Samhällets styrsystem en vänbok till Inga Carlman

Transcription

1 Samhällets styrsystem en vänbok till Inga Carlman Society s steering systems a Friend book to Inga Carlman Fröling, M Flourishing societies within planetary boundaries. Pages in E. Grönlund & A. Longueville (eds.): Society s steering systems a Friend book to Inga Carlman. Mid Sweden University, Östersund, Sweden.

2 Publicerad av: Mittuniversitetet Avd. Ekoteknik och hållbart byggande Akademigatan Östersund Samhällets styrsystem en vänbok till Inga Carlman Erik Grönlund Anna Longueville (red.) Första upplagan. Författarna 2016 ISBN Omslagsfoton: Staffan Westerlund, Erik Grönlund Published by: Mid Sweden University Dept. of Ecotechnology and Sustainable Building Engineering Akademigatan 1 SE Östersund SWEDEN Society s steering systems a Friend book to Inga Carlman Erik Grönlund Anna Longueville (eds.) First edition The Authors, 2016 ISBN Cover photos: Staffan Westerlund, Erik Grönlund

3 Morgan Fröling Department of Ecotechnology and Sustainable Building Engineering, Mid Sweden University, Sweden Morgan Fröling is a professor in Ecotechnology and Environmental Science at the department of Ecotechnology and Sustainable Building Engineering, His background is as a Master of Chemical Engineering, and he holds a PhD in Chemical Environmental Science from Chalmers University of Technology, Göteborg, Sweden. After his doctoral studies he spent two years as a post doc at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts, as a Wallenberg Research Fellow at the Laboratory for Energy and the Environment and at Department of Chemical Engineering. In 2010 he joined Mid Sweden University, and the Ecotehcnology and Sustainable Building Engineering group. 123

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5 Flourishing Societies within Planetary Boundaries Morgan Fröling Department of Ecotechnology and Sustainable Building Engineering, Mid Sweden University, Östersund, Sweden That is where the real work starts That is where the real work starts was among the first thing Professor Inga Carlman ever said to me. The meaning of those seven words has impacted the direction of my research and thinking since. Other things has probably simultaneously been involved developing my thinking in the same direction, but those words are what in hindsight stands out clearest as a marker for a renewed direction of thoughts and research interests. Until then my main research focus had been developing new technological solutions and assess the earlier practice and the proposed new practice using environmental systems assessment, predominantly using Life Cycle Assessment methodology. I had just had a seminar presentation on environmental assessments of different technical options which Inga Carlman had attended, and while leaving the meeting she said to me It is good that you are able to assess which option is the more environmentally friendly one, but when we know that, that is when the real work starts! What she alluded to, was that knowing which the better option is does not make us actually use that better option. It put words on something that I had observed and been frustrated by over the years. I had at several occasions during my life so far been involved in research projects where a new technology obviously would be less environmentally impacting, provide a better product or service, while using natural resources more efficient and create larger economic revenues for the involved company or organization and still the idea would not take off, the technology would not be used, sometimes not even considered at all. The engineer in me had been frustrated, Inga Carlman s words marked a point in time when I more actively started to understand this phenomena and not only letting it frustrate me [1]. Knowing what is the better option is of course something we need to know, but that is where the real work starts, to create flourishing societies within planetary boundaries. 125

6 What is the better option? One reason for why we do not move forward as fast as the frustrated me would like us to, is that we actually do not agree on what direction is forward. While the United Nations Global Goals of 2015 has given a strong indication of direction for global development from the international society, a vast number of more detailed how? questions remain. Different views on sustainability can be one such root cause for disagreements that lead to inaction. Here Inga Carlman and I share the view of strong sustainability; that it is necessary to protect the integrity of the biosphere and its ecosystems, and that social and economic sustainable societies only can exist on the base of a sustainable biosphere. This view is for most people unproblematic on an overarching level, but it often becomes problematic, also for me, when handling real tradeoffs in practice. As an example can be mentioned, that sometimes occurs when working with ecosystem services, is that using receiver or market valuation in some cases very obviously give the ecosystems lower value than their importance to economy [2]. What is regarded more important to consider by us humans also changes over time, partly because we actually solve some problems, but also because changes in awareness, or that new use of technology or organization of society have created a new problem [3]. During the latest decades society has developed from an environmental awareness, with reactive thinking of the pre Brundtland age into having sustainability as the goal for human development after the Rio declaration. Lately, within the environmental scientific sphere, the concept of resilience is increasingly superimposed on the sustainability paradigm. Such development also shifts the predominant articulation of sustainable development [4] and such shifts are important to be aware of if you want to be an agent for change in any specific direction. Another example is how to assess bio based products and biomass use, if we strive toward a bio based society [5]. For a future society, where use of renewable resources are dominating, climate impacts will probably not be the most significant issue to minimize in society or optimize technical systems towards but what is it then? To some extent we need to handle such questions already today, since the choices of technologies, infrastructure etc that we make today will to some extent be present also in a future bio based society. Globally, we need to significantly increase human well-being for a large part of the world s population [1]. However, if this is done wrong, the potential to worsen global environmental problems and overburden planetary boundaries is significant. Technically mankind has at its disposal much of what is needed to solve these problems, but we don t seem to be able to use available options in effective ways. 126

