The Natural Step to Planning for Sustainability : A Framework For Getting From Here To There
		Sarah James
		Session: Monday, April 17, 2000 10:15-11:30 am	Author Info

ABSTRACT

While many planning practices over decades have been implicitly headed toward sustainability, recent, deepened understanding of this critical concern challenges planners to include the needs of future generations and the Earth's capacity to support their needs as well as ours in present-day planning decisions. A framework developed through a consensus of scientists in Sweden and abroad, based upon scientific and natural laws, offers guidance to planners in developing systematic and comprehensive strategies for moving toward the goal of sustainability in their communities and development.

Sustainability: When the needs of present and future generations can be met within the Earth's ability to support them.

Many sustainable planning and development practices are well-known to planners and have been in use for decades floodplain and watershed management, open space protection, compact development to name a few. More recently, a deepened understanding of sustainability underscores the principle of intergenerational equity managing our present economic and development activities in a way that will not deny our grandchildren's children the ability to exist and earn their livelihood in a healthy environment and accomplishing this within the capacity of the natural systems of the Earth.

Sustainability in development and community planning takes many forms building that is compact and near public transit, buildings and homes that are energy-efficient and toxic-free, businesses that reduce or eliminate the use of hazardous substances in their products and operations, housing and jobs that allow pedestrian access to shopping, services, and public transit to reduce, if not eliminate the need for a car. Greater sustainability in development benefits businesses, communities, and citizens as well as the planet. Healthy, non-toxic homes and workplaces support healthy occupants and increase worker productivity. Energy-efficient, water and power-saving homes and businesses are more affordable to occupants, and reduce business costs. Innovative development approaches such as cohousing and neighborhood-based participatory development rebuild community connections lost in the isolation of conventional suburbs and fragmented urban life.

This paper presents a framework for systematically identifying a comprehensive set of actions to move toward greater sustainability in community planning and development. This framework is then used to generate a list of such possible actions. To better understand that framework and what sustainability is about, it helps to first consider what's happening on a larger scale, and what it is that is unsustainable.

Background

There is agreement among scientists that the physical resources and natural systems of the earth are deteriorating. We're losing over 40 million acres of forestland per year. Soil erosion has caused an eight-time sediment increase in river basins. The amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has increased 30 percent over its natural occurrence. Poisonous elements mined from below the Earth's surface such as cadmium and lead are five and eight times their natural rates in the biosphere (earth's natural systems and atmosphere). Over 70,000 chemicals, many of these toxic in ways we still don't understand, are now being produced by society and released into the biosphere. Scientists estimate that the present level of human consumption of resources is exceeding the earth's carrying capacity by 30 percent and that we are making up that difference by depleting "natural capital". We in the U.S. are the worst offenders we, who make up only 5 percent of the world's population annually consume about 30 percent of the world's resources.
 
 

System Conditions for Sustainability	The questions for planners are...
1. Substances from below the Earth's surface must not be allowed to systematically increase in the biosphere. Fossil fuels, metals, and minerals that are mined or extracted from the earth, must not be taken out at a rate that exceeds their slow redeposit and integration into the earth. This is because these substances are steadily accumulating in the biosphere and will eventually reach limits beyond which irreversible changes will occur.	1. What planning approaches can help decrease dependence on fossil fuels, underground metals, and minerals
2. Unnatural compounds produced by society must not systematically increase in the biosphere. Chemical, organic, or synthetic compounds, the range of materials fabricated from the basic physical elements, must not be produced at a faster rate than they can be broken down into their natural elements and re-integrated into the cycles of nature. These substances, too, are accumulating in the earth's systems and will eventually reach limits beyond which irreversible changes will occur.	2. What planning approaches can help decrease economic dependence on synthetic chemicals
3. The physical basis for productivity and diversity of nature must not systematically be diminished. Our natural systems green plants, forests, water, topsoil, wildlife, land generate the resources upon which our human health and prosperity depend. It is the natural systems that recycle wastes once again into natural resources.	3. What planning approaches can halt or minimize activities that encroach upon nature?
4. Basic human needs must be met with the most resource-efficient methods possible, and their satisfaction must take precedence over the provision of luxuries. Farmers in Brazil will keep destroying the rain forest to grow crops until their subsistence needs are met. The "ecological footprint" of the average resident in the United States is 25.5 acres, compared with 2.0 acres of the average resident of India.1 If human needs for food, adequate shelter, and a decent livelihood are not addressed, the other three system conditions will not be able to be met.	4. How can our planning approaches increase efforts to address human needs fairly and efficiently?

To see what needs to be done to halt or reverse this pattern, it is useful to revisit some basic principles of science and natural laws.

Scientific Principles

• Matter and energy cannot be destroyed. We can change the structure and concentration of matter but we cannot destroy that matter. In other words, we can't get rid of anything.
• Matter and energy tend to disperse. As matter disperses, it loses its concentration and structure. When we "consume", we are really consuming order. We are turning concentrated and structured matter into dispersed matter (waste). All matter, materials and compounds that we create or extract from below the earth's surface will at some point be released into the ecosphere.
• Green plants are the primary producers of order and are our "life support system".. Plants capture and use solar energy through photosynthesis to concentrate and structure dispersed matter, creating order. Green cells are unique in our ecosphere in that they produce more order than they consume. Green cells produce the oxygen we breathe, and the sugars and carbohydrates that are the basis for the plant and animal food that we eat. Green cells absorb the carbon dioxide that we give off.

