Managing Editor ISSN: 1548-7733d20nn6mxpbiih2.cloudfront.net/sspp-journal/SSPP-vol12.1.pdf · Managing Editor ISSN: 1548-7733 Maurie Cohen (New Jersey Institute of Technology) Brie

Volume 12 ● Issue 1 Spring 2016

ISSN: 1548-7733

Journal Editor Maurie Cohen (New Jersey Institute of Technology)

Managing Editor Brie Betz (ProQuest)

Editorial Introduction to the special issue on social sustainability: integration, context, and

governance Nicole Peterson (The University of North Carolina at Charlotte, USA)………………………….3

Community Essays Toward a gender diverse workforce in the renewable energy transition Rebecca Pearl-Martinez (Tufts University, USA) & Jennie C. Stephens (University of Vermont,

USA)……………………………………………………………………………………………….8 Network priorities for social sustainability research and education: Memorandum of the

Integrated Network on Social Sustainability Research Group Rachelle Hollander (National Academy of Engineering, USA), Adjo Amekudzi-Kennedy

(Georgia Institute of Technology, USA), Sarah Bell (University College London, UK), Frazier

Benya (National Academy of Engineering, USA), Cliff Davidson (Syracuse University, USA),

Craig Farkos (American Society of Civil Engineering Task Committee on Sustainability, USA),

David Fasenfest (Wayne State University, USA), Regina Guyer (University of North Carolina

Charlotte, USA), Angelique Hjarding (University of North Carolina Charlotte, USA), Michael

Lizotte (University of North Carolina Charlotte, USA), Dianne Quigley (Brown University,

USA), Diana Watts (Trinity Washington University, USA), & Kate Whitefoot (Carnegie Mellon

University,

USA).…………………………………………………………………………………………...16 Articles Sustainable dissemination of earthquake resistant construction in the Peruvian Andes Malena Serrano (Pontifical Catholic University of Peru, Peru), Marcial Blondet (Pontifical

Catholic University of Peru, Peru), Álvaro Rubiños (Pontifical Catholic University of Peru,

Peru), and Elin Mattsson (Uppsala University, Sweden).……………………….……………...22

Social sustainability dimensions in the seismic risk reduction of public schools: a case study

of Lima, Peru Sandra Santa-Cruz (Pontifical Catholic University of Peru, Peru), Graciela Fernández de

Córdova (Pontifical Catholic University of Peru, Peru), Miryam Rivera-Holguin (Pontifical

Catholic University of Peru/National University of San Marcos, Peru), Marta Vilela (Pontifical

Catholic University of Peru, Peru), Victor Arana (Pontifical Catholic University of Peru, Peru),

and Juan Palomino (Pontifical Catholic University of Peru, Peru).……………………….……34

Achieving one-planet living through transitions in social practice: a case study of Dancing

Rabbit Ecovillage Robert Boyer (University of North Carolina at Charlotte, USA)………………………………..47

Managing the triple bottom line for sustainability: a case study of Argentine agribusinesses Poonam Arora (Manhattan College, USA), Nicole D. Peterson (University of North Carolina at

Charlotte, USA), Federico Bert (La Asociación Argentina de Consorcios Regionales de

Experimentación Agrícola (AACREA), Argentina), and Guillermo Podesta (University of

Miami, USA)……………………………………………………………………………………..60

The social lab classroom: wrestling with — and learning from — sustainability challenges Danielle Lake, Hannah Fernando, and Dana Eardley (Grand Valley State University, USA)…..76 Systems of access: A multidisciplinary strategy for assessing the social dimensions of

sustainability Christopher Wolsko (Oregon State University‒Cascades, USA), Elizabeth Marino (Oregon State

University‒Cascades, USA), Thomas Joseph Doherty(USA), Steve Fisher (USA), Amanda S.

Green (Davidson College, USA), Briana Goodwin (Oregon State University, USA), Ryan Reese

(Oregon State University‒Cascades, USA), and Andrea Wirth (University of Nevada‒Las Vegas,

USA)……………………………………………………………………………………………..88

Published online ● http://sspp.proquest.com ● ● email: [email protected]

Sustainability: Science, Practice, & Policy http://sspp.proquest.com

3

Sustainability: Science, Practice, & Policy | http://sspp.proquest.com Spring 2016 | Volume 12 | Issue 1

INTRODUCTION Introduction to the special issue on social sustainability: integration, context, and governance

Nicole Peterson Department of Anthropology, The University of North Carolina at Charlotte, 9201 University City Boulevard, Charlotte, NC 28223 USA (email: [email protected])

Since the late 1980s, the pursuit of sustainability

as a practical effort, rather than as a purely scientific

or descriptive concept, has recognized the importance

of balancing the competing priorities of

environmental protection, economic growth, and

social equity. We now know that we cannot make

meaningful progress resolving issues like climate

change and the degradation of global ecosystems

without also addressing associated economic and

social equity concerns. As part of this realization,

scholars and practitioners in diverse disciplines have

adopted a “triple-bottom line” or “three pillars”

approach as an expedient heuristic that understands

sustainability, or sustainable development, as

achieving some balance among environmental,

economic, and social equity priorities, all at once.

Over time, however, decision makers have earned

criticism for using this triad of objectives as a policy

inventory rather than a model for examining the

relationships and interdependencies among

environmental, economic, and social priorities in

diverse places (see, in particular, Boström, 2012).

Some scholars, coming to the issue from a range of

disciplines, have attempted to address the short-

comings of the three-pillar model by adding more

pillars (e.g., Godschalk, 2004; Bendell & Kearins,

2005; Inayatullah, 2005; Seghezzo, 2009). However,

the challenge remains that forcing complex and

unprecedented socio-environmental problems into

three, four, or seven distinct containers represents an

outdated, unduly modernist way of problem-solving

that tends to approach environmental, economic, and

social issues as independent, and consequently, their

solutions as separate (Vanclay, 2004; Milne & Gray,

2013).

New research and practice in sustainability

proposes an integrated concept whereby “social

issues” are indistinguishable and inseparable from

economic or environmental issues and vice versa.

These approaches are based in experiences with real

places and real people, pertaining to, as Krueger &

Agyeman (2005) contend, “actual existing sustain-

abilities.” The articles in this special issue extend the

effort to envision a deeply integrated approach to

sustainability by rooting their analyses in local places

and actual people, highlighting the importance of

grounded perspectives, collaborative processes, and

engaged governance that address multiple issues at

once and challenge the customary multi-pillar model.

While these are not new concerns in sustainability

circles (see Boström, 2012; Murphy, 2012), the

authors of the work presented here argue concretely

for the interconnections among these elements and

suggest specific ways that they can be better included

in sustainability efforts.

