he says, a problem of how to make the demand meet the supply. This is where I think the Shac approach differs from the Decathlon. The tasks in the Decathlon are about maxising energy production so that the teams can achieve tasks such as tumble drying towels. The Shac houses are more about making sustainability a natural part of everyday life.

I struggled with David example of housing – where sustainability features such as energy render the house a square box – “the worst kind of machine for living”. He contrasts these to things of beauty (eg Torajan houses), of craftsmanship valuing the connection between the environment and people. I don’t see the difference. Sure, the houses look different, but they are still an expression of values. I’ll try and with him about this today.

Software Engineering class explores our handprint

Samuel Mann — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 21:03:56 +0000

Our software engineering students have proven again that computing can make a bigger contribution than energy in the data centre. We’ve been working with the Dunedin 350 campaign. All semester, groups have been working with their client – Ella Lawton – to develop systems to raise awareness and engage people in climate change. Although the big release day was the Spring Food Festival (see Flickr set), we’ve just had the final presentations where the students reflected on the process. There is some really really nice work (see below).

Engaging students in a sustainability project has met all our goals - they’ve learnt software engineering through engaging in a real project- a project that takes the impact of computing beyond its own footprint, to exploring our potential handprint.

As part of the 350.org movement, our main mission is to raise the awareness of the 350 campaign and its purpose of ensuring the safe upper limit of CO2 in our atmosphere is lowered to 350 parts per million.

At 350 Live, it is our primary objective to design an interactive application that will be released to the public of Dunedin free of charge to promote education about 350, and bring to attention the significance of the important date of October 24, 2009, the International Day of Climate Change.

Here’s some screen captures from the projects:

Sustainability Pictures X

Samuel Mann — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 06:13:40 +0000

Ten more for the collection. Breaking my rule of stand-alone images but these seemed quite evocative, even if they do take some explanation.

See also these variations on earlier approaches: Venn diagrams coming together and showing changing dominance of sectors in a static animation, and a nice systems loop.

179. Brown’s 15 elements of Ecovillage living

180. The Barometer of Sustainability (ICUN)

The Barometer of Sustainability is the only performance scale that measures human and ecosystem wellbeing together without submerging one in the other. The Barometer’s key features are:
• Two axes, one for human wellbeing, the other for ecosystem wellbeing. This enables each set of indicators to be combined independently, keeping them separate to allow analysis of people-ecosystem interactions.
• The axis with the lower score overrides the other axis in the analysis. This prevents a high score for human wellbeing from offsetting a low score for ecosystem wellbeing, or vice versa. This approach reflects the view that people and the ecosystem are equally important and that sustainable development must improve and maintain the wellbeing of both.

181. ‘The Egg of Sustainability’ (Robert Prescott-Allen, in IUCN, 1995)

182. Red triangle/Green Circle (from SustainAbility Gearing Up).

These high friction worlds are represented by the red triangle: low levels of trust increase friction in the system, with different sectors fighting (or ‘scapegoating’) each other.

183. Mapping environmental problems by management and revsersibility (UNEP Geo4)

184. Global environmental outlook framework (UNEP Geo4)

Net gains in human well-being facilitated by the social and economic sectors have, however, been at the cost of growing environmental changes, and the exacerbation of poverty for some groups of people

185. Shrinking Earth (UNEP Geo4)

186. Sustainability Asymptogram (Onwueme and Borsari – Proquest link)

100 percent sustainability is a perfect state that is practically unattainable by anybody or any system. No matter how good a person or system is, there is always a sustainability deficit that cannot be overcome, as entropy affects living systems and their physical habitats without exceptions. This means that there is always room for improvement. Different persons or systems are located at different levels on the curve, with larger or smaller sustainability deficits, but with deficits all the same.

