Disruption! Rethink the system

A circular economy is one where “the goods of today become the resources of tomorrow at yesterday’s prices”. 

Economic Context: Scotland was the first nation to join Circular Economy 100.  In August 2013, Environment Secretary, Richard Lochhead, issued the statement: “Scotland’s economy will benefit from moving to a more circular model of production and consumption. Our Zero Waste Plan is already delivering important actions to make better use of resources, and we can accelerate progress if we join together with others on a global level.” By 2016, the Scottish Government issued Making Things Last:  A Circular Economy Strategy.

Using a Nature as Teacher where waste=food philosophy, the circular economy rests on three principles, each addressing several of the resource and system challenges. These are becoming increasingly more discussed and adopted, by large scale and SME businesses- aiming to disrupt ‘business as usual’ of the linear economy systems and encourage a rethinking of the status quo.

Principle 1: Preserve and enhance natural capital…by controlling finite stocks and balancing renewable resource flows.

Principle 2: Optimise resource yields…by circulating products, components, and materials at the highest utility at all times in both technical and biological cycles. This means designing for remanufacturing, refurbishing, and recycling to keep components and materials circulating in and contributing to the economy.

Principle 3: Foster system effectiveness..by revealing and designing out negative externalities.

Education Context: Many policies and publications* have nudged the core school curriculum (3-18years old) towards an overall aim to embed Sustainable Development Education in Scottish education.  The most recent construct is Learning for Sustainability, LfS (One Planet School Group, 2012) which comprises sustainable development education, global citizenship and outdoor learning.  The intention is that LfS in the curriculum helps to ‘nurture a generation of children and young people who know and value the natural world……. committed to the principles of social justice, human rights, global citizenship, democratic participation and living within the ecological limits of our planet.’ (One Planet Schools Implementation Group, 2016: 3).  As a contributor to LfS, Circular Economy, through Cradle to Cradle, is incorporated in the school certificate course ’Design and Manufacture’ (SQA, 2013)

University of Edinburgh is working to identify how the principles of the Circular Economy can be embedded into Research, teaching, operations across the whole university (UoE,2016). The university SRS department have been leading the concept of the university as ‘A living Lab’ to progress thinking and actions related to sustainability and social responsibility in all aspects of the university.

Several Professional Institutes have embedded the requirement for education for sustainable development and / or Circular Economy in their professional accreditation processes.

Prompts to explore and cause pause to ponder

Principles:: Values:: Responsibilities:: Practices::

Preparation for the GESA Reading group, please choose from these 2 papers and / or 2 videos

Webster, K (2013)   Missing the wood for the trees: systemic defects and the future of education for sustainable development Curriculum Journal 24:2, 295-315 http://www.tandfonline.com.ezproxy.is.ed.ac.uk/doi/full/10.1080/09585176.2013.802585

The circular economy. By Walter R. Stahel – Nature, 23 March 2016. http://www.nature.com/news/the-circular-economy-1.19594

and / or

Circular Economy: Thomas Rau at TEDxZwolle – ( approx. 20mins) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrb2v_f0ZYY

Rethinking Progress: The Circular Economy  (3 mins 11 secs)

https://www.youtube.com/user/made2bemadeagain

Questions: 

• Are principles such as those of the Circular Economy (Nature as Teacher, Waste = Food, material cascades, made to be made again, regenerative manufacture, sharing economies, nature as capital, design for disassembly, cradle to cradle thinking, bio-nutrients/ technical nutrients and closed loop cycles) considered realistic and feasible concepts to encourage a wide scale rethinking of systems ?

• What are the responsibilities of industry, commerce, business and enterprise in relation to ESD and Circular Economy principles? Who should / could take responsibility?

• Should school aged young people be exposed to Circular Economy principles, the sharing economy, social enterprise and for-profit approaches, or is this something for those entering specialist education at higher levels of study? Should educators display their own ‘frame of mind’ and values in relation to issues of sustainability and sustainable development when working with young people? What should be taught? Who should be responsible for this? Why?

• How should/could the Circular Economy manifest in practice? What needs to be in place to engage society (rich and poor, diverse cultures and communities), encourage innovation, inform and develop practice disrupt and rethink current systems?

Principles:: Values:: Responsibilities:: Practices::

Further links and readings can be made available for follow up for interested readers.