Using these conditions as a framework, it is possible to develop a systematic set of actions that can be taken to direct our community and development activities-or activities in any field toward more sustainable practices. Many organizations, businesses, and communities already have developed plans of actions toward greater sustainability in their operations, using these system conditions as a "compass".

The list of actions in the pages that follow have been generated through applying the four system conditions to development and community activities. There are many more actions that can be identified, using the system conditions as a framework. The four principles can be applied to the range of contexts in which planners work-transportation, land use, housing, economic development, etc.-to generate a systematic, comprehensive community plan and action strategies to move toward sustainability. A particularly effective approach is to use a participatory process, involving citizens and business people in generating action strategies toward the 4 sustainability objectives.

While the steps on the following pages likely can't all be taken at once, use of this 4-principle framework enables us to develop systematic and comprehensive plans of action to revise our practices to move toward meeting the conditions for sustainability in our communities and development activities. Here are a few examples:

PLANNING ACTIONS TOWARD SUSTAINABILITY

1. Support planning and development approaches that reduce or eliminate the use of fossil fuels, underground metals, and minerals.

• Develop & support transport alternatives to the car for housing occupants and workers (car-pooling, shuttles, bike paths, etc.)
• Use building materials generated locally to reduce, if not eliminate the need for long-distance, fuel-consuming transport.
• Use heating systems powered by other than oil or gas, such as solar panels, geothermal heat pumps.
• Encourage businesses that are locally-based or home-based, reducing or eliminating the need to commute.
• Provide recreational facilities within walking and bicycling distance

• Use natural building materials wherever possible instead of ones made with chemical compounds. (Eg: use alternatives to PVC pipes; wood board instead of plywood made with formaldehyde, no VOC paint, no toxic glues).
• Encourage businesses that minimize or eliminate of chemicals and employ proper disposal and recycling mechanisms for these
• Use agricultural and landscape methods that reduce or minimize use of pesticides, herbicides, and manufactured fertilizers
• Educate citizens and community officials about both short- and long-term risks associated with the use and disposal of hazardous materials and chemical substances

• Support appropriate development and population growth policies linked to carrying capacity of natural systems and community facilities
• Support educational efforts to reduce levels of consumption and waste generation at the household and community levels

• Re-use existing buildings where possible instead of demolition and new construction.
• Build compactly, preserving as much open space as possible.
• Use permaculture practices (whole systems design for landscaping & agriculture).
• .Use alternative building techniques such as straw bale, cob, or rammed earth construction.
• Encourage businesses that use recycled or by-products of other businesses, minimizing the use of virgin raw materials

• Reduce water usage through water-saving devices and consumer education to use less water.
• Separate gray water from black water; recycle & re-use gray water for indoor and outdoor gardens.
• Use "living machine" or solar aquatic greenhouse sewage treatment.
• Use stormwater management techniques which retain and use drainage water on site, rather than culverting to existing brooks or streams.
• Minimize amount of on-site impervious surfaces, such as asphalt paving, using gravel or other materials that allow for water absorption into the earth.

• Promote fair and equitable growth management policies maintaining diversity in local populations and economies
• Integrally involve local community residents in setting the vision for and developing action plans toward sustainability in their communities and regions
• Combine housing efforts with initiatives to increase local availability of jobs and locally-based businesses, to reduce commuting and rebuild community life.
• Provide affordable living environments that support a cohesive community and neighborhood life. (Cohousing, compact development, children's play areas, day care).
• Create vibrant community-based economies with employment opportunities that allow people economic self-determination and environmental health

Source Material & References:

"A Compass for Sustainable Development", Karl-Henrik Robert, John Holmberg, Herman Daly, & Paul Hawken, The Natural Step, San Francisco, CA, 1996.

Our Ecological Footprint, Mathis Wackernagel & William Rees, New Society Publishers, Gabriola Island, Canada, 1996.
Caring for the Earth, United Nations Environment Program et.al, Gland, Switzerland, 1991.

Caring for the Earth, United Nations Environment Program et.al, Gland, Switzerland, 1991.

Footnotes
1. "Ecological Footprint"-the amount of land needed to support present patterns of consumption and waste assimilation of a given population or activity. Our Ecological Footprint, op.cit.
2. Karl-Henrik Robert, John Holmberg et.al, "A Compass for Sustainable Development", The Natural Step Newsletter, 1996.

Author and Copyright Information

Copyright 2000 By Author

Sarah James
Principal, Sarah James & Associates

Sarah James has operated a consulting practice in community planning for fourteen years, based in Cambridge, MA and Meredith, NH. Her firm, Sarah James & Associates, specializes in citizen participatory planning and approaches to sustainability. She has taught or lectured on the subject of sustainability and participatory planning at Harvard, MIT, and Vassar as well as at numerous conferences and workshops. She is a co-founder of Sustainable Step New England, a non-profit organization dedicated to expanding awareness of sustainability issues throughout the New England region. She holds a Masters Degree in City Planning from the Harvard Graduate School of Design. Sarah James is a co-author of APA's forthcoming Policy Guide on Sustainability. She can be contacted at 617-576-1745 or through e-mail at sjamesassoc@compuserve.com.