Together, these articles suggest that an integrated

approach to sustainability can be envisioned and

enacted through specific kinds of governance and

educational activities that encourage cooperative

processes and attention to local experiences. All of

the authors find separation of the economic, environ-

mental, and social dimensions of sustainability to be

superficial and impractical for communities that must

reconcile these objectives every day, and they prefer

instead to address overarching concerns in terms of

well-being, livability, security, equity, and

community engagement. For example, Malena

Serrano and her colleagues assess their experiences

sharing earthquake resistant building techniques in

Peru and argue that integrated sustainability

recognizes the need to incorporate local perspectives

and values into processes of technology transfer and

to account for the connections between degraded

environments and social inequalities. They

furthermore argue that construction techniques are

deeply connected to ideas of well-being and

acceptable living spaces.

The notion of well-being for effective

sustainability efforts is crucial for several other

authors. Sandra Santa Cruz et al. discuss the

importance of security and basic services through

their case study of earthquake-risk mitigation in

schools in Peru concluding that both social equity

and community are crucial to building sustainable

resilience to hazards; ensuring student physical,

psychological, and social well-being; and providing


4


environmental and economic benefits. Rachelle

Hollander and colleagues stress the importance of

assimilating social elements like well-being into

engineering curricula, echoing Serrano et al.’s and

Santa Cruz et al.’s insistence that infrastructure

necessarily involves an integrated vision of

sustainability.

Other articles in this special issue argue that

integrated sustainability is crucial given the

importance of community-level coordination. Robert

Boyer’s research on an eco-village in the United

States highlights that collective environmental and

financial resource management requires

interpersonal-communication and conflict-resolution

skills unad-dressed by typical sustainability planning.

Contrib-utions by Poonam Arora and her coauthors

and Danielle Lake et al. also examine interactions

and interdependencies across environmental,

economic, and social concerns, showing that both

environmental education and agriculture blur

boundaries. Arora et al. find that Argentine

agribusiness owners think about risk and the water

table in relation to social responsibilities, rather than

concerns simply requiring economic calculation.

Lake and colleagues examine a course where students

use community engagement to think through wicked

problems in sustainability, highlighting the value of

multiple perspectives and local concerns for

associated efforts and education.

The final two articles in this collection examine

how integrated sustainability is enriched by consid-

ering issues like access and equity, which are

typically and problematically relegated to the

category of social sustainability. Drawing from

several short vignettes, including decisions about

renewable energy and open-access publishing,

Christopher Wolsko and his coauthors argue that

accessibility is a critical element of sustainability,

integrated across the three pillars. Rebecca Pearl-

Martinez and Jennie Stephens examine how gender

diversity is invaluable for sustainability efforts,

reviewing how women working in energy-related

fields might make that sector more competitive and

sustainable, as they have in other areas.

Throughout the sustainability field, many authors

find that social sustainability, as well as sustainability

more broadly, remains amorphous, lacking a clear

and consistent definition (Dempsey et al. 2009;

Vallance et al. 2011; Boström, 2012; Murphy, 2012;

Missimer et al. 2016a . Others argue that broad

definitions allow for greater attention to local needs,

values, and concerns (Weingaertner & Moberg, 2014;

see also Sen, 2004). In the articles here, the authors’

ideas about social aspects of sustainability draw on

the specifics of each case study, though also

reflecting concepts developed by other researchers

(e.g., Murphy, 2012; Missimer et al. 2016b). Based

on their analyses, the articles in this special issue

consistently assert that equity and access to resources

and governance processes are critically important for

sustainability. Contributors whose work focuses on

structures like homes and schools shed light on how

sustainable infrastructure supports (or could support)

well-being, livability, security, accessibility, oppor-

tunities, and basic services (Serrano et al.; Santa Cruz

et al.; Hollander et al.). Other authors address

sustainability as an outcome of collective resource

management that includes considering both resource

availability and social relationships (Arora et al.;

Boyer). Finally, a third set of authors finds that

sustainability is deeply enmeshed with issues of

access to governance, education, resources, and

opportunities (Lake et al.; Pearl-Martinez &

Stephens; Wolsko et al.). While the articles discuss

sustainability in slightly different ways, all address

the challenges of diverse populations with varied

perspectives, values, and opportunities. There are

also important themes—for example, well-being,

security, communication, and conflict resolution—

that remain important variables for sustainability

efforts more broadly. The special issue as a whole

moreover emphasizes that an integrated view of

sustainability is inextricably linked to local concerns

and contexts, which define processes, perspectives,

and even possibilities for sustainability.

Drawing more deeply on the importance of local

context and meanings, virtually all of the authors

argue that sustainability can be defined by the

integration of diverse perspectives through new

forms of community engagement. The two articles

focused on earthquake preparedness in Peru advocate

for participatory planning exercises to help identify

community needs and relationships that can affect the

success of risk-mitigation strategies. At a minimum,

involving the local community can build trust and

interpersonal connections to overcome reluctance to

adopting new techniques. Boyer demonstrates the

value of community decision-making and

participatory self-governance. Hollander and her co-

authors similarly advocate for citizen science as an

inclusive and socially aware approach to

sustainability research, and Pearl-Martinez &

Stephens argue that including a variety of

perspectives is needed for a successful energy

transition.

A multi-perspective approach particularly makes

sense if we are to take seriously the idea that context

strongly influences sustainability goals and that

standard models of individual behavior cannot easily

account for the complexities of meanings, skills, and


5


relationships (a point separately made in the

contributions by Arora et al., Boyer, and Pearl-

Martinez & Stephens). In examining the value of

community engagement for sustainability education,

Lake and her colleagues succinctly describe the value

of engaging local actors: “inherently context-

dependent and emergent SS [sustainability science]

requires broad social inclusion, demanding we

continuously uncover and weigh the merit of our own

and others’ assumptions, values, and goals.” The

course described in Lake et al. models this approach

through student projects that build skills for engaging

diverse groups. The authors write that

“[p]articipatory skills and virtues (like team building,

active listening, collaboration, and integration) must

be fostered in order to empower more effective and

just coaction on wicked problems. In fact, we suggest

a failure to foster these skills and virtues is at the core

of many current social struggles.” In sum, the articles

presented in this special issue collectively argue that

integrated sustainability must be locally engaged and

engaging.

Finally, Wolsko et al. push for a transformation

in how we think about engagement. The examples in

their article coalesce around a concept of “access”

(building on Amartya Sen’s work on this topic) and

push for a form of engagement that recognizes the

multi-scalar nature of sustainability, relations of

power, and inequalities. The authors find that

sustainability is inhibited by both access, often

understood as an individual attribute, and

vulnerability at larger scales. This is particularly

evident in their decision-making case study where

power relations and legitimacy claims determine

access to decisions. Through their analysis, access

becomes a way to consider sustainability as a process

that engages with diverse ideas and activities. Yet

access also signals the potential for lack of access,

often tied to inequalities in resources, education, or

political connections. This shift in frame encourages

a focus on identifying and removing barriers to

access, and similarly raises the issue of how to ensure

this process through governance strategies.