Check out the Disruptive Innovation Festival 7^th Nov- 25^th Nov 2016

https://www.thinkdif.co/

By Joanna Wright

MSc Carbon Management 2015-2016

Claire Hamlett

I woke up several times during the night last night. A few times because of the fluctuations in temperature: the heating couldn’t be turned up or down, so instead was being turned off and on again every once in a while when the carriage got too hot and then when it got too cold. Another time because I drooled on my neck pillow. And a final time when someone stepped on my bare toe with the heel of her shoe.

This is how I spend two nights a month: sprawled in a chair on the sleeper train between London and Edinburgh, part of a longer journey to get me from Nijmegen, the Netherlands, where my husband is a post-doc, to Edinburgh, where I’m doing my PhD. The rest of the trip involves a 3 hour train between Nijmegen and Brussels, changing in Roosendaal, and 2 hours on the Eurostar between Brussels and London. The whole lot takes about 12 hours door to door.

Why would I willingly subject myself to such an arduous journey twice a month when I could make it from city to city using the modern marvel of air travel in a mere 5 hours (including travel to and from airports, queuing for security, and browsing WH Smith’s book collection without any intention of buying anything)? I’m glad you asked. It turns out that if I took a return flight from Edinburgh to Amsterdam (a 830 mile trip), I would be responsible for 0.11 metric tons of carbon emissions. But a round trip by train, covering a distance of 1500 miles, puts me in debt by 0.04 metric tons. Over the course of a year in which I make the trip every month, that’s a saving of nearly a ton of carbon.

My PhD is in environmental ethics, so the decision to travel by train instead of plane was a simple one (otherwise my conscience would be gnawing at me unbearably and I doubt I’d be able to look my supervisors in the eye). But, despite my uncomfortable sleeper train experiences, taking the long route instead of the convenient one has really cemented my belief that train travel is just superior to flying. Here are my reasons, some of which apply to train travel in general and some of which are specific to my journey:

1. If the train bumps or rattles or makes other weird noises, I hardly notice. If a plane does that, I immediately start making my peace with a god I previously had no belief in.
2. Turning up a maximum of 20 minutes before departure. I am someone who is perpetually cutting it fine when it comes to being on time. I do not like having to turn up several hours in advance of a main event. Even on the Eurostar, I find that I go through security quicker if I turn up later than the recommended 45 minutes prior to departure, since by the time I reach security everyone else has already gone through it.
3. Going through London means I get to stop off there for weekends quite regularly to see my family and friends, which has the added bonus of breaking up my journey into two more manageable chunks. If I were to fly, I’d bypass London entirely and my life would be poorer for it.
4. Trains are just more comfortable. Okay, not all trains. I find Cross-country ones weirdly humid, and on First Great Western I’ve often wondered if the other passengers decided to have a food fight before I got on. But the ones I take between Nijmegen and Edinburgh are usually pretty clean, with much larger and comfier seats than one can get on a plane in economy class. Also if you’re sitting next to someone with a cold, there are ways to escape them on a train. Not so on a plane, where their germs are just getting mixed up with everyone else’s and recycled through the air-conditioning.
5. Lounge and cafe cars. My favourite thing to do on the Eurostar is spend most of the journey in the cafe car sipping sparkling wine and eating overpriced French snacks.
6. Thinking time. Train journeys are a slower alternative to plane journeys (except horrendous long-haul flights of course), and that means more time to fill between start and end point. For me, this has been invaluable thinking and daydreaming time. Watching the Dutch countryside slide past the window for several hours helps my brain to slow down and relax enough to work out thesis problems that might otherwise vex me for days.

Environmental ethicists talk a lot about the ways humans can forge a positive relationship with nature. Often they’re referring to spending time in nature, literally getting our hands dirty, but in our everyday lives, I think this can also mean finding value in the changes we need to make to have less impact on the planet. Environmentalism needn’t all be about sacrifice, the things we can’t or shouldn’t do. It can and should be about gaining something too. So while some people might consider my extensive train journeys to be a sacrifice of convenience, for me it actually makes travel which is necessary for my life right now much more enjoyable than it would be otherwise (despite the fact that I sometimes think the sleeper train should be renamed the sleepless train). But it’s nice to have a massive carbon saving as motivation too.

