Ecology and Education for Sustainable Design
By David A. Bainbridge
©2000-2001 Work-in-progress
Associate Professor
United States International College of Business
Alliant International University
San Diego, CA 92131
Presented at the Efficiency and Miniaturization Forum
Solar 2000 American Solar Energy Society
Madison, WI - June 2000
As I have argued for much of my career, we need a new approach to
education that includes full consideration of sustainability in design,
resource management, economics and ecosystem management (Bainbridge,
1985). Developing literacy in calculating and understanding the true
economic and environmental cost of our behavior, integrating the value of
nature's services and the current externalized costs of environmental
damage and the health and social impacts of our actions and policies will
be a critical step in this process. Every student should be aware of these
issues when they graduate from high school and capable of understanding
and undertaking life cycle cost assessments, ecosystem analysis and
multidisciplinary team research by the time they graduate from college.
This is particularly important in the design and planning professions
(architecture, engineering, planning) where facilities, behavior, and
resource commitments are made for 50 -100 years or more. Current
subsidies, perverse incentives and incomplete costing encourage
unsustainable practices and behavior, but these will not be changed until
more people are conversant with these issues and their implications.
An important part of this educational effort will be placing humans within
the ecosystem, as Aldo Leopold first argued more than 50 years ago
(Leopold, 1948; Bainbridge, 1972;). As Robert Kates (1994) notes, we need
to accept that: 1) cohabitation with the natural world is necessary, 2)
there are limits to human activity, and 3) the benefits of human activity
need to be more widely shared. This ecological context will help us
understand that there is "no away" where wastes can be placed,
and that local actions have global impacts. This ecosystem approach has
quickly gained acceptance more quickly in industry, and the practice and
theoretical bases of industrial ecology are growing rapidly (Frosch and
Gallopoulos, 1989; Ayres and Simonis, 1994; Graedel and Allenby, 1995;
Porter and van der Linde, 1995; Socowlow et al., 1997; Anon, 1998; Frosch,
1998). This vision now needs to be extended to the design professions and
to the general public (Environment Canada, 1993; Dunn and Steinemann,
1998). This will help us understand the relation between the parts and the
wholes, our place in the local and global ecosystem, and the importance of
today's choices on future options.
While considerable attention is now being paid to global warming and it's
attendant risks in the press, increased storms, rising sea level, and
changes in rainfall patterns, very little work is being done to evaluate
the many other known impacts development has on the world. And even less
is being spent to examine the responses of stress on critical ecosystem
functions and structure. It is almost certainly going to be something we
haven't imagined or studied that bites us hardest.
Recent advances in ecological science and understanding can help us
develop and refine this new approach to education. For example, studies of
the genetics of disease resistant sugar pines suggest that these wind
pollinated trees, once thought to be similar across very large areas, are
very local specific. The genetic similarity is greatest within two to
three tree lengths-not miles or tens of miles as was previously thought.
As we often ask in ecological restoration, "How local is local?"
As it turns out, very local.
Studies of the effect of increasing CO2 levels suggest that the subtle
changes that may occur in many aspects of the environment may have serious
consequences. One of the many surprises was the large impact increasing CO2 had on fungal spore production, which increased dramatically (Klironomos
and Allen, 199_). This provides a very important warning, that the
unexpected little impacts that result from global warming might be the
ones that cause us the most severe problems. This research also is
relevant to architects as they develop building designs for high occupancy
load buildings such as schools, where CO2 levels and moisture are
elevated. Sick building syndrome is quite likely often related to the
response of fungi to elevated CO2. On a global level it would suggest that
asthma and allergies will increase, crops will more commonly afflicted by
disease, and natural ecosystems will be disrupted by fungal pandemics. The
design choices we make today will affect CO2 production for tens or
hundreds of years, each small local action must be made with the long term
global implications carefully considered. Fortunately design for local
self-reliance can minimize energy and resource consumption and protect
global and local ecosystems (Bainbridge, 1987; Schmitz-Gunther, 1999).
The full consideration of costs will lead to dramatic changes in design
and behavior. For example, a study of automobiles as transportation
suggests that the current subsidy is 90% (Batt, 1998). If we paid the full
cost we would design our cities and suburbs for pedestrians and bicycles.
This miniaturization of our perspective would provide economic benefits,
enormous ecological benefits and health benefits. In San Diego, arguably
the best climate for bicycling in the United States if not the world, less
than 1% of the commute is by bicycle. In Germany, with much worse weather,
support for bicycle commuting has paid large dividends. In Freiburg the
bicycle commute has risen from 12% in the 1970s to 19% today, and in
Muenster bicycle commuting has increased to 32% ( ). In the Netherlands
companies buy bicycles for their employees to use in the commute. The
Netherlands also offers tax credits to people who commute by bicycle,
acknowledging the savings to society and offsetting subsidies for cars.
Thinking locally also helps maintain the local economy. Bicycles can be
custom made locally, keeping money in the community instead of shipping it
off to Detroit.