The authors assembled in this special issue thus

largely agree on a vision of sustainability that is

integrated and engaged with diverse participants and

their local perspectives and practices. These elements

push us toward a process-focused idea of

sustainability, in that how we engage with a system

of relations (involving sustainability ideas, practices,

activities, and outcomes) depends not just on the

identification of these elements, but how they are

arranged and how they can mutually influence one

another. The students at the center of the contribution

by Lake et al. go beyond identifying environmental

“wicked problems” to comprehending how they are

understood, how they affect different people, and

how they are tied up in decisions and institutions.

Arora et al.’s study of Argentine agribusinesses also

suggests that the processes underlying decisions are

not just the result of considering risks and outcomes,

but are engendered by goals tied to relationships with

family and farmers alike. How these interpersonal

connections are built is key. It needs to be done

through trust (Serrano et al.), cooperation, and

empathy (Boyer), cultivation of which can improve

through practice (Lake et al.; Boyer). Yet, as

Hollander and her colleagues warn, process can be

harder to operationalize as a gauge of success than

outcomes, which can be counted and assessed. They

suggest that interdisciplinary approaches can help,

and the variety of strategies in this special issue

suggests specific ways that process can be appraised:

through commitments (Serrano et al.), access

(Wolsko et al.), reflection (Lake et al.), and inclusion

(Pearl-Martinez & Stephens).

This introduction builds on previous work on

social sustainability, particularly the special issue of

Sustainability: Science, Practice, & Policy edited by

Magnus Bostöm in 2012, which articulated many of

the challenges to addressing social aspects of

sustainable development. In his introduction,

Boström outlined the challenge of defining and

operationalizing social sustainability. He argued that

sustainable development, including ideas of social

sustainability, is best understood as a frame that can

be used to communicate, make decisions, and

evaluate progress. This frame can be dynamic over

time and place and encompass a variety of elements

such as well-being, governance, and equity. This

special issue uses case studies, examples, and

overviews to further refine Boström’s sustainability

framework.

Part of any organizational scheme is the

underlying model of how parts of a frame intersect

and interact. In advocating for integration, context

spec-ificity, and governance issues, these articles

suggest that important hallmarks identified in

previous work on social sustainability emerge from

considering local governance and community

engagement. This collection also highlights that truly

integrated sustainability is not just an issue to address

through governance and decision-making;

sustainability underlies and makes governance

possible. In this way, the framework moves beyond

environmental, eco-nomic, and social issues to

realize that good governance is sustainability and

vice versa. Yet, overlaying sustainability with

governance potentially clouds both of these pursuits.

Are these ideas too broad and abstract? The cases


6


here, in their specific details, suggest not. Integrating

governance into sustainability reveals how

sustainability can be achieved. It requires recognizing

and responding to local contexts and concerns and

can only be achieved through local governance

mechanisms. Within these cases, we see concern for

well-being, access, and inclusion as ways to

implement sustainability. But how these concerns are

defined and negotiated depends on local per-

spectives and governance structures that can engage

with concerns and help break down barriers

(Shiroyama et al. 2012; Magee et al. 2013; Mutisya

& Yarime, 2014; Donevska, 2015; Milan, 2015).

The contributions here suggest that sustainability

efforts can encourage good governance by making it

part of the model and framework, and thus process

and practice. They suggest that important

characteristics of governance processes might include

an integrated vision of sustainability (rather than

separate spheres), attention to local contexts and

ideas, assurance of access to necessary resources, and

engagement of citizens in decision-making. The

concept of sustainability as governance can also open

the possibility of stronger joint efforts with

governments and social movements to work toward a

shared objective of good governance. Broadening

sus-tainability in this way thus encourages specific

governance processes while creating the possibility

for broader coalitions. The holistic view explored in

this special issue is the next logical step in furthering

the conversation for sustainable development. We

suggest that social implications and social issues are

the cornerstone for such a discussion, and an

integrated approach is necessary if true progress is to

be made.

Acknowledgements

This material is based upon work supported by the

National Science Foundation under Grant Number

1231382. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or

recommendations expressed in this material are those

of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the

views of the National Science Foundation. The

author would also like to thank the members of the

Integrated Network for Social Sustainability for their

help in thinking through social sustainability,

particularly the leadership team of Brett Tempest,

Helene Hilger, Robert Boyer, Thomas Gentry,

and Jennifer Munroe.

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COMMUNITY ESSAY

Toward a gender diverse workforce in the renewable energy transition

Rebecca Pearl-Martinez

1 & Jennie C. Stephens

2

1 Renewable Equity Project, Center for International Environment and Resource Policy, Fletcher School, Tufts University, 160 Packard Avenue, Medford, MA 02155 USA (email: [email protected]) 2 Energy-Climate Transitions Research Team, Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources, College of Engineering and Mathematical Sciences, University of Vermont, 81 Carrigan Drive, Burlington, VT 05405 USA (email: [email protected])

Authors’ Personal Statement

We explore gender diversity in the energy workforce and highlight the value of systematic assessment of women’s participation in the move toward sustainable renewable-energy systems. A gender imbalance in the energy sector workforce is apparent in countries throughout the world, yet women’s participation in, and contributions to, the energy industry have not been systematically characterized. As the energy sector transitions from fossil-fuel dominated systems toward more efficient, sustainable renewable-based systems, new opportunities for a more inclusive energy workforce are emerging. We are concerned, however, that if the energy industry does not prioritize gender diversity now, the renewable energy transition could perpetuate and deepen, rather than reduce, gender inequality. Although research demonstrates that diversity enhances innovation and creativity, there is minimal attention to considering and promoting diversity within the energy workforce. In this Community Essay we explore how greater consideration of the role of gender and the value of diversity in energy could provide multiple social benefits, including promoting more sustainable practices, accelerating innovation, enhancing women’s opportunities, and empowering communities to engage in energy-system change.

Keywords: women; gender; energy; renewables; sustainability; transitions; fossil fuels

Introduction

Contemporary energy systems are in transition

from predominantly fossil fuel-based infrastructures

to more sustainable renewables-based systems. As

this process continues, it is critical to consider that

throughout the world women are less involved in the

energy workforce and in energy-decision making

than men. A gender imbalance within the energy

sector is apparent to many observers, yet the role of

women in the energy workforce is not being

systematically characterized. Diversity and inclusion

are critical in the renewable energy transition. If

intentional consideration of gender diversity is not

prioritized, the changes have potential to perpetuate

and deepen, rather than reduce, gender inequality.