Dr Laura Jeffery

Dr Laura Jeffery

Until the end of the 20^th century, most Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) were relatively small-scale conservation zones in coastal waters. The past decade has seen a proliferation in the designation of ever larger MPAs. Mega MPAs measuring over 100,000km² now already comprise the vast majority of the total area covered by MPAs worldwide. But why are the world’s powerful leaders – including Clinton, Bush, and Obama – competing to create ever larger MPAs?

The states party to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) have agreed on a target to protect 10% of the world’s oceans by 2020. Mega MPAs clearly help governments as they seek to reach this (repeatedly deferred) target, but do they offer effective protection? Proponents argue that the smaller border-to-area ratio of mega MPAs means that the area of well-protected ocean in the middle is increased while the border zones exposed to external threats are reduced. But critics point to a range of problems associated with mega MPAs:

Challenges to surveillance and enforcement: Size and remoteness pose particular challenges for effective surveillance and enforcement of mega MPAs, where surveillance vessels cannot effectively patrol such large areas, and remote sensing technologies cannot track illegal fishing vessels that do not have satellite tags. Environmental NGOS (eNGOs) have reported widespread illegal fishing within numerous MPAs, including illegal shark fishing in the Galapagos Marine Reserve (Ecuador).

Diverting attention from real challenges: Most mega MPAs have been designated in remote areas with little human habitation, but this means they are not ideally located to address the real challenges facing the world’s oceans, such as overfishing, tourism, and pollution. A good example of this is the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument designated around the uninhabited and relatively unexploited northwest Hawaiian Islands (USA).

Vulnerability to commercial interests: Seeking to meet ambitious targets without threatening economic growth, governments are likely to protect areas that already have low economic value. Australia’s Coral Sea Commonwealth Marine Reserve, for instance, covers deep water that sees little fishing activity at present, and leaves the most valuable commercial fishing areas unrestricted.

Undermining social justice: By banning resource use within vast areas, mega MPAs risk undermining social justice in terms of equitable access to economic livelihoods. The UK’s Chagos Marine Protected Area, for example, seems to have been designed to entrench UK sovereignty over an Indian Ocean territory also claimed by Mauritius, safeguard the security of the US military base on Diego Garcia, and harm the displaced islanders’ campaign for their right of return to the Chagos Archipelago.

Diverting resources from existing MPAs: Promoting mega MPAs may divert attention and resources from improving the management and effectiveness of existing or smaller MPAs. On the other hand, however, mega MPAs such as the Chagos MPA and South Georgia and Sandwich Islands (UK/Argentina) were designated alongside a network of smaller coastal MPAs around the UK mainland; Australia’s Coral Sea Commonwealth Marine Reserve was designated alongside smaller MPAs in areas of high resource use.

Discussion Questions

• Can national solutions such as mega MPAs effectively address global challenges?
• How can remote mega MPAs be effectively monitored and enforced?
• Does vulnerability to commercial interests undermine mega MPAs?
• Do remote mega MPAs divert attention from the real issues?
• Do mega MPAs undermine social justice?
• Do mega MPAs divert resources from smaller MPAs and MPA networks?
• Can MPA networks and Marine Spatial Planning (MSP) offer effective solutions?

Indicative Readings:

• MPA News. International news and analysis on marine protected areas published by the University of Washington.
• De Santo, E.M. 2013. Missing marine protected area (MPA) targets: How the push for quantity over quality undermines sustainability and social justice. Journal of Environmental Management 124: 137-146.
• Leenhardt, P, B. Cazalet, B. Salvat, J. Claudet & F. Feral. 2013. The rise of large-scale marine protected areas: conservation or geopolitics? Ocean & Coastal Management 85, A: 112-118.
• Singleton, R.L. & C.M. Roberts. 2014. The contribution of very large marine protected areas to marine conservation: giant leaps or smoke and mirrors? Marine Pollution Bulletin 87: 7-10.

Dr Laura Jeffery is Lecturer in Social Anthropology in the School of Social and Political Science at the University of Edinburgh, and has research interests in island ecologies, human–environment relations, and the politics of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs). She has recently published on WikiLeaks evidence in judicial review of the Chagos MPA, debates about environmental guardianship of the Chagos Archipelago, and ‘coconut chaos’ and the politics of restoration ecology.