187. Meadows’ framework (after Daly). (Balaton Group)

I see the triangle as saying there’s no way human ends can be realized without healthy, functioning natural and economic systems

188. Ecosphere as a mail sorter (Collins)

Imagine all of Earth’s chemistry as a mail sorter’s wall of letter slots in a post office, with the network of compartments extending toward infinity (see the bottom figure, next page). Each compartment represents a separate chemistry so that, for example, thousands of compartments are associated with stratospheric chemistry or with a human cell. An environmentally mobile persistent pollutant can move from compartment to compartment, sampling a large number and finding those compartments that it can perturb. Many perturbations may be inconsequential, but others can cause unforeseen catastrophes, such as the ozone hole or some of the manifestations of endocrine disruption. Most compartments remain unidentified and even for known compartments, the interactions of the pollutant with the compartment’s contents can usually not be foreseen, giving ample reason for scientific humility when considering the safety of persistent mobile compounds.

STENZ Tertiary Education Strategy submission

Samuel Mann — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 02:03:57 +0000

STENZ Submission on Tertiary Education Strategy:

1. Status and interest of submitter

This submission is presented on behalf of the Sustainability in Tertiary Education in New Zealand. STENZ is a working group dedicated to the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (UNDESD) across all tertiary education in New Zealand. STENZ aims to provide a whole-of-sector approach to Education for Sustainability. It is made up of people who have leadership roles in the tertiary education sector, across a variety of institutions and academic disciplines. They are committed to Education for Sustainability rather than any explicit political agenda.

2. Submission summary

In summary, this submission:

Applauds the inclusion of sustainability in the vision, but argues that it must take an integrated approach to an integrated socio-ecological system; and

Maintains that Education for Sustainability must be explicit in the directives and mechanisms.

3. Vision for tertiary education

The vision for tertiary education is well-aligned with sustainability and embraces key sustainability related concepts. STENZ applauds this approach.

The opening line of TES describes the role of tertiary education:

High quality tertiary education is central to helping New Zealand achieve its economic, social and environmental goals, and meeting the development aspirations of Māori and Pasifika peoples.

The above role description does not explicitly mention sustainability, but it could be interpreted to do so because of its mention of the three dimensions of sustainability – economic, social and environmental. These are central to virtually all definitions of sustainability.

Moreover, the focus on well-being – both personal and economic –is consistent with sustainable development as a process that may lead to sustainability.

Access to high-quality tertiary education enriches people’s lives, increases their employment opportunities and helps to build a productive skills base to drive economic growth. Government wants relevant and efficient tertiary education provision that meets the needs of students, the labour market and the economy.

So, too, the over-arching education vision that stresses successful citizens, security and opportunity embraces concepts aligned to sustainability:

Government’s vision is for a world-leading education system that equips all New Zealanders with the knowledge, skills and values to be successful citizens in the 21st century.

A world-leading education system is an important first step towards a productive and growing economy that delivers greater prosperity, security and opportunity for all New Zealanders.

4. Focus in the remainder of the strategy

Unfortunately, in the remainder of the strategy, the integrated goals – economic, social and environmental – are split apart and considered separately, with an almost singular focus on the economic.

STENZ sees this separation as contrary to a robust consideration of the integrated nature of the economic, social and ecological system that supports human life and that human life is inescapably part of. Focussing on these dimensions in isolation will not lead to successful global citizens. STENZ’s thinking is in line with that promulgated by the UN Millennium Development Goals, the World Commission on Environment and Development 1987 (Brundtland Report), The Rio Earth Summit 1992, Agenda 21, and, of course, the United Nations Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (UNDESD).

5. Explicit expectation of teaching and learning for every student

The strategy rightly points out the impact of education; it is the biggest lever we have for transforming New Zealand into a more prosperous society which promotes well-being, as noted in the TES vision.

Accordingly, the tertiary education system needs to prepare learners who are capable of meeting future global challenges/changes. In other words, we need to produce graduates who can operate as sustainable practitioners in their particular fields. STENZ suggests a focus on the sustainable practitioner would reflect goals already included in the draft TES but it needs to be made explicit.

Sustainability is an explicit goal of research (noted below). Sustainability should also be explicit in teaching (rather than only implicit in “meet labour market demands”, and “world-class skills and knowledge”) and to complement the existing focus on productivity.

