Footprints for Sustainability: The Next Steps

The concept of an ecological footprint is based on the understanding that every individual human appropriates a share of the productive and assimilative capacity of the biosphere. An ecological footprint corresponds to this exclusive biologically productive area that a defined population uses for all its resource requirements and wastes, and is expressed in terms of bioproductive space, with world-average productivity. Humanity's footprint or its aggregate ecological demand can only temporarily exceed the productive and assimilative capacity of the biosphere without liquidating and weakening the natural capital on which humanity depends fundamentally. Therefore, accounting tools for quantifying humanity's use of nature are essential for overall assessments of human impact as well as for planning specific steps towards a sustainable future.This paper discusses the strengths and weaknesses of the ecological footprint as an ecological accounting method, points out research needs for improvement of the analysis, and suggests potential new applications. The paper identifies ten new applications of the tool to make it applicable at various geographic scales and for a number of analytical and didactic purposes. Then nine methodological improvements are suggested that could refine the currently applied method, making assessments more sensitive to a larger number of ecological impacts. It concludes that many crucial questions pertinent to building a sustainable society can be addressed by current ecological footprint research. By making the method more complete, this tool could evolve from being largely of pedagogical use to become a strategic tool for policy analysis.     

Infrastructure development through PPPs in India: criteria for sustainability assessment

Public private partnerships (PPPs) allow the Indian Government to leverage private capital for meeting the widening demand-supply gap in the provision of infrastructure services. The private sector, however, prefers to limit the participation to financially attractive projects only, thereby resulting in patterns of infrastructure creation impeding the progress towards sustainable development. In order to promote sustainable development, the PPP procurement process should focus on incentivising the private sector for sustainable infrastructure development rather than concentrating on ensuring financial sustainability only. This paper discusses the principles-based PPP-specific framework that has been developed to facilitate assessment of PPP projects' progress towards sustainable development. The framework development was based on a holistic approach to sustainability assessment and subsequently validated through questionnaire survey with key stakeholders in the Indian PPP programme. This framework will provide the decision makers with appropriate decision aid for integration of sustainable development principles in the PPP procurement process.     

A spatially explicit backcasting approach for sustainable land-use planning

General backcasting as a decision support and planning method starts from desired future states and simulates developments backwards until reaching the present state. Development pathways that reveal steps to be taken to reach a certain future state, and milestones that serve as interim goals, are created during the process. Backcasting has hitherto only been applied in workshops or as a theoretical framework and no spatially explicit backcasting model has previously been established. This paper presents the development of a spatially explicit backcasting model. The proposed model first creates a future scenario utilizing an agent-based model and then simulates backwards. It is implemented using the programming language Python. The model has been applied to a case study for sustainable land-use planning in Salzburg, Austria. The results of the model run show a successful backcasting of land-use classes from a future state back to the present, in 10 year time steps.     

Measuring the linkage between strategies on sustainability and institutional forces: an empirical study of Spanish universities

Policy documents are commonly identified as key outcomes that guide initiatives directed by senior university leaders towards sustainability through plans and policies. Many studies have called for a more integration of sustainability into universities. Nevertheless, the interest in sustainability issues has been more recent in the specific case of Spain. This study analyses the strategic plans developed by Spanish universities in the last decade with two different aims: first, we examine the extent to which Spanish universities are incorporating strategies on sustainability. The second goal evaluates whether the presence of strategies on sustainability in Spanish universities could be associated with coercive and mimetic pressures. Findings indicate the low presence of strategies on sustainability in Spanish universities. Moreover, the results seem to suggest that the presence of strategies on sustainability in Spanish universities could be linked with coercive and mimetic pressures emanating from the State performance funding for universities. The results indicate that universities usually incorporate practices and strategies on sustainability as a response of the pressure exerted by institutional forces, such as the funding systems of higher education institutions.     

Urban sustainability – a segmentation study of Greater Brisbane,Australia

Setting universal goals for sustainability is problematic and may hinder the adoption of sustainable pathways as different sectors of society often have differing opinions on not just what sustainability means for them, but also what is of priority to them. This paper tests a set of psychographic, behavioural, lifestyle and social identities to segment the public on sustainability. We evaluate general knowledge, apply social-choice tools to identify public priorities, and then apply segmentation to reveal broad strata of community profiles around these choices. We discuss our findings in the context of moving beyond knowledge on sustainability and general public choices, to more nuanced messaging and engagement that respects differences in sustainability orientations. We suggest that by focusing on what matters most for different segments of society, there is potential to design effective processes to engage with people and acquire better ownership of sustainability.     

Assessing local planning capacity to promote environmentally sustainable residential development

Smart growth and sustainability planning have, in recent years, become central issues in planning discourse. Scholars have argued that planning capacity at the local government level is critical for smart growth planning, and that planners have a fundamental role to play in advancing local and regional sustainability. In this paper, we investigate the extent to which local planning capacity enables communities to promote more sustainable, smart growth residential development. Based on a 2013 survey of 38 county and 53 municipal governments in the state of Wisconsin, USA, this study finds that the majority of the sample communities have permitted residential developments characterized as transit-oriented, New Urbanist, mixed use, infill developments, or conservation subdivisions as alternatives to low-density, automobile-dependent conventional developments. The study also finds that jurisdictions with higher planning capacities are more likely to overcome significant barriers to more sustainable residential development.     