Greater understanding of the gender gap in energy-

related industries, as well as more widespread

acknowledgement of the positive potential of gender

diversity in this sector, would likely promote more

sustainable energy practices, accelerate energy

innovation, expand opportunities for women, and

encourage greater social engagement in energy-

system change.

In this Community Essay, we review what is

known about the level and nature of women’s

participation in the energy workforce and highlight

knowledge gaps. We also describe a broad range of

potential benefits of gender diversity and conclude by

highlighting the value of inclusivity and call for

systematic data collection on and analysis of the

energy workforce to support efforts to reduce the

gender gap.

Gender diversity refers to the representation of

women and men in a specific organization, sector, or

community (Herring, 2009). While assessments of

gender diversity, or gender balance, are designed to

consider both women and men, we concentrate here

on the role of women in the energy workforce and the

potential for women’s advancement despite persistent

inequalities. Gender inequalities are apparent in many

major business sectors, but industry analysis suggests

that they are particularly acute within the energy

sector (Ernst & Young, 2015; Herring, 2009; PWC,

2015).

Knowledge Gaps on Women’s Participation in the

Energy Workforce

Limited information about the level and nature of

women’s employment in the energy workforce

presents a challenge to exploring the relationship

between gender diversity in relevant industries

involved in the renewable energy transition (Baruah,

2015). One recent assessment of gender-workforce

imbalances suggests a larger gap in the energy sector

than other major industries (Ernst & Young, 2015).

Within energy organizations, gender diversity is



found to be most advanced in consumer services and

consumer goods, while power and utility entities are

less gender diverse, and infrastructure entities lag the

farthest (Ernst & Young, 2015). The energy industry

has the lowest representation of women on boards of

directors in the United States and a 2012 study of

Russell 3000 companies headquartered in the United

States found that 61% of energy companies in the

country have no female representation on their board

of directors (GMI Ratings, 2012). Only 20% of oil

and gas extraction employees were women in the

United States in 2013. The corresponding rate was

27% in Canada in 2006 while women’s employment

in coal mining was about 9% in the United States in

2013 and 12% in Canada in 2006 (Catalyst, 2012).

Women’s employment rates in wind, solar,

wave, and other renewable energies are generally

estimated to be slightly higher than in the fossil and

nuclear industries. A recent study prepared for the

International Renewable Energy Association

(IRENA) reported 33% female employment in the

renewable workforce worldwide (Lallement, 2013).

For industrialized countries, female employment in

this sector is estimated to be 20–25%, mostly in

administrative and public relations positions

(IRENA, 2013). In the United States, women’s

employment in solar jobs rose from 18.7% to 21.6%

between 2013 and 2014 (IRENA, 2015). Among 22

wind-industry companies in the country surveyed in

2011, women made up 25% of the workforce and

11% of senior management (WoWE, 2011).

Similarly in the European Union, women make up

22% of the wind-industry workforce (Blanco and

Rodrigues, 2009).

Despite a robust literature on gender and

environmental issues (e.g., Leduc, 2010; McCright,

2010; Kennedy & Dzialo, 2015; Leach, 2015),

gender-related information and research in the energy

sector is more limited. This phenomenon has been

attributed to low awareness of the significance of

gender in energy planning and energy-system

development (Clancy, 2009). To date, research on

gender and energy has focused primarily on gendered

uses of energy, particularly household-energy use in

deve-loping countries (Räty & Carlsson-Kanyama,

2010), rather than women’s jobs and decision making

within the energy industry. Under the umbrella of

renewable energy, preliminary research is emerging

on gender in the context of the renewable energy

workforce (Baruah, 2015). In addition, several earlier

studies called for more attention to gender in all

aspects of energy policy (Farhar, 1998; Parikh, 1995)

and recent studies in Europe have addressed energy-

consumption patterns and the different ways in which

men and women use energy (Carlsson-Kanyama &

Lindén, 2007; Räty & Carlsson-Kanyama, 2010).

Comprehensive gender-disaggregated data is not

currently available for the energy sector as a whole or

for subsectors, including oil and gas, nuclear, and

renewables. When gender is excluded as a data point

in the collection of information about an industry,

sector analysis can be incomplete or misleading and

sector-specific initiatives are unlikely to integrate

consideration of gender (Doss & Kieran, 2014).

Without gender-disaggregated data on employment,

the prevalent and accepted practice of justifying the

hiring of certain types of employees with claims of

“cultural fit” can be perpetuated and often-

unacknowledged gender bias can limit opportunities

for women (Rivera, 2015). In our data-driven society,

we know that what is measured is more likely to be

addressed (Moser, 2007)—in other words what has

not been counted, does not count. Data collection on

the complicated and diffuse energy industry is

already a challenge for many countries (Adib, 2014),

so adding another metric may be perceived as an

additional burden. Although the Bureau of Labor

Statistics (BLS) started to collect data on green jobs

in the United States starting in the 2010 fiscal year,

major budget cuts in 2013 halted systematic assembly

of employment data by industry and occupation for

businesses that produce green goods and services

(BLS, 2013). Thus there is limited current infor-

mation about the growing renewable energy industry

in the country, let alone data on gender in its

constituent sectors.

Several major new initiatives to collect gender-

related data signal how data monitoring is surfacing

as an important tool to achieve gender equality.

Data2X, a global project chaired by the World Bank

and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation,

intends to spark a gender-data revolution and to close

gender gaps through data collection in the categories

of health, education, economic opportunities,

political participation, and human security (Data2X,

2015). Similarly, the United Nations Evidence and

Data for Gender Equality (EDGE) initiative seeks to

“accelerate existing efforts to generate comparable

gender indicators on health, education, employment,

entrepreneurship and asset ownership” (UNSD,

2015). These initiatives, however, are limited to

traditional issues that have typically been associated

as priorities for women—for example health and

education—and do not address the energy sector.

While information on the participation of both

men and women is not generally included in

employment data, governments, non-governmental

organizations (NGOs) and the private sector are

increasingly recognizing gender as an important



factor in the energy sector, particularly in developing

countries (ESMAP, 2011). Several initiatives are

geared toward development of gender-responsive

energy policies in African and Asian countries,

including the collection of sex-disaggregated national

statistics related to energy access (ENERGIA, 2015).

Several government and NGO efforts are also

working to improve household-cooking technology to

reduce life-threatening health impacts that fall

particularly on women and children in developing

countries (ESMAP, 2011; GACC, 2015). These

endeavors recognize that women’s needs are often

neglected in the design of energy-delivery systems,

putting a greater burden on their lives and continuing

a cycle of poverty. To more fully understand the

global implications of the different levels of

participation in the energy transition by women and

men, governments, NGOs, and the private sector

need to expand their attention to gender beyond the

household level to consider the full energy-value

chain and to prioritize research and information in the

energy-sector workforce globally (Pearl-Martinez,

2014). Given that developed and developing

countries share a low level of women’s workforce

participation throughout the energy sector, we believe

that research about women in the energy workforce

would be beneficial in multiple ways in developed

and developing counties alike.

