5th Global Conference

Conference Programme, Abstracts and Papers

Monday 3rd July - Thursday 6th July 2006
Mansfield College, Oxford

Session 10: Sustainable Development and Environmental Impacts
Chair: Kim Loyens

The Sustainability Analysis Framework: A Whole of Government Model
Kendal Hodgman
Institute for Sustainability and Technology Policy, Murdoch University, Perth, Western Australia

Sustainability, governance and communication are concepts which must guide new millennium policy drafters, law makers and those charged with making socially just, economically responsible and environmentally sound decisions, if our planet is to be transmitted not irretrievably diminished to future generations.
Such is the level of the global community’s concern for the urgent implementation of Sustainability principles, that, in the spirit of Sustainability, international treaties have been signed, conventions and protocols ratified, as well as international and domestic laws enacted. Despite all this, the world continues to slide backwards in the quest for a sustainable common future.
This paper contends that many of the impediments to Sustainability are due to it being a paradoxically simple yet complex concept and practice. Communicating about Sustainability and models for its achievement remains a challenge, particularly for governments, which are charged with the prudent stewardship of the common wealth for the common good.
A paradigmatic shift is required, one requiring that traditional disciplinary hubris be dissipated and that decision-makers be educated of the need to integrate social, economic and environmental considerations. This paper outlines the evolution of such a tool in the largest state government in Australia, New South Wales (NSW). The Sustainability Analysis Framework (SAF), devised by the author, and detailed in her report to the NSW Government, Sustainability: A New South Wales Whole of Government Approach, has been implemented across thirty-eight state agencies and demonstrates that a whole of government Sustainability perspective is achievable.
The level of the NSW Government’s commitment to this process is evidenced by the fact that it was co-ordinated at the highest levels of the administration and engaged high-level input from a comprehensive portfolio of its agencies.
The successful deployment of the SAF across this significant bureaucracy shows that this generally applicable mechanism is effective in data collation, information sharing, knowledge organisation and the communication of Sustainability practice and wisdom.

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What does REPS tell us about Ireland's Attitude to, and Understanding of, Sustainability?
John McDonagh
Department of Geography, NUI, Galway, Ireland

This paper draws on the Rural Environmental Protection Scheme (REPS) as a vehicle of exploration in terms of Ireland’s attitude to, and understanding of, sustainability. Ilbery (1998) described agri-environmental policy as one of the most impressive achievements in the environmental field. Undoubtedly, agri-environmental policy has created numerous positive environmental responses (a growing knowledge of nutrient and habitat management, educating farmers to become more environmentally aware etc.) but it has also, according to Belshaw (cited in O’Rourke, 2005), brought about an ‘unsettling artificiality’ to our rural areas, and particularly to our farming practices. Consequently Hamell (2001: 9) has suggested, that ‘although some environmental legislation places direct requirements on agriculture, it must be broad enough in scope to ensure that agriculture itself is protected’. Robinson, (2004) has also taken up this mantle and declared that ‘small farm households provide, not only employment but the management of rural landscapes and ecological features, and a significant social role in supporting the population of rural areas’. Both of these observations allied to the declaration that the ‘living countryside’ concept is ‘essential for farming just as farming is essential for a living countryside’ (2nd European Conference on Rural Development, 2003) and we begin to see the challenges facing the agricultural sector in Europe and the need to determine the extent to which agri-environmental policy can support or undermine this role. So, while Lenihen et al (2002: 94) argue that ‘farmers are a critical component of this rural environment and it’s through the renewal and development of core farming activities in a balanced and sustainable manner, which, are vitally important for future sustainability’, the recent statistics for REPS in Ireland raise a number of important questions in this respect in that farmers participating in REPS are older, smaller farmers in the west of the country using more extensive and environmentally friendly farming methods.
This paper then, contextualized within the broader concept of the agri-environmental debate, explores the extent to which REPS is reflective of what could be deemed a lack of understanding of sustainability and what it should entail. Drawing on the rhetoric of policies such as the  ‘Cork Declaration’ (1996); the White Paper on Rural Development (1999); The National Development Plans (2000-2006); the Salzburg Rural Development Conference (2003),and the 3rd Economic Report on economic and Social Cohesion (2004), this paper questions the broader ‘thinking’ behind Ireland’s agri-environmental policy by addressing the concept of rural sustainability particularly as it relates to farming practices within the framework of the ‘living countryside’ agenda of the EU.

Sustainable Development Aims of the Clean Development Mechanism
Karen Olsen
UNEP Risø Centre: Energy, Climate and Sustainable Development, Risø National Laboratory, Roskilde, Denmark

The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM) is part of the global carbon market developing rapidly in response to mitigation of global warming. One of the aims of the CDM is to achieve sustainable development (SD) in developing countries but uncertainty prevails as to whether the CDM is doing, what it promises to do. In a review of the literature on how the CDM contributes to sustainable development it was found that no methodology exists to assess the total contribution of all CDM projects to sustainable development (Olsen 2005). This paper develops a new methodology to evaluate the sustainable development aims of all the CDM projects in the validation pipeline based on approximately 650 Project Design Documents (PDDs) by 1 April 2006. First, the paper develops a new methodology for coding intended, self-reported sustainable development aims of all CDM projects. The methodology is described and its limitations discussed. Second, results on how all CDM projects contribute to SD are presented using the new methodology. Thirdly, selected policy implications are discussed. Following the conclusion issues for further research and policy development are suggested.