Robustness of Meteorological Droughts in Dynamically Downscaled Climate Simulations

We examine the robustness of a suite of regional climate models (RCMs) in simulating meteorological droughts and associated metrics in present‐day climate (1971‐2003) over the conterminous United States (U.S.). The RCMs that are part of North American Regional Climate Change Assessment Program (NARCCAP) simulations are compared with multiple observations over the climatologically homogeneous regions of the U.S. The seasonal precipitation, climatology, drought attributes, and trends have been assessed. The reanalysis‐based multi‐model median RCM reasonably simulates observed statistical attributes of drought and the regional detail due to topographic forcing. However, models fail to simulate significant drying trend over the Southwest and West. Further, reanalysis‐based NARCCAP runs underestimate the observed drought frequency overall, with the exception of the Southwest; whereas they underestimate persistence in the drought‐affected areas over the Southwest and West‐North Central regions. However, global climate model‐driven NARCCAP ensembles tend to overestimate regional drought frequencies. Models exhibit considerable uncertainties while reproducing meteorological drought statistics, as evidenced by a general lack of agreement in the Hurst exponent, which in turn controls drought persistence. Water resources managers need to be aware of the limitations of current climate models, while regional climate modelers may want to fine‐tune their parameters to address impact‐relevant metrics.     

Aboriginal world views and colonisation: implications for coastal sustainability†

In this paper, we show how the Aboriginal people in the south-west of Australia (the Nyungar) developed systems of knowledge, of caring for country and of family relations that enabled them to survive for tens of thousands of years and continue to have importance today. The impacts of British colonisation on cultural continuity and knowledge in the south-west have been significant and include loss of land, break-up of families and massacre. These practices led to a loss of knowledge of language and culture in some cases. However, Nyungar culture is alive and dynamic, constantly being reclaimed, re-energised and rebuilt through the interaction of contemporary and traditional research praxis. Focusing on Derbal Nara (Cockburn Sound) on the coast in the southern metropolitan area of Perth, we provide case examples of the action-research-learning methodologies used by Whadjuk Nyungar Traditional Owners. We also provide examples of stories about Derbal Nara that are still alive and being recounted up to the present day, including those that account for the recent ice age and the end of the ice age 8000 years BC when sea levels rose, drowning land in the area of Derbal Nara. Finally, we argue that Whadjuk Nyungar experiences and world views based on relationality and reflexivity are central to sustainable coastal management and that in some respects there has already been a convergence of Indigenous and Western coastal management. We present a set of principles that support the development of this “third space” for coastal sustainability.     

Governing sustainability: a dialogue between Local Agenda 21 and transition management

Since the 1990s, the local level of governance has become increasingly important in addressing the challenge of sustainable development. In this article, we compare two approaches that seek to address sustainability locally, namely Local Agenda 21 and transition management. Discussing both approaches along six dimensions (history, aim, kind of change, governance understanding, process methodologies, and actors), we formulate general insights into the governance of sustainability in cities, towns, and neighbourhoods. This dialogue illustrates two related modes of thinking about sustainability governance. We touch upon the importance of an integrated perspective on sustainability transitions through which sustainability is made meaningful locally in collaborative processes. We suggest that the explicit orientation towards radical change is a precondition for governing sustainability in a way that addresses the root causes of societal challenges. Governing sustainability should address the tensions between aiming for radical change and working with status quo-oriented actors and governing settings. We conclude that governing sustainability should be about finding creative ways for opening spaces for participation, change, and experimentation, that is, for creating alternative ideas, practices, and social relations. These spaces for innovation encourage a reflexive stance on ways of working and one's own roles and attitudes, thereby preparing a fertile terrain for actors to engage in change from different perspectives.     

Globalization’s limits to the environmental state? Integrating telecoupling into global environmental governance

Globalization entails increased interdependence and interconnectivities among distal regions and social-ecological systems. This global interregional connectedness – telecoupling – gives rise to specific sustainability challenges, which require new governance solutions. Moving beyond ‘scaling-up’ governance to address global environmental problems, and exploring the implications of telecoupling for state-led environmental governance, ways the state can effectively address telecoupled environmental issues both within and beyond national borders are addressed, drawing on the example of soy trade between Brazil and Germany. This builds on recent contributions to the literature on governance of interregional ecological challenges to elaborate potential policy and governance options, ranging from classical bilateral, multilateral, and international agreements, to information-based, economic, and hybrid governance modes. While telecoupled environmental problems create governance challenges related to scale, knowledge gaps, coordination, and state capacity, the state has an important role to play. To explore this further, interdisciplinary inquiry is required that includes but moves beyond the state.