The Benefits of Gender Diversity

The benefits of greater gender diversity in the

energy workforce span multiple levels, including

opportunities for women themselves, advantages for

energy organizations, and improvements in the

overall energy system. These enhancements can be

categorized in terms of their environmental,

economic, and cultural aspects.

Recent research documenting environmental

gains associated with women’s leadership suggests

potential environmental benefits to gender diversity.

Companies with more women on their board of

directors are more likely to proactively invest in

renewable energy and to reduce carbon emissions

throughout their value chain (CRB, 2012). Potential

environmental gains have also emerged in the

governmental context, as countries with higher

female parliamentary representation are more likely

to cut carbon-dioxide emissions and set aside

protected land areas (UNDP, 2011). Environmental

sociologists have also revealed clear gender

differences in engagement in environmental issues; in

industrialized countries, women are more likely than

men to express environmental concern, support

environmental protection, and enact pro-

environmental behaviors (Kennedy & Dzialo, 2015;

McCright & Xiao, 2014).

Awareness of the economic benefit of women’s

advancement is gaining ground in the private sector.

Gender diversity is now recognized as a force for

economic growth and is considered “smart eco-

nomics” (World Bank, 2012; WEF, 2014). It is now

acknowledged that a country’s national compet-

itiveness correlates strongly with various metrics of

gender equality (World Bank, 2012). In an analysis

of the Japanese economy, closing the gender gap in

employment and focusing on gender diversity was

identified as an avenue for companies and the

country itself to significantly boost the economy

(Matsui et al 2014). The literature linking women’s

leadership roles and corporate performance suggests

financial, institutional, and environmental gains

through closing gender gaps. Fortune 500 companies

in the United States with the highest representation of

women on their boards (19 to 44% women) were

found to enjoy 16% higher net income as a

percentage of revenue than companies with no such

representation (Catalyst, 2007). Beyond the bottom

line, the value to enterprises of investing in women

also includes enhanced recruitment and retention as

well as the creation of a more welcoming and

inclusive work environment. Analysis of enterprise

value of investing in women has demonstrated

increased innovation through gender-diverse teams

and revenue growth through the leveraging of

women’s relationships to attract new business

(Pellegrion et al., 2011).

Cultural benefits related to interactions, com-

munication, and decision making represent another

category of potential gain. Research suggests that

women’s participation in groups can lead to more

effective and inclusive outcomes. In one study led by

the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Carnegie

Mellon University, and Union College documenting

collective intelligence among groups of people who

cooperate, researchers found that the tendency to

collaborate effectively is linked to the number of

women involved. This was attributed to women’s

strength at reading nonverbal cues and encouraging

greater participation of their peers (Woolley et al.,

2010).

Within diversity research, the study of gender

gaps and inequalities establishes a rich literature on a

breadth of negative social impacts of homogenous

and gender-segregated groups, communities, and

organizations (Seguino, 2000). The growing literature

in gender-policy studies also demonstrates that a lack

of gender parity in institutional positions can lead to

harmful social impacts (Cornwall & Goetz, 2005;

Goetz, 2005, 2007; Enloe, 2013). Scholars of peace



studies and of the militarization of society have

highlighted women’s limited role in many critical

political and military decisions (Enloe, 2013). Other

research demonstrates that having more women

involved in decision making increases governmental

transparency, and greater engagement of women

enhances the likelihood that issues related to gender

equity are integrated into decision making (CAWP,

1991; Carroll, 2001).

At the larger energy-system scale, an additional

social benefit of advancing women in the energy

sector is the potential for greater social engagement

in energy-system change. When more women work

in and contribute to the energy sector, social

awareness about energy and energy decisions will

broaden. As distributed and decentralized renewable

energy options expand, individuals, households, and

com-munities throughout the world have new ways to

participate in energy decisions and energy-system

change (Rifkin, 2011). Energy access plays an

increasingly critical role in human livelihood, so

diversification and distribution of those who control

energy-system change is increasingly important. The

term “energy democratization” has emerged to repre-

sent new opportunities for more distributed

ownership and engagement in energy (Sweeney,

2012; Farrell, 2014). More intentional engagement

and inclusion of women throughout the energy sector

has huge potential to change community awareness

and participation in energy-related issues and

decisions.

In addition to gender-specific matters, the

general value of equality is important (Wilkinson &

Pickett, 2009) and researchers, politicians, and the

public increasingly recognize the social dangers of

growing inequality (Stiglitz, 2013). Decades of

research on diversity in groups, firms, schools, and

society demonstrates that diversity strengthens

organizations, communities, and entire sectors (Page,

2008). Although studies consistently show that more

diverse groups outperform homogenous groups

(Hong and Page, 2004), a lack of diversity in many

organizations persists due to a confluence of social,

economic, and cultural factors including uneven

access to education and training as well as conscious

and unconscious bias and assumptions (Fine and

Handelsman, 2012).

Job Areas with Strong Potential for Gender

Diversification

To facilitate the multiple potential benefits of

greater gender diversification in the energy work-

force, it is worth considering specific types of jobs.

Three key job areas in the energy sector appear to

have particularly strong potential for increased

gender diversification: 1) engineers and technicians;

2) construction, installation, and manufacturing jobs;

and 3) public- and private-sector leadership. These

three areas move beyond the more typical

participation of women in administrative and public-

relations roles within the energy sector.

Engineers and Technicians

Although women make up half of the workforce

in the United States, as of 2009 they held less than

one quarter of jobs in science, technology,

engineering, and mathematics (STEM) (U.S.

Department of Commerce, 2009). Some of this

gender gap can be attributed to a low share of women

in STEM academic studies; however, other factors

contribute across educational and professional arenas.

While half of American women who complete under-

graduate training report being interested in STEM-

related careers, 50% of those women depart

employment or further training within the first decade

after graduation. Girls and boys express the same

level of interest in STEM careers and achieve an

equal level of success through secondary education,

but a major factor for girls and women is the lack of

visible role models and mentorship, leading to a

culture of isolation in tertiary education and entry-

level positions (GSRI, 2012). A study by the

American Association of University Women also

found institutional culture to be a major factor in

attaining gender diversity and recommends the

cultivation of girls’ achievement and interest in these

fields, the creation of college environ-ments that

support women, and the establishment of avenues to

counteract bias (Hill et al. 2010).