This expectation for research should be complemented by similar statements for teaching and learning (as offered in 5.1):

research…create and share new knowledge that contributes to New Zealand’s economic and social development, and environmental management

5.1 Recommended expectation for all institutions: Produce graduates who each think and act as sustainable practitioners for the benefit of New Zealand’s integrated economic and social development, and environmental management system.

While research is clearly important, the more direct return on government investment in education is manifest in the skills, values and behaviours of our graduates. Including the above expectation in the TES will motivate institutions to ensure that graduates have the capability to embed sustainability principles, values and practices in their lifestyle and profession.

The prosperous future of New Zealand relies on people from every discipline, hence it is important that we move to an “every graduate” approach to sustainability. This means that every student is educated to be able to see through a sustainable lens.

6. Recognition of eco-literacy as a core capability

In the achievement of a prosperous New Zealand, eco-literacy is a core capability, much like literacy and numeracy and with similar productivity benefits that are essential for a natural resource based economy.

6.1 Recommendation: Add ecoliteracy to statements describing expectations of core capabilities.

7. Integrated curricula

As a society we have to learn to live in a complex world of interdependent systems with high uncertainties and multiple legitimate interests. These complex and evolving systems require a new way of thinking about risk, uncertainty, ambiguity and ignorance. They require that we can think simultaneously of drivers and impacts of our actions across scales and barriers of space, time, culture, species and disciplinary boundaries. This means our graduates need skills in:

Systems thinking
Understanding the connected nature of our socio-ecological and economic system
Global citizenship
Critical and creative thinking
Pragmatics of change management

Sustainability should not be seen as an extra subject and should not be confused with green, or with education about the environment. Instead it provides a context for learning within and across disciplines. STENZ considers a focus on sustainability will result in improved completion rates as it provides a hook to link academic subjects to the real world. This relevance will improve the work-ready nature of graduates. STENZ applauds moves to promote collaborative work and direct relevance to industry and suggests Education for Sustainability as a proven powerful vehicle for its achievement.

8. Promotion of interdisciplinary study and research

With a discipline-based panel structure, the Performance-Based Research Fund is not good at supporting interdisciplinary research such as sustainability.

8.1 Recommendation: Add an action plan (to “We will look at whether the Performance-Based Research Fund is working well for all parts of the sector”) to look at ”’how PBRF could better support interdisciplinary initiatives”’.

Associate Prof Samuel Mann on behalf of Sustainability in Tertiary Education in New Zealand.

Otago Polytechnic

smann@tekotago.ac.nz

STENZ is a pivotal initiative within the NZDESD programme of activities. STENZ is supported by SANZ and the New Zealand National Commission for UNESCO.

Almost 350

Samuel Mann — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 02:02:02 +0000

Including sleep, there’s 15 hours until we have to be coherent and on show for 350. Student projects are rapidly emerging and getting hurried testing (hopefully not too hurried!).

If you’re in Dunedin, come and see us at the Spring Festival. (more Flickr images).

Challenge for anyone who uses a computer

Samuel Mann — Sun, 18 Oct 2009 03:26:41 +0000

Here’s a challenge to give to folks who start quoting the environmental friendliness of their latest computer. All new computers and especially laptops come with claims of “green” and most laptop users are pretty smug about their energy use.

This map shows the sources of the components of a typical laptop. It’s a Sourcemap representation of PCMag’s What’s inside your laptop.

So here’s the challenge: click though to the map and see if you can find a source component that isn’t described somewhere as being linked to unsustainable practices. Pick any of the parts and source area eg “Cobalt Congo”. Put that phrase in your favorite search engine and see what you find. For some you don’t have to look very hard, for others you can speed the search by adding key search phrases such as environmental degradation, human rights injustice, war, pollution and so on.

Let me know if you find a genuinely sustainable component. I bet you can’t.

