Block 4. Sustainability

I have reflected upon your last STEEP/PESTLE exercise and considered your possible suggestions for new business and service opportunities.  The majority seem to have Environment / Energy Transition at their core.   I have therefore decided that we will leap from Block 2 straight to Block 4 and this Sustainability theme and how it affects our lives personally and professionally. It will come at you in essentially four parts:

1. Defining our terms: we hear a lot of ‘green/eco/bio/alternative/responsible’ terminology and we are seeing a proliferation of labels on all sorts of products and services … but what do they mean? More importantly – what do you and I believe that they mean (because we make decisions based upon what we believe rather than what things actually are). So when I talk about ‘x’ .. are you understanding ‘y’?
2. Can the planet afford me?  Am I (as the Brundtland Commission and its report ‘Our Common Future / Notre Avenir à Tous’)  put it in 1987): ‘Living within the Planet’s ecological means’?  Let’s get personal with our planet – am I damaging it or making it a better place for my kids?  Do I know and do I care? Remember, when we go to work we are each one of us just ourselves – even if we are wearing a different (professional rather than personal) ‘hat‘: if we are not convinced about the environment and the need to be sustainable in our personal lives, we are hardly going to change in our professional lives.  So we need to start with the personal.
3. Inhibitors – what is stopping each one of us from doing better?  We will review our individual views concerning sustainability and our individual Carbon Footprint Test results and consider how we as a representative, multi-cultural group are performing.  If we can identify what is holding us back / preventing us from being more sensitive and sustainable then we can address it in order to improve.
4. Action programme: personal, professional & political.  We will address our inhibitors systematically with a view to identifying potential solutions and how they might be put into action in order to stimulate positive change in the immediate, short, medium and longer term.

So – here we go!

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PART 1. Defining our Terms / understanding the context.

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The What. Before we go deeper into the world of ‘sustainability’ we need to look at the range of terms people use for it or aspects of it.   If we can’t agree on what something actually means, how can we then talk about it productively, let alone enter into any agreements?

1. Sustainability v Développement Durable.   The latter is often used as a direct translation for the former.  What do they mean?  Are they the same / might there be some important differentiation?  Definitions please…. and don’t just settle for one – they may be different!
2. Ethics v Morality. Both of these terms are used in the contextualisation of Sustainability and Développement Durable, BUT are these actually synonyms?  If not, wherein might lie the difference. Cite and attribute your sourses.
3. Max Havelaar (see: https://www.maxhavelaarfrance.org/)  v Fair Trade (commerce équitable – see: https://www.fairtrade.org.uk/.)   We are used to seeing these words and their associated logos on everyday products, but do we really know what they mean ?  Are they the same or are they significantly different?
4. ‘Bio’ v ‘Eco’ (as used here in France).  For example, there are ‘eco’ and ‘bio’ wines on the supermarket shelves and on restaurant wine lists sitting side-by-side.  What are they ? Are they to all intents and purposes the same or are there subtle distinctions between the two – if so, what exactly? ?
5. Fair Trade Towns (see: http://www.fairtradetowns.org/) v The Incredible Edible. (see https://www.incredibleedible.org.uk/) – Also, relating to this, watch a spectacularly funny and revealing 10 minute TED Talk by Pam Warhurst.  These are both sustainability initiatives at the local/town/commune level, but what ARE they exactly and how do they differ? Has France taken up such ideas to the same degree?
6. The ‘Zero Waste Home‘ movement’  v ‘Low Impact Living’ (To start, see Lowimpact.org  What are these and how do they differ?  Are these just for dreamers, BaBa Cools and environment fanatics, or do they represent to some degree a rational way forward towards principles oand practices which we could and should all adopt?
7. European Ecolabel for Tourist Accommodation Scheme v  Visit England’s Green Business Tourism Label systems (https://www.green-tourism.com/green-tourism-gradings/).  What are they?  How do they differ?  Is it confusing to have so many such schemes in operation – these two are by no means the only ones? (see http://www.ecolabelindex.com).  How many EU ecolabeled hotels in France and in Alsace? (See http://ec.europa.eu/ecat/hotels-campsites/en/fr/france). Compare this number with the number of Green Tourism Scheme graded accommodation establishments in England.  Why such a difference?
8. Food and general lifestyle carbon footprint calculators  v Earth Overshoot Day calculations . Identify and compare and contrast a number of these calculators.  Which do you consider to be the most revealing and why.  Which ones are the best at identifying: the CO2 we produce individually; the number of planets we would need if everyone lived like us, whether we are living within our alloted ‘share’ of the worlds resources to hit global targets, the day in the year when we will have used up our resource allocation, the difference in impact of different dietary choices.
9. A new pair of blue jeans every three months (start with: a lifecycle analysis of jeans vid)  v a beefburger/cheeseburger once a week (start with this): what are their respective impacts upon the planet (water used/polluted … CO2 produced etc) and how do you feel about it?  Are there any lower impact alternatives for both which may be worthy of our consideration?
10. The 1987 World Commission on Environment and Development Report (Our Common Future/Notre Avenir à Tous a.k.a. The Brundtland Report) v Chief Seattle’s Reply 1854 (there are several versions of this, so please use this one.  130-odd years apart: but to what extent might Chief Seattle’s Reply have ‘foreshadowed’ the modern ‘Sustainability’ cause?
11. Al Gore’s ‘Inconvenient Truth’ (book and film – also see a 2017 revisit of Inconvenient Truth in the light of recent events), ‘Climate Reality’ project & ’24hours of reality’ initiative   v Climate Change Deniers (see an LSE article on the subject as a jumping off point, but do look elsewhere).  A bit like the X-Files, we say that ‘the truth is out there’ – but where does it lie?  Is there still any real doubt?  Who are the doubters (and who pays them)?

