4th Global Conference
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Tuesday 5th July - Thursday 7th
July 2005
Mansfield College, Oxford
Session 2: Missing Elements, Imposed Challenges and Observations
Chair: Lloyd Steffen
Can Sustainable Development be Achieved when Geo-Science
Issues are Ignored?
Katherine
Royse
Thames Gateway Project, British Geological Survey,
Kingsley Dunham Centre,
Nottingham, United Kingdom
Sustainable development implies that there
is a stable relationship between human activities and the natural world,
so that the prospects of future generations do not diminish. Can this
really be achieved in the Thames Gateway where social and economic
issues are the driving force?
Most development projects in the Thames
Gateway will necessitate construction on ground that would be classed
as ‘difficult’ in engineering
terms. Compressible soils, high groundwater levels and contaminated brownfield
sites are typical of problems that will be faced. Environmental
issues such as sustainable urban drainage, biodiversity, flood control
and foundation conditions remain important considerations, for which
an understanding of the geology is critical. In light of these considerations
it would seem prudent to place geosciences top of the agenda. This has
evidently not occurred as the publication in January 2005 of the House
of Commons environmental audit committee report finds the government
treating the environment as a “bolt on extra” in its development
plans. Geoscience information is traditionally underutilized in planning
and development, because all too often its relevance and significance
is misunderstood.
The British Geological Survey (BGS) has
launched an interdisciplinary project to deal with these issues, focused
on making geoscience information more accessible, relevant and understandable
to the wide range of users involved in the regeneration and development
of the Gateway.
Traditionally, geological information has been displayed
on maps supported by cross-sections. Digital advances have introduced
the routine use of Geographic Information Systems, enabling an unlimited
range of spatial data to be displayed as single or multiple ‘layers’.
Recent rapid developments in three-dimensional modelling software are
now providing exciting possibilities for constructing geological models
of the shallow sub-surface. Using this new technology, we can start to
predict not only the type of rocks that lie beneath our feet, but also
their engineering properties (e.g. strength, shrink-swell and compressibility)
and hydrological properties (e.g. permeability, porosity, or conductivity).
Moral Knowledge: The Forgotten Dimension of Sustainability
Gabriela
Sabau
Department of
Economics/Environmental Studies,
Sir Wilfred Grenfell College,
Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada
Various economic theories
attempt to clarify the role of knowledge and technology in the dynamics
of economies. The new (endogenous) growth theories and evolutionary
economic theories, based originally on Schumpeter's logic of creative
destruction, consider innovation and the technological and organizational
changes associated with it the key drivers of long-run economic growth.
They maintain that sustaining the growth rate of the economy, measured
in per capita income or GDP, without deliberate outside intervention
to support it, would solve the problem of both dynamic efficiency and
intergenerational equity (Stavins, Wagner, Wagner, 2003).
The paper contends
that these economic theories have been unsuccessful in generating means
for determining a sustainable way of using limited resources, due to
a too narrow definition of knowledge as technological innovation. A broader
definition of knowledge is proposed, based on moral philosophy (A. Smith,
K. Haakonssen - 1981, A. Salinas - 2003), as the economic problem of
deciding how to allocate resources among alternative uses is a moral
question of what is socially beneficial, good or right. The market mechanism,
an impersonal institution (J. Viner, 1972) based on contextual knowledge
of economic agents motivated by self-interest, cannot endogenously give
fair solutions to moral problems. The need to correct market imperfections
by an "impartial spectator" endowed
with systemic knowledge is documented.
Coping Strategies of Households Exposed
to Unequal Environmental Quality in Germany
Heike
Köckler
Center for Environmental Systems Research, University of Kassel, Kassel,
Germany
Environmental Justice is not an important
topic in German planning science and politics by now, although differences
in the environmental quality of many cities are obvious. Some neighbourhoods
are more often and more intensively exposed to noise, malodour and air
pollution while having less access to environmental amenities. However
empirical data are missing on whether and how the environmental quality
of a neighbourhood correlates with socio-economic factors of its households.
Within a research project at the Centre for Environmental Systems Research
(CESR) at the University of Kassel a case-study is being carried out
for the city of Kassel, a city with about 200,000 inhabitants in an economically
weak region in the middle of Germany. Together with the city department
on the environment existing data for socio-economic and environmental
quality indicators are collected in a geographical information system
(GIS) for a small scaled spatial data analysis.
Besides first results
of the spatial analysis, a conceptual framework on coping strategies
of households exposed to unequal environmental quality will be presented
in the talk. Central components of the framework are the income, the
education and the environmental perception of a household. This framework
serves to explain if and how households are active in reducing these
impacts resulting from the external environmental quality of their neighbourhood.
To understand how different types of households are under the influence
of their environment the application of vulnerability theories seems
a fruitful approach, because they define determinants of a household’s
coping capacity in view of external impacts. To use these theories, which
are up to now primarily applied in the context of developing countries
for hunger and natural hazards, findings have to be transferred to German
conditions and to the topic of environmental quality.