Need to mobilise submissions for sustainability in higher education (NZ)

Samuel Mann — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 01:49:53 +0000

The draft Tertiary Education Strategy is out for consultation. It gives direction to NZ’s tertiary education for the next five years. The draft is weak on sustainability: it’s alluded to in the higher level statements but missing in the directions for teaching and learning. As it stands, institutions will not see sustainability as an imperative, instead they’ll be driven entirely by productivity.

We have until 6th November to send submissions to tertiary.strategy@minedu.govt.nz. Please write something yourself and prompt your organisations to include sustainability in their submission (folks are usually grateful for help, so send some words for them to use).

Here’s the draft of my submission (any thoughts gratefully received):

1 Key messages:

Applaud the inclusion of sustainability in the vision, but that it must take an integrated approach to an integrated socio-ecological system
Education for Sustainability must be explicit in the directives and mechanisms
Polytechnics must be supported in the delivery of applied degrees.

2 Justification

Thank you for the opportunity to contribute to the Tertiary Education Strategy.

The Tertiary Education Strategy is New Zealand’s chance to deliver on the promise of the United Nations Decade for Education for Sustainable Development (2005-2014).

The opening line of TES describes the role of tertiary education

High quality tertiary education is central to helping New Zealand achieve its economic, social and environmental goals, and meeting the development aspirations of Māori and Pasifika peoples.

The “Vision for tertiary education” does not explicitly mention sustainability, but it could be interpreted to do so:

Access to high-quality tertiary education enriches people’s lives, increases their employment opportunities and helps to build a productive skills base to drive economic growth. Government wants relevant and efficient tertiary education provision that meets the needs of students, the labour market and the economy.

So too the Over-arching education vision (1.1). Successful citizens, world leading, security and opportunity are all concepts conducive to sustainability:

Government’s vision is for a world-leading education system that equips all New Zealanders with the knowledge, skills and values to be successful citizens in the 21st century.

A world-leading education system is an important first step towards a productive and growing economy that delivers greater prosperity, security and opportunity for all New Zealanders.

An integration of the “economic, social and environmental goals” can be considered a in a sustainable future. Unfortunately, from then on, these integrated goals are split apart and considered separately, with an almost singular focus on the economic. This is contrary to a robust consideration of an integrated socio-economic system and will not lead to successful global citizens.

The strategy rightly points out the impact of education, it is the biggest lever we have for transforming NZ to a more prosperous society in the long term. I would like to see the use of this lever go beyond a focus on productivity for personal and societal benefit to include a wider role, that of the sustainable practitioner.

The tertiary education system needs to prepare learners who are capable of meeting future global challenges/changes. I suggest a focus on the sustainable practitioner would reflect goals already included in the draft TES but it needs to be made explicit. The expectation for research:

“research…create and share new knowledge that contributes to New Zealand’s economic and social development, and environmental management”.

should be complemented by similar statements for teaching and learning:

Produce graduates who will think and act as sustainable practitioners for the benefit of New Zealand’s integrated economic and social development, and environmental management system.

While research is clearly important, the far bigger levers we have are the skills, values and behaviours of our graduates. This will ensure graduates have the capability to embed sustainability principles, values and practices in their lifestyle and profession.

The prosperous future of New Zealand relies on people from every discipline, hence it is important that we move to an “every graduate” approach to sustainability. This means that every student should be able to see through a sustainable lens.

As a society we have to learn to live in a complex world of interdependent systems with high uncertainties and multiple legitimate interests. These complex and evolving systems require a new way of thinking about risk, uncertainty, ambiguity and ignorance (Stagl 2007). These systems require that we can think simultaneously of drivers and impacts of our actions across scales and barriers of space, time, culture, species and disciplinary boundaries. This means our graduates need skills in:

- Systems thinking

- An understanding of the connected nature of our socio-ecological system

- Critical and creative thinking

- Ability to act as change agent

- Understanding of ethics

- Sense of participation and action

Sustainability should not be seen as an extra subject and should not be confused with green, or with education about the environment. Nor should it in any way be seen as anti-business. Instead it provides a context for learning within and about the student’s discipline. I believe a focus on sustainability will result in improved completion rates as it provides a hook to link academic subjects to the real world. This relevance will improve the work-ready nature of graduates. I applaud moves to promote collaborative work and direct relevance to industry and suggest Education for Sustainability as a proven powerful vehicle for achieving this.

