1. Sustainability Overview: Global and Island
Challenges and Opportunities
Youth Leadership Summit
Martha’s Vineyard June 22nd to June 28th, 2013
Alex Frost
2. Purpose
To build participant’s capacity to
• Understand the global sustainability challenge;
• Identify and be comfortable with the basic science of sustainability;
• Cite examples of world-changing islands advancing sustainable
development.
3. Agenda
1. Introduction
2. Global Overview
3. Sustainability Science
4. Island Leaders in Sustainability
• Hawaii, USA
• Samso, Denmark
• Island of Wight, England
• El Hierro Island, Spain
• Iceland
5. Conclusion
4. Introduction – Who am I?
• Former Sustainability &
Resource Coordinator for
Hawaii County (7 years)
• Peace Corps Philippines
• Starting Master’s in Urban
Planning at UH Manoa in
Fall 2013
• Finishing up my 20 months
pilgrimage - visiting sacred
places & surf around the
world.
9. Seeing the Opportunities –
Business…
Walmart’s Goals
• To be supplied 100 %
by renewable energy
• To create zero waste
• To sell products that
sustain our resources
and environment
13. Metaphor of the funnel
Declining
resources and ecosystem
services
Increasing
demand for resources and
ecosystem services
14. Emerging Sustainability Issues
• Increased operational costs
– (energy, waste disposal, infrastructure & building maintenance,
health care, policing, water treatment, insurance, etc…)
• Increased demand for social services…
• Regulations & compliance costs and challenges…
• Reduced air quality…
• Reduced water quality…
• Health issues…
• Deteriorating sense of trust…
• Loss of cultural uniqueness…
• Growing land use conflicts…
• Increasing pressures and extinctions of plant and animal life…
• Increased security demands…
15. Emerging Opportunities
The metaphor of the funnel also suggests that:
those who find new ways to provide
services and products that meet human
needs while reducing their negative
impacts and enhancing their positive
impacts will be best positioned to succeed.
And if not now, when?
17. What is Sustainability?
Sustainability: Sustainability can be scientifically defined as a dynamic
state in which global ecological and social systems are not systematically
undermined.
Ensuring that activities do not systematically undermine ecological and
social systems is to ensure that the capacity of future generations to
meet their needs is not compromised.
Ecological and social systems can be undermined in four basic ways.
United Nations 1987 Brundtland Report - Our Common Future:
“Sustainable Development is development that meets the needs of the
present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet
their needs.”
18. Cycles of nature
Slow geological cycles
(volcano eruptions and
weathering)
Slow geological cycles
(sedimentation and
mineralization)
Closed system with
respect to matter
1) Nothing disappears
2) Everything disperses
Open system with
respect to energy
« Photosynthesis
pays the bill »
Sustainability is
about the ability of
our own human
society to continue
indefinitely within
these natural
cycles
19. How we influence cycles
Relatively large flows
of materials from the
Earth’s crust
Introduce persistent
compounds foreign to
nature
Physically inhibit
nature’s ability to
run cycles
Barriers to
people
meeting their
basic needs
worldwide
20. 4 Sustainability Principles – An
operational definition
...concentrations of substances
extracted from the Earth’s crust,
...concentrations of substances
produced by society,
...degradation by physical means,
...people are not subject to conditions
that systematically undermine their
capacity to meet their needs.
In a sustainable society, nature is not
subject to systematically increasing...
and, in that society...
22. Our Sustainability Situation
The problem is not that we mine, harvest and
consume resources and use ecosystem
services.
It is that our industrial system, as it currently
operates, requires the mining, harvesting and
consumption of an ever-increasing amount of
resources and making ever greater use of
ecosystem services.
At some point, we exceed the Earth’s capacity
to supply those resources and services, and
to absorb the associated wastes.
23. 4 Sustainability Principles – An
operational definition
...concentrations of substances
extracted from the Earth’s crust,
...concentrations of substances
produced by society,
...degradation by physical means,
...people are not subject to conditions
that systematically undermine their
capacity to meet their needs.
In a sustainable society, nature is not
subject to systematically increasing...
and, in that society...
25. • There is a general belief that humans have all kinds of
needs that are constantly changing over time.
• A deeper look, however, reveals that there are really
only a few basic needs that all humans, all around the
planet, share.
• And what changes is how we satisfy those needs.
• In fact, it is how we satisfy those needs that
distinguishes our various cultures
Human Needs
26. Example of Island Sustainability Challenge:
Hawai‘i Island (Da Big Island)
27. “Ola Na Moku”
“Living Island”
Ho’owaiwai is a Hawaiian
word meaning “to enrich”.
In old Hawai‘i it was
everyone’s responsibility to
take care of the water. Those
with a sufficient supply of
wai (water) were considered
“wealthy.”
Learning from the Past
28. Island Sustainability Challenge
68%
Electricity
99.9%
Fuel
(transportation)
76%
Materials
85%
Food
Fossil Fuel
Dependence
*Source: IH Green Economy Report
Import Economy = Not Self-Sufficient
29. Challenges Facing Island Families
Income
Jobs
Livelihood
Services
Expense
(Highest in Nation)
Housing, Food,
Electricity, Gasoline
Transportation Childcare
Health Care, Misc.
Assets
Savings
Investment
Time
Lowest Annual
Wage in the
Nation
Highest Living
Cost in the Nation
Difficulty
Building Assets
• Child Poverty Rate 18.6%
• 31% of children receive
food stamp
• 50% of children reduce or
free lunch
• Poverty Level 13.3%
• Per capital income $18,791
• 50% of homeowners and
renters pay more than 30%
30. Challenges for Sustainability in
Hawai‘i & Islands in General
• Little local energy production
• Waste management
• Little food security
• Little economic diversification
• Creating transit infrastructure that gets people out of
their cars and enhances mobility
• Mainstreaming sustainability and overcoming resistance
• Siloed approach by government to funding and address
of sustainability related challenges noted above
• Depletion of biodiversity
31. Opportunities for Sustainability in
Hawai‘i
• Creating local energy self sufficiency
• Creating local food security and diversity of food
sources / crops
• Learning from the kupuna
• Leveraging the creativity, passion and intelligence of
Hawai‘ian people to further the sustainability agenda
• Growing awareness of sustainability and related
challenges and opportunities
• Take advantage of the economic downturn
• Creating a larger green job market
• Great grassroots support and motivation
• Becoming a world leader in island sustainability