7 To get us going Other reasons to stay inactive can be that even if we have a clear vision, the vision is not easily transferable into guidelines for actions in our everyday life, or our daily work. This can be observed for example in product or material development projects, where overarching visions and goals are hard to interpret when it comes to the details of the development work, and these issues thus might become somebody else s problem [6]. But it might also be the result of overwhelming by the sheer magnitude of issues and their complex interaction [7]. There is a continuous flow of information and a general awareness about the necessity of taking action (thereby reducing the negative anthropocentric contribution to global warming and ecological systems depletion); and it is important to arrange platforms that serves to shape a fruitful dialogue between all stakeholders from individual to groups that will make it possible to create a common plan to be implemented [7]. To get a holistic view of the complex problems and to clarify the relationships of structure and function, systems thinking has been applied; e.g. modelling, cybernetics, systems analysis, life cycle assessment and energy and material flow analysis [8]. Such tools used collectively, conceptualized as integrated assessment, can help to communicate fundamental knowledge, and to support decisionmaking when identifying, developing and implementing precautionary measures and solutions. There are good examples demonstrating the strength of such approaches; e.g. solutions to the ozone depletion by replacing CFC s with more chemically reactive compounds that are degraded within the troposphere. Governance in the Anthropocene must be based on an understanding of the problem picture at hand, and learning how to appropriately address increasingly complex issues [8]. Information flows, communication, interpretation and stakeholder involvement are at the same time moving into focus, for us to actually achieve any goals we have been able to set up. That organisational systems intended to lead to a better environment don t always deliver might partly be driven by such issues, and thus we can think of ideas as e.g. to incorporate ecosystem service thinking into environmental impact assessment in order to enhance stakeholder involvement and strengthen the role of alternatives in such processes [9]. To release creativity To handle the tremendous challenge before us we will need the power and ingenious of many brains and many, perhaps all human beings. We will need to crate processes to transfer and transform information between individuals with different expertise and knowledge so that it becomes actionable for each involved individual [10, 11]. For example the understanding by a natural scientist of such issues as planetary boundaries, limitations and needs to reduce have better 127

8 chances to become realized in practice if they can be transformed into positive design challenges of products and services in a flourishing society within such boundaries [12]. If we can transform problems into such positive challenges it might be one way to release creativity to replace fear for future with action to create a flourishing society. To more often be able to find such positive challenges could partly be facilitated by talking more about good and inspiring examples within this area. But to be able to talk about such examples we need to know about them. One, to me, inspiring example is building design incorporating a heated atrium, a design feature that in the climate of north Sweden seems to be able to simultaneously enhance energy efficiency and facilitate social interaction [13]. This might be one of many ideas that, taken together, can help us build a flourishing future. Integrated environmental assessment What Inga Carlman said to me, when I first came to Mid Sweden University, has over time developed into the understanding that to move in direction of sustainable, flourishing societies we need to have with us the wider perspective of integrated environmental assessment while we pursue new knowledge with the goal of taking action [14]. The understanding of the state of the world and the situation for nature and ecosystems is necessary, but not enough. In connection, there are pressures on the biosphere in forms of e.g. emissions or changes in physical landscapes due to human uses, which are necessary to grasp, but that is still not enough. The pressures on nature are seldom the result of intentional actions intended to destroy nature, generally they are the results of the processes humanity uses to generate gods and services for human well-being those are the drivers. The changes in nature due to the combination of all pressures generate impacts to the human society and to our ability to generate human well-being and living good lives. When large enough groups of people can discern and comprehend such impacts and their drivers, we can through governance structures create responses to the impacts. The responses may be in different forms of management practices, laws, economic steering tools, dissemination of information etc. affecting the drivers causing negative impacts. We sometimes discuss this as the DPSIR framework of thinking. To this framework we also should add the need for innovation and technical development of appropriate technical and organizational solutions. Research vise, we will still need deep knowledge and research in all these different areas, and individual researchers will mainly work in one or a couple of the mentioned areas. But for positive change to actually happen, all the parts will have to be understood, and we thus all need to keep what each of us work with in the integrated perspective - otherwise it will be very hard to take action; the issue 128