3 Recommendations

3.1 Add education for Sustainability as an expectation for all graduates:

Sustainability is an explicit goal of research. Sustainability should also be explicit in teaching (rather than only implicit in “meet labour market demands”, and “world-class skills and knowledge”) and to complement the existing focus on productivity.

Produce graduates who will think and act as sustainable practitioners for the benefit of New Zealand’s integrated economic and social development, and environmental management system.

3.2 Add sustainable practice as a core capability

Acting as a sustainable practitioner is core capability, much like literacy and numeracy (indeed “Eco-literacy” is an often used short hand) and with similar productivity benefits.

continuing to assist adult learners to gain the literacy, language, numeracy, information literacy and ecoliteracy skills for higher level study or skilled employment

3.3 Promote interdisciplinary study and research

With a discipline-based panel structure, the Performance-Based Research Fund is not good at supporting interdisciplinary research such as sustainability.

Add an action plan (to “We will look at whether the Performance-Based Research Fund is working well for all parts of the sector”) to look at how it could better support interdisciplinary initiatives.

September 25th should live in infamy

Samuel Mann — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 23:14:10 +0000

Today is Earth Overshoot Day. This is not a day to celebrate.
Calculated by the Global Footprint Network, Earth Overshoot Day shows the day on which our total Ecological Footprint (measured in global hectares) is equal to the biocapacity (also measured in global hectares) that nature can regenerate in that year. For the rest of the year, we are accumulating debt by depleting our natural capital and letting waste accumulate. The ratio shows that in 2009, in just 268 days (September 25), we demanded the biosphere’s entire capacity for the year.

I like these images from GFN. This first one, “Running on Empty” uses the familiar speedometer, we are clearly in the red. But perhaps, I thought, that’s not too bad – only 40% too much – surely we can do that? But then you look at the next one, showing the relative dates of different countries and you realise that we really are in trouble. With America living in ecological debt from the 21st of March and much of the world aspiring to the American dream, the future looks grim.

I’m reading about solution focussed counselling and motivational interviewing at the moment so I’m grasping for positives here. I misinterpreted the country diagram for a bit – the UK seemed only 57% too high but alas at 257% it is 157% too high.

The Living Planet Report presents scenarios based on this same information (and the detail upon which it is based). Here, the GFN, WWF and the Zoological Society of London discuss the strategies that could reduce the gap between human demand on nature and the availability of ecological capacity.

Each of these strategies can be represented as a sustainability wedge that shifts the business-as-usual path towards one in which, when these wedges are combined, overshoot is eliminated.

I think this gives some hope. This shows that what we do, individually and in groups can make a difference:

One way of organizing wedges is to link them to the three factors that determine footprint. Some strategies in the per person consumption and technology wedges, such as insulating buildings, produce quick results for shrinking overshoot. Other strategies, such as those that would reduce and eventually reverse population growth, may have less impact in the short term, but lead to large cumulative declines in overshoot in the longer term.

Within a wedge, many interventions are possible. Individual consumption can be reduced by designing cities in which walking is preferable to driving. Technological innovations can increase the efficiency of resource use, such as meeting communication needs with cellular phones rather than landlines. Rehabilitation of degraded lands can increase agricultural yields while minimizing increases in footprint associated with agricultural expansion.

Alternatively, wedges can also be organized around major consumption categories such as food, shelter, mobility, goods and services, along with population size. The footprint of food, for example, might be reduced by optimizing the relationship between the distance it is transported and the efficiency with which it can be locally produced. The energy efficiency of residential and commercial buildings can often be dramatically increased, and utilities supporting them can be integrated so that wastes from one system serve as inputs for another. Individual wedges typically overlap, creating opportunities for synergistic solutions that can bring about even greater reductions in overshoot.