One of the most adverse impacts of development is the disruption of the
hydrologic cycle. Streets, parking lots, sidewalks, and roofs dramatically
increase the percentage of soil surface that is impervious to water
(Arnold and Gibbons, 1996). Soil compacted by equipment, degraded by past
overgrazing and abuse, and colonized by weeds may also retain much less
rain water or snow melt than undisturbed natural ecosystems. Instead of
infiltrating into the ground a high proportion of rain water runs off
quickly into streams causing much more frequent and higher peak flows than
existed in the natural watershed. Flood peaks may increase 6-fold, and
floods once expected only one in a 100 years in an unurbanized setting may
now recur every 10-20 years (Leopold, 1969). These high flows destabilize
stream beds, mobilizing more sediment, which in turn can destabilize the
lower stream reaches and cause additional problems. Flooding increases and
with sediment blocking drains, flood damage increases even more. Flooding
from a 100-year rainfall event can be catastrophic, reaching far beyond
the 100 year flood plains calculated before urbanization took place. Water
quality declines as stormwater collects debris and pollutants and
ecosystems are disrupted and critical habitat and species are lost. People
get sick from exposure to stormwater, and beaches and recreation are
curtailed, at high economic cost. The solution is miniaturization, moving
from consideration of regional storm sewers and treatment plants to
minimizing or eliminating runoff by incorporating stormwater management in
home, facility and transportation design. This worked very well in the
innovative 220 unit solar subdivision known as Village Homes, but was
fought bitterly by city engineers (Bainbridge et al., 1979; Corbett and
Corbett, 2000). But even innovative stormwater infiltration systems carry
a risk if the entry of pollutants into the environment is not curtailed
(Lind and Karro, 1995).
A more subtle but important impact of design choices is nitrogen
pollution. Nitrous oxides from fossil fuel consumption fall back to earth
as dry particulates and in rain. Nitrogen deposition can reach more than
50 kilograms per hectare in auto dominated areas like Southern California,
considerably more than the world average application of nitrogen
fertilizer for farming. This high level of nitrogen addition appears to be
having a very large negative impact on our native ecosystems. Sadly, we
don't know much in most areas because studies have just started. One of
the reasons we don't see the changes from these low level impacts is
because they are slow and cumulative. A common impact study would evaluate
only two or three years, and at some levels of added nitrogen this would
reveal only positive changes. Yet over the long term very negative impacts
develop. In areas where this has been studied it has been nothing short of
catastrophic. A long term study in England, showed dramatic declines in
the diversity of grassland plots with nitrogen added treatments at
nitrogen levels well within current deposition rates (Brenchley, 1956;
Wedin, and Tilman, 1996). On the Rothamsted plots diversity dropped from
30 species to 3 over the 90 years of the study, figure x. A 12 year study
in Minnesota grasslands showed similar declines in species diversity and
community composition. Species richness declined 50% and bunch grasses
were replaced by invasive weedy European grasses. Recent reports from
Sweden, where deposition can exceed 100 kg/ha, are alarming. Design
affects energy and fossil fuel use determines nitrogen pollution.
Miniaturization would minimize nitrogen pollution, walking, bicycling and
naturally heated and cooled buildings require only a fraction of the
energy of our current systems.
Cities should develop and maintain accounting systems for the inflow and
outgo of nitrogen, phosphorus and other elements and compounds. To be
sustainable in the long term they need to be in balance, yet as studies in
Sweden have revealed, even coping with a non-toxic element like phosphorus
is very difficult (Gunther, 1997). Developing balance will require local
recycling. Miniaturization would return food production to local areas
(much to homes), and growing most food locally using co-composted human
waste can complete the phosphorus and many other nutrient cycle. This
would reduce the energy cost, nitrogen pollution associated with long
distance food transport. Lumber can also be produced locally, as it is in
China, as an adjunct of land treatment of sewage and storm water.
Regional and national studies of more toxic compounds are also essential.
Studies of heavy metal budgets in the Rhine Basin are even more
disturbing, although they show signs of improvement (Stigliani and
Anderberg, 1994). Design for disassembly and industrial ecology can
minimize leakage of harmful materials into the environment.
The public around the world is more aware of environmental issues than
their leaders, and as the saying goes "Where the people lead, the
leaders will follow". The major challenge is now developing cost
effective implementation programs and policies rather than creating
awareness of problems (Trudgill, 1991; Bloom, 1995). The emerging
discipline of ecological economics offers new approaches to better
understanding our world and providing incentives for sustainable
management (O'Riordan, 1994; Massarratt, 1997; Tietenberg, 2000). Often
these are no cost options, such as making the polluter pay (Anderson,
1994).
Incorporating ecology in education is both possible and essential.
Students and design professionals need to understand the whole to improve
the parts. They need to learn that actions have effects, and that problems
can't be solved in isolation (Charland, 1996). Teaching the skills of
ecological footprint analysis, life cycle cost assessment, and
environmental management systems should be a normal part of every
curriculum (Graedel and Allenby, 1994; Uhl et al. 1996; Wackernagel and
Rees, 1996). Environmental citizenship (Environment Canada, 1993) should
be given the same weight as language and math skills, and can enrich
lessons in both.
Universities and professional organizations must rise to the challenge of
developing an understanding of sustainable behavior and culture throughout
the educational system, particularly for those involved in the planning
and development of land and buildings (Uhl et al., 1996; Fisk et al.,
199?; Dunn and Steinemann, 1998). The University of Georgia now requires
all of its 22,000 students to fulfill an environmental literacy
requirement (Bainbridge, 1998). Making campuses more sustainable would
provide the opportunity for students to learn and to demonstrate more
responsible management of resources. Although student efforts have made
some progress most campuses have made little progress toward
sustainability (Creighton, 199 ; ).
Almost 90% of first year college students believe the Federal Government
is not doing enough to clean up the environment and 25% say involvement in
programs to clean up the environment is a very important or essential
personal objective (Dey et al., 1991). We must also develop much better
linkages between countries, both at the professional and student levels so
that progress can be made without repeating mistakes or ignoring lessons
learned elsewhere.
It can and must be done! Having environmentally illiterate students,
citizens, designers and politicians is as risky as having airline pilots
who are exhausted, tanker captains who are drunk, and hazardous waste
handlers who cannot read. It will lead to disaster.
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