9 that frustrated me so many years back and which Inga Carlman put words to for me. It is not easier, but necessary if we want to be part of creating flourishing societies within planetary boundaries. Acknowledgments I want to thank Professor Inga Carlman for her valuable input. Without her this work would not have happened. References [1] Morgan Fröling and Inga Carlman (2014): To Really Do What We Know We Need to Do - Can Humanities Help Where Natural Sciences and Engineering Have Reached the End of the Road? In: Proceedings of NIES X / ECOHUM Research Symposium, Rethinking Environmental Consciousness, Mid Sweden University, Sundsvall, 5 8 December [2] Erik Grönlund, Morgan Fröling and Inga Carlman (2015): Donor values in emergy assessment of ecosystem services. Ecological Modelling, Vol. 306, pp [3] Morgan Fröling, Erik Grönlund and Inga Carlman (2015): From environmental problems to sustainable development and towards resilience: Development over time of a university program in environmental science aiming for action competences. 8th World Environmental Education Congress WEEC 2015 Planet and People - how can they develop together?, Göteborg, Sweden, June 29 - July [4] Magdalena Svanström and Morgan Fröling (2011): Trade-offs in the district heat distribution system. In: What is Sustainable Technology?: Perceptions, Paradoxes and Possibilities [eds] Karel Mulder, Didac Ferrer and Harro van Lente, Sheffield, UK: Greenleaf Publishing Ltd, 2011, pp [5] Gunilla Clancy, Morgan Fröling & Magdalena Svanström (2013): Changing from petroleum to wood-based materials: critical review of how product sustainability characteristics can be assessed and compared. Journal of Cleaner Production, vol. 39, pp [6] Gunilla Clancy, Morgan Fröling & Magdalena Svanström (2013): Insights from guiding material development towards more sustainable products. International Journal of Sustainable Design, vol. 2: 2, pp [7] Torbjörn Skytt, Sören Nors Nielsen, Fredrik Ståhl, Anders Jonsson, Erik Grönlund, Inga Carlman and Morgan Fröling, (2015): A strategic tool to find out regional sustainability methodologies helping individuals to make long term decisions. In: Proceedings of Global Cleaner Production and Sustainable Consumption, Barcelona Sitges, November 1-4, [8] Torbjörn Skytt, Sören Nors Nielsen, Erik Grönlund, Fredrik Ståhl, Anders Jonsson, Inga Carlman and Morgan Fröling, (2015): Interdisciplinary Cooperation 129

10 and System Modelling as Means to Govern the Anthropocene. In Proceedings of the 59th Annual Meeting of the International Society for the Systems Sciences. Scandic Berlin Potsdamer PlatzBerlin; Germany; August 2 7, [9] Anna Longueville, Inga Carlman, Morgan Fröling and Erik Grönlund (2013): Ecosystem Services Supporting Decision Making in Environmental Impact Assessments. In Proceedings of Ecological Modelling for Ecosystem Sustainability in the context of Global Change, 19th biennial ISEM Conference. [10] Gunilla Clancy, Morgan Fröling, Magdalena Svanström and Sverker Alänge (2013): Actionable knowledge to develop more sustainable products. In Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on Life Cycle Management, August 25-28, 2013, Göteborg, Sweden. [11] Gunilla Clancy, Morgan Fröling, Gregory Peters (2015): Ecolabels as drivers of clothing design. Journal of Cleaner Production, vol. 99, ss [12] Morgan Fröling and Lena Lorentzen (2016): Design Processes Releasing Creativity for Sustainability. In: Valuing and Evaluating Creativity for Sustainable Regional Development. Book of abstracts. Östersund, Sweden, September 11-14, [13] Itai Danielski, Gireesh Nair, Anna Joelsson and Morgan Fröling (2016): Heated atrium in multi-storey apartment buildings, a design with potential to enhance energy efficiency and to facilitate social interactions. Building and Environment, vol. 106, pp [14] Morgan Fröling (2015): Integrated assessment for sustainable rural development in the Mid Sweden mountain region. In Proceedings of Sustainability of Rural Areas in Practice (SURAP), Slovak University of Agriculture in Nitra, Slovakia, December

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