Construction, Installation, and Manufacturing Jobs

Construction, installation, manufacturing, and

other trades involved in building, operating, and

maintaining energy infrastructure make up a

significant portion of energy-industry jobs. In the

solar sector in the United States, women account for

about 37,500 workers, or 21.6% of the workforce,

although only 17.7% are employed in solar

installation (The Solar Foundation, 2014). In all

energy fields, cultural views often impede women

from “blue collar” jobs, as employment in heavy

machinery and infrastructure is perceived as male

activities. For example, female construction workers

in India have been considered unfit to advance their

masonry skills, although their capabilities and desire

to progress are equal to their male counterparts

(Barnabas et al. 2009). Several countries are opening

doors for women in these fields, recognizing the

benefits of gender diversity. For example, companies



in Chile, Ghana, and Papua New Guinea note that

machinery is better maintained and operating costs

are lower when women run heavy mining equipment.

In addition, some countries have launched women’s

technical training programs geared toward infra-

structure projects. For example in Brazil, one third of

all households are headed by women and the rate of

female unemployment is almost double that of men.

The government developed a program to help women

enter better paying infrastructure jobs, resulting in an

increase in female employment in hydropower

projects in the State of Rondonia to 20 percent

(World Bank, 2009). Similarly, companies and

industry associations focusing on solar technologies

are working to attract more women to installer jobs.

In 2014, one of the largest solar companies,

SunEdison, initiated programming to improve gender

diversity, including having senior executives mentor

high-potential women in the company, and

organizing a speaker series, peer-support meetings,

and trainings on unconscious bias (Barron, 2014).

Public and Private Sector Leadership

In the public sector, there are few female energy

ministers worldwide. In Europe, women hold around

2% of senior decision-making positions across the

environment, transport, and energy industries, with a

higher level of women’s participation in envi-

ronmental fields (EIGE, 2012). The gender

imbalance is similar in the private sector. In the

United Kingdom, only 5% of executive board seats in

the top 100 domestically headquartered energy firms

are held by women. One concrete indication of

systematic gender-based discrimination is the

disparity in compensation between female and male

executives. Men often receive higher bonuses than

women, and their compensation is generally more

sensitive to performance compared to female

executives (Kulich et al., 2011). Besides equalizing

compensation levels, company leadership can build a

solid pipeline toward gender diversity by demanding

diverse shortlists for hiring, reporting on gender

diversity, and setting and communicating targets

(PWC, 2015).

Diversity Contributing to Societal Transformation

The energy transition from predominantly fossil

fuel-based infrastructures to more sustainable

renewables-based systems is being driven by multiple

factors, one of them being increased social awareness

of the harmful societal and environmental implica-

tions of fossil-fuel reliance and the more sustainable

future of renewable energy (Brown et al., 2015;

IPCC, 2014; Strunz, 2014). Beyond technical

changes, the energy transition involves complex

social dynamics that researchers have only begun to

explore (Berkhout et al., 2012; Fri & Savitz, 2014),

of which diversity and inclusion are clearly critical

issues that have as yet received scant attention.

During this transition, there is a need to integrate

social logics from diverse stakeholders whose

priorities are influenced by multiple challenges,

including growing urgency about the risks of climate

change and other types of environmental degradation,

geopolitical insecurity, and economic instability.

Among those stakeholders actively involved in the

energy-system transition, gender is one critical factor

influencing framings and articulations of appropriate

responses to climate-energy challenges (WEDO,

2008; Alston, 2011; Nagel, 2015). While some

proponents advocate minimal change and a minor

shift in the mix of fossil fuels, others are actively

working toward a radical transition to a completely

carbon-free renewable energy system (Jacobson &

Delucchi, 2009; Jacobson et al., 2013; Lovins, 2014).

The interplay of these different visions influences the

legitimacy of the emerging energy system and

represents a diversity of opinions regarding

opportunities and challenges for energy-system

change (Stephens et al., 2015). Different actors

involved in the energy-system transition provide

multiple perspectives, priorities, and types of

influence on the transformational pathway. The

incorporation of new voices, particularly women’s

voices, with more female representation in these

critical decisions, will influence future trajectories.

Increased attention to energy-system change has

been coupled with recent calls from multiple scholars

for more social science in the study of energy

(Webler & Tuler, 2010; Sovacool, 2014; Stirling,

2014). Many energy scholars are recognizing the

utility of broadening energy research to integrate

critical social and cultural dimensions of energy-

system change. (Fri & Savitz, 2014). Within this

movement toward enhancing social perspectives on

energy, there has been only limited acknowledgement

of the need for more studies of gender and identity

(Ryan, 2014).

Opportunities for women to expand their role in

this industry include, but are not limited to, science

and engineering as well as installation and

operations, management, sales, communication, and

finance. The Department of Labor in the United

States has advocated for women to pursue

employment in the green-energy sector as a

nontraditional job opportunity that could lead to

greater wage equality (U. S. Department of Labor,

2010). Potential exists for advancement throughout

the sector, including women’s roles as engineers and



technicians, as construction and manufacturing

workers, and as leaders in both the public and private

spheres.

Social awareness of, and concern about,

women’s issues and connections among climate

change, human well-being, and sustainable energy

systems is growing among scholars and practitioners

throughout the world (Alston, 2011; Leduc, 2010;

WEF, 2014). As social responses to these challenges

expand, paying attention to women’s interests and

needs and recognizing new opportunities for women

in energy would simultaneously provide economic,

environmental, and technological benefits while

encouraging energy-sector innovation. As energy

systems transition away from centralized, corporate-

controlled, fossil fuel-based systems, new

opportunities are emerging for women to contribute

to the development of a more creative, innovative,

and dynamic community-oriented energy industry

that is more responsive to social and cultural change.

However, without gender data characterizing ongoing

developments, efforts to broaden the industry through

diversity and inclusion will be more difficult to

justify and support.

Conclusion

Deeper and more intentional consideration of

women’s participation and contribution to the rapidly

changing energy industry would be valuable for

multiple reasons. Systematic collection and distri-

bution of data on gender in the energy work-force

will encourage greater awareness about gender

equity, support opportunities for women’s

advancement, and highlight the multiple benefits of

hiring and advancing more women. Applying a

gender lens to research on energy-system change and

energy transitions will encourage positive change in

multiple ways including harnessing new

opportunities for a more inclusive and innovative

energy industry.

The following hypothesis emerges from this

initial exploration of the social-change potential of

greater gender diversity in energy. Enhanced gender

diversity among those involved in shaping energy

systems will accelerate both social and technical

change in the energy-system transition. We propose

that increasing gender diversity in energy-decision

making will distribute political power and influence

to encourage a more sustainable society. More

research is needed to further explore this hypothesis

and our proposition.