TASK Instructions (ASSESSED in teams of 2 or 3) :

1. Create 11 teams of broadly equal size (pairs or threes MAX – no individuals / no teams of four or more). Choose ONE topic from the list above [arrange with other teams so that there is NO DUPLICATION].
2. where you are being asked to produce definitions, first (before you rush online) consider for yourselves the WHO, WHAT, WHEN, WHERE, WHY and HOW of the terms concerned…. then pool your thoughts and go online to see what the terms really mean.  How close were you?  Make notes of your findings (in English) to support a presentation. You will then be asked to informally present your team definitions to the class  considering also the other questions I have put to you with your topic.  
   
3. Where you are being asked to do research, review materials or compare and contrast resources – follow the instructions, make notes of your findings (in English) to support an informal presentation (in English) to your classmates.
   

We will then have a plenary session / discussion to consider:

• Why are we talking about these terms today ….? ( – 25 years ago we weren’t….).  So where and why have they emerged relatively recently (Those having studied topic N°10 should be able to help us get started here)?
• Who is and who is not listening to the ‘messages’ embodied by these terms?
• What proportion of ‘society at large’ would you say is:
  • aware of these terms – but neither subscribes to them nor is doing anything about them
  • aware & interested – subscribing to them in theory at least (head knowledge) but not really trying enough to adjust accordingly in practice (heart understanding promoting action).
  • aware, interested and actively trying to act accordingly, but feeling inhibited in making much progress.
  • aware, interested, trying and partially succeeding.
  • aware, interested, trying and demonstrably succeeding…..

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PART 2. Can the Planet Afford Me?

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In the above, we have been talking about ‘people’ as if they weren’t ‘us’ … but they are us – each one of us is a small part of ‘people’…..  ‘People’ = the sum total of each individual and his/her decisions and actions so:

• what about my consumption decisions?
• what about my impact upon the world’s resources?
• am I enjoying my ‘fair’ share of such resources or the ‘lion’s share’?
• do I care (enough) about other people’s right to a share?
• could/should I do more (am I prepared to have a little less so that others can have a little more)?
• am I prepared to do more……………………………..?
• etc etc etc….

To start this off, in your own time (and before our next class) I want you all to do a couple of  Carbon Footprint tests (in English, of course) and bring to class the results which will usually include information like:

• how many planets would we need if all the world’s population consumed like me / enjoyed my lifestyle?
• where do I stand in relation to the average in my country – am I performing better or worse than M Average?
• where do I stand in relation to the targets the nations of the world have agreed for 2020 in order to reduce CO2 emissions and keep the global temperature rise under 2°C for the century?
• how much CO2 am I personally responsible for producing?

We will adopt the calculators reviewed and recommended by the team doing Q 8, or as a fallback we will use the following:

DO ALL THREE of these tests and record your results (and bring them to class to share with your colleagues). The tests give you different output and I would like you to provide all of the indicators:

• http://footprint.wwf.org.uk/
  • My scores:
    • I am using 79% of my ‘allocation’ (i.e. what is ‘fair’ for me to use according to the 2020 targets)
    • I produce 8.2 tonnes of CO2 (a compressed tonne of C02 is about 8 cubic metres – half the volume of my office)
    • my impact is 50% less than the UK average (NB. France is just a little bit higher than the UK), BUT 50% more than the world average
• http://www.footprintcalculator.org/
  • My scores:
    • my personal ‘overshoot day’ (because I am consuming more than the Earth can provide in any given period if everyone lived like me) – was 3rd Sept in 2017 … but by reason of air travel in 2018 this date has advanced to 17th June (my birthday, ironically).  For the rest of the year it is as if I have nothing left in the ‘bank’ and I am going into an unauthorised overdraft situation – which I (or my kids and grandkids) will have to repay/bear the costs of.
    • we would need 1.5 – 2,0 Earths if everyone were to live and consume like me … but, of course, the problem is that we will only ever have the one planet Earth and we have to share it with more and more people every day: just take a look at the live ‘World Population Counter‘ … and be prepared for a shock.  I am writing this in the middle of the afternoon, and already the day has seen births exceed deaths by 250,000…. suggesting that three populations the size of France’s (67,000,000 x 3) get added to the sum total of humanity every year….  Sharing is going to become more an more of an issue….