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1


COMMUNITY ESSAY

Network priorities for social sustainability research and education: Memorandum of the Integrated Network on Social Sustainability Research Group Rachelle Hollander

1, Adjo Amekudzi-Kennedy

2, Sarah Bell

3, Frazier Benya

1, Cliff Davidson

4, Craig Farkos

5,

David Fasenfest6, Regina Guyer

7, Angelique Hjarding

8, Michael Lizotte

8, Dianne Quigley

9, Diana Watts

10, &

Kate Whitefoot11

1 Center for Engineering Ethics and Society, National Academy of Engineering, 500 Fifth Street, NW, Washington, DC 20001 USA

(email: [email protected]; [email protected]) 2

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, 709 Atlantic Drive, Atlanta, GA 30332 USA (email: [email protected])

3 Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University College London, Chadwick 117, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT,

UK (email: [email protected]) 4 Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Syracuse University, Syracuse, NY 13244 USA (email: [email protected])

5 American Society of Civil Engineering Task Committee on Sustainability, 9105 Aspenshire Court, Raleigh, NC 27613 USA (email:

[email protected]) 6 Sociology Department, Wayne State University, Detroit, MI 48202 USA (email: [email protected])

7 Energy and Environmental Assistance Office, University of North Carolina Charlotte, EPIC 1150, Charlotte, NC 28223 USA (email:

[email protected]) 8

Sustainability Office, University of North Carolina Charlotte, 9201 University City Boulevard, Charlotte, NC 28223 USA (email: [email protected]; [email protected])

9 Northeast Ethics Education Partnership, Brown University, PO Box 1943, 135 Angell Street, Providence, RI 20017 USA (email:

[email protected]) 10

Department of Business, Trinity Washington University, 125 Michigan Avenue, NE, Washington, DC 20017 USA (email: [email protected])

11 Departments of Mechanical Engineering and Engineering and Public Policy, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh PA 15213

USA (email: [email protected])

Authors’ Personal Statement: The Integrated Network for Social Sustainability (INSS) is a research-coordination network supported by the National Science Foundation that is currently in its third year of activities. Individual and institutional members, representing a wide range of fields and interests, are devoted to addressing social sustainability as an important, understudied issue under the broader rubric of sustainability and sustainable development. The INSS has developed a number of affinity groups and a set of activities to facilitate its development. An annual conference draws members together to review and report on their efforts. At the first conference, a group interested in developing a research agenda formed. This Community Essay shares its members’ perspectives about priorities for future research and education on social sustainability, highlighting efforts for greater inclusion of marginalized populations in research.

Background

The notion of “sustainability” includes environ-

mental, economic, and social aspects. Social sustain-

ability in particular is a quality of society that

promotes enduring conditions for human welfare,

especially for vulnerable persons or groups.1 Much

research on and planning for social sustainability

goes by other names. For instance, work on issues of

environmental or social justice, examining how the

lives and status of susceptible or marginalized

1 See https://clas-pages.uncc.edu/inss/what-is-social-sustainability

for some definitions. Normativity in a definition does not preclude

scientific status—consider “positive” economics and the model of the so-called “rational actor.”

populations can be improved, is a research topic for

the Integrated Network on Social Sustainability

(INSS) (Boström, 2012). Research and innovation to

overcome food insecurity is another example of a

social justice issue. Scholars of food systems have

also identified community innovations that meet

requirements for sustainability, although these inter-

ventions have limited applicability given the needs

and circumstances of human populations around the

globe (Marsden, 2013; Hankins & Grasseni, 2014;

Arora et al. 2015). Cities with transportation plans

that facilitate the access of low-income groups to

amenities, education, and jobs provide yet another

example of attention to social-justice concerns

(Fischer & Amekudzi, 2011).


2


For INSS, this work qualifies as social

sustainability research, as does that from numerous

social groups that approach the topic with different

priorities based on the specific needs and concerns of

their constituencies. A recent publication of the

National Association for the Advancement of

Colored People (NAACP) examines the need for

socio-technical systems that are inclusive of

vulnerable and marginalized people to achieve

community resilience. The report develops a list of

measures of vulnerability, adaptation, and resilience

in the face of climate change. Patterson (2015)

explains that on a local governmental level, “The aim

is for city planners, community organizations, elected

officials, and others to consider these equity-based

indicators of resilience as they design adaptation

plans.” Among businesses, corporate social

responsibility is a rubric with which firms approach

social sustainability. The NAACP and business

organizations have developed various measures to

evaluate whether projects meet social sustainability

goals and how these initiatives achieve them.2

The concerns of engineering organizations for

sustainable development have influenced their

attention to sustainability directives in their codes of

practice. For example, in 1993 the American Society

of Civil Engineers (ASCE) issued a policy on

sustainability and then in 1996 amended its first Code

of Ethics Canon to include sustainability as follows:3

Engineers shall hold paramount the safety,

health and welfare of the public and shall

strive to comply with the principles of

sustainable development in the performance

of their professional duties.

The INSS focus on social aspects of

sustainability includes a commitment to inclusion and

diversity in research, education, and practice.

Including a broad spectrum of disciplines and

practitioners will require frameworks and

methodologies that align diverse, practice-specific

lexicons for social sustainability. Developing these

approaches is a key challenge for social sustainability

2 The INSS has created a bibliography of assessment tools that can

be accessed at https://clas-pages.uncc.edu/inss-projects/wiki/pro jects/assessment-tools. INSS member Frazier Benya posted a blog

on the site about assessment tools that do or can include social

sustainability on the Network. It is available at https://clas-pages.uncc.edu/inss/blog/2013/10/04/measuring-social-

sustainability. 3 ASCE Policy Statement 418 available at http://www.asce.org/issues-and-advocacy/public-policy/policy-

statement-418---the-role-of-the-civil-engineer-in-sustainable-

development/ and ASCE Code of Ethics at http://www.asce. org/code_of_ethics.

researchers if they are to coalesce into a coherent

field.

Engineering for Sustainability

Engineers interested in sustainable development

should be able to take social sustainability into

account in their projects. However, their efforts are

often frustrated by the imprecision of the concept, the

differences in priorities of project stakeholders, and

the lack of appropriate training. For instance, training

pays little attention to the influence of engineering

and technology on social systems or how those

systems interrelate with other sustainability goals

(Jones et al. 2015). Differences in priorities raise

conflicts over project goals; again, engineers are

poorly prepared to cope with such differences.

Furthermore, they often lack training and experience

to recognize that process rather than outcome

measures may be needed to move projects in positive

directions. This section highlights the need for

engineers to engage with social sustainability through

interdisciplinary research and practice.