• https://www.bbc.com/news/health-46865204  .  Scroll down to the middle of the article. Embedded there you will find a calculator of food environmental imacts that, for everything from an apple to beef gives you an idea of its impact in nutrition, C02, water consumption and shows you how much of the world’s land surface your consumption requires.  Have a look – it is quite startling

I am going to ask you to ‘pool’ your results in class and we will see what our class average is and how this relates to the Earth’s resources.  I suspect you may be shocked by the results.  

THEN ASSESSED: in the light of your result, I would like you to consider your daily life and how you are living it (what you eat, what you wear, what you spend your money on, how you live in your home, how you travel etc) and write a short and personal analysis and evaluation to address the question: « Can the planet afford me?« .  If the planet can’t afford your lifestyle and consumption changes, what is stopping you changing to a lifestyle the planet can afford?  2 x Pages of A4 MAXimum  / 1 x page A4 MINimum. Printed.  To be handed to me in class – date to be advised. Your report should start with your footprint test scores.

The question then is: ‘Why aren’t we doing better?  / What is stopping us’?

(In other words: ‘inhibitors’)

Which brings us to our third phase in this block:

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PART 3. Inhibitors

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If we know that we are not performing as well as we should be or would like to be in sustainability terms, then why is this the case? …. and are we prepared to actually DO something about it (if we get the help – encouragement and/or ‘kick’  /  carrot and/or stick – we might be needing)?

• From your thoughts at the end of the second part, what do you think might be the ‘inhibitors‘ which are preventing you yourself from acting more consistently in keeping with a life lived within the the limits of the Planet’s environmental/ecological means….
• What could and should you do to overcome such inhibitors?
  • what can you actually do yourself that you can and will determine to do (you don’t need any more persuasion, support or forcing)?
  • what would you do for yourself with a little practical help or persuasion (carrot) – what is it you need?
  • what is it that you simply choose not to do unless and until you are given no choice / forced to (the stick) – what is it that will need to happen such that you change?
  • are there things that are 100% intractable constraints that prevent you from acting within the planet’s ecological means, even with all the carrots and sticks applied?  What are they and why?

How are we going to do this once you have thought through the above?  A Brainstorm (Group Assessment)

1. contribute all the inhibitors you have thought of individually
2. ‘cluster‘ them together in ‘meaningful‘ groupings
3. consider which are of greatest importance and urgency
4. brainstorm up potential solutions in Part 4, below)

This then gives us a ‘menu’ of problems to be addressed for which we need to find solutions and see if we can ‘package’ them in a programme of actions that can be undertaken at the personal, organisational, regional, national levels….

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PART 4. Sustainability Action Programme:

Personal, Professional and Political

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Up ’til now, we have been ‘talking the problem’… now we need to consider how and by whom solutions may be put into place.   You will notice that I have not termed this a ‘plan’ – that is too high, too remote, too vague – more a vision of an end point rather than a roadmap and timetable of how to get there.  I have called this an Action Programme: it is logical, organised and with a timetable and ready to be implemented.

[OK… here I need to give you a ‘nano-lecture’ for a minute: have you heard of ‘cascading‘ the American term used for the ‘translation‘ of objectives from the top of the organisation right down to the bottom through each and every level of heirarchy?  This involves the following steps:

1. Policy – the vision of the future to be achieved [where we are going]- made at the very apex of the organisation. Think President/ Board of Directors.
2. Programme – the who, what, why, when, where and how in the form of a step-by-step guide [to address the Q ‘How are we going to get there] Think the CEO/MD/PDG
3. Procedures – sets of rules and regulations to be imparted throughout the organisation in order to realise the Programme and its Policy objectives Think divisional/functional heads and Senior Management.
4. Practices – coherent sets of actions to be implemented and managed by teams towards the base of the organisational structure as directed by the Procedures
5. Performance – an action by an individual which may be repeated many times as demanded by the Practices (which is, in turn, fully in accordance with Procedures, Programme and the ultimate achievement of the overall Policy objectives).

Clearly, the Programme needs to be VERY well thought out, because if even a little error or incompleteness happens at the top – the impact thereof is magnified at the bottom of the pyramid.

End of ‘Nano-lecture’!]

So, how are we going to construct our Alsace Sustainability Action Programme (ASAP)?

We will:

1. address each cluster and each inhibitor in turn, considering:
   • what solutions may be possible
   • which are likely to be the most successful, and why?
   • when the solutions should be put in place (immediate, short, medium or long term)and how long it might take to generate the desired results.
   • who should lead and participate inthe action points needed to deliver the solution
   • how they should be put in place
   • how much it might cost and ways of defraying this cost
   • means of measurement.  What can we measure to identify the extent to which our solutions have been successful?
2. our final output will be in the form of an Action Programme based upon how this might be taken forward and put into action as a ‘pilot’ project across Alsace which will be presented to ‘key players’ like national, regional and local government, support agencies, educational establishments, the media etc.  It will feature a specific Action Programme Case Study for the UHA. This will involve group/team presentations, supported by a PREZI or Powerpoint.

As usual, I will be assessing each step in terms of both teamwork and quality of individual input to aspects like discussions, brainstorms etc.

I am hoping that the engagement with this topic area will enthuse and challenge you on both personal and professional levels.