Many colleges and universities have recognized

the need to incorporate sustainability content in

engineering education since the late 1980s. However,

most of these efforts have been confined to

departments of civil and environmental engineering

instead of all engineering disciplines, with little

systematic integration across institutions (Davidson

& Heller, 2014). As professional engineering bodies

have begun to emphasize the role of engineering in

addressing twenty-first century challenges, engi-

neering education has sought to raise the importance

of sustainable development in curricula (Byrne et al.

2010).

Especially in developing communities, technical

engineering solutions can fail to meet full design

expectations because of inaccurate or incomplete

assessment of the social aspects of a project rather

than poor technical design.4 Not least for this reason,

engineering training and practical engineering

experience needs to include increased exposure to the

complex relationships between the technical

components and the social and economic circum-

stances that give rise to them.

Both individual and group behaviors have

consequences that make a difference to engineering

and policy-making outcomes. Besides problems from

disregard for social behavior, failures may arise from

4 See, for example, http://cspo.org/research/adaptive-pathways-to-

climate-change/for a demonstration of the need to incorporate local

perspectives and priorities into project planning and implementation.


3


lack of flexibility as new information becomes

available, or when there is no exit strategy for when

problems arise. History has shown that many projects

do not account for uncertainty in the planning process

or the need to monitor and maintain performance,

resulting in multiple unintended consequences.

Engineering disasters, such as the Hyatt Regency

bridge collapse and the Deepwater Horizon oil spill,

are two spectacular examples. Considering the best

ways to move from prototypes to real-world

applications, and examining why previous projects

failed, enhance chances of success. National

assessments of infrastructure can help make the case

for expanding the problem space in engineering to

include social sustainability?5

A more systemic case for emphasizing social

sustainability in planning can be made by examining

the Interstate highway system in the United States.

Built in the 1960s, it contributed to expeditious

movement of goods and ease of access throughout

the country. However, the system also contributed to

the decay of urban downtown areas, creating physical

and psychological barriers between rich and poor

neighborhoods. The highways also led to sprawling

suburbs and limited options for walking, bicycling,

and public transit. However, these problems should

be put into the wider context in which redlining,

restrictive and poor zoning, and discriminatory

housing policies also contributed to socially adverse

outcomes. More than fifty years later, Americans still

struggle with these problems which hamper efforts

across the country to move toward sustainable urban

lifestyles (TRB, 1997, 2014).

Because of their behavioral and social aspects,

only an integrated approach to engineering for

sustainability can address the problems identified

above. However, the challenges facing

interdisciplinary and policy-relevant academic

research also include complexities of funding

structures, institutional requirements, and data

integration. Some funding sources do not support

broad participation—by social scientists, community

members or non-academic practitioners—in research

projects. Where such participation might be allowed,

reward structures for faculty vary greatly within and

among institutions and from one discipline to

another, making it difficult to collaborate on research

or teaching. Universities are often

compartmentalized, and cooperation involving

different colleges and departments, or with potential

community partners, may be difficult to arrange.

5 See ASCE http://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/grades which

provides the backdrop for discussion of social sustainability and infrastructure needs for the United States.

Research centers and other institutions may be

valuable resources on campuses or in cities, but their

funding is often precarious, relying on short duration

individual project grants from governmental bodies

or foundations. Finally, differences in acceptable

data, particularly between the social and natural

sciences, can make effective collaboration difficult.

Success may require a broader vision and specific

means for showing the connections among various

types of data. For example, understanding poverty

requires both qualitative and quantitative data, and

research that gives both big-data overviews and

nuanced descriptions can be valuable for creating

deeper perspectives. Without interdiscipl-inary and

cross-institutional participation, as well as long-term

support, these conditions are unlikely to be met.

The relevance of interdisciplinary efforts to

resolve social problems is becoming more apparent to

many policy makers, scientists, and engineers who

are looking for ways to encourage research and

education at the interfaces of different disciplines.

For example, a recent issue of Nature devotes a

special section to the range of challenges researchers

face in developing successful interdisciplinary

research and interventions (Brown et al. 2015). An

article in this issue lists principles for

interdisciplinary success, with the need for

institutional support, as one of the keys (Brown et al.

2015). Another report issued last year by the

publisher Elsevier (2015) examined the status of

sustainability science globally and indicated that

while the field is highly collaborative it lags

somewhat on measures of interdisciplinarity. The

report indicates that an increasing portion—almost a

third—of sustainability research in the United States

involves international collaboration. Increasing

interdiscipl-inary effort about sustainability may,

then, deserve particular attention in the country.

Engineering for sustainability requires broadening the

problem space in both education and practice, with

attention to the need for interdisciplinarity as well as

global collaboration.

Research Needs Identified in the Literature

Besides discussion of case studies and theoretical

approaches to sustainability, we found several

research strategies related to social sustainability in

the literature. This work can be summarized as

follows. First, a new model of prosperity must

consider economic development in the context of

respect for planetary boundaries and human equity

(Bailey, 2011; Ramaswami et al. 2012; Raworth,

2012). In particular, human well-being and other

expressions of social welfare over the long term

should drive definitions of sustainability. Besides


4


recognizing the influence of technological trajectories

and phenomena of globalization, the new model will

also need to address interactions among science,

engineering, and policy and the attachment that

people have to ecological, aesthetic, and religious

spaces such as waterways and wilderness (Mallik,

2014). Understanding how these spaces are perceived

and used is critical to achieving sustainable outcomes

from innovation and globalization. Case studies such

as Mallik’s about river use in India provide a useful

resource for identifying and testing certain principles

of social sustainability, and cross-case analysis can

be an instructive way to isolate generalizable factors,

such as those concerning religious priorities that can

promote, or alternatively undermine, aspects of social

sustainability (Khan & VanWynsberghe, 2008).

Second, research on sustainable cities indicates

the need for a framework involving attention to

social, ecological, and infrastructure components, and

their interactions. The phrase “sustainable

development” can help define such a framework

(Bourgeois, 2014). New educational paradigms must

allow development and testing of a variety of

approaches, including interdisciplinary and cross-

cultural learning, and the consideration of

distributional, procedural, professional, and cross-

cultural ethics (Ramaswami et al. 2014). Additionally, rebuilding and retrofitting

American cities to become more sustainable requires

integrating contributions from public and private

organizations, including those from federal, state, and

local governments. It also requires “connections

across social-ecological systems and governance

linkages…for successful management of connected

systems” (NRC, 2013). DC Solar United

Neighborhoods is an example of these connections

working to provide solar power to low-income

communities in Washington, DC.

Finally, the role of “science” in sustainability

needs elucidation. One view conceives of sustain-

ability as requiring communities at various levels to

envision their future well-being and to draw from

sustainability science to make such visions viable. In

this regard, sustainability science and engineering

should include the brokering or negotiation of

knowledge and pathways to achieve change and

enable development of capable social institutions

(Miller et al. 2014; Schindler & Hilborn, 2015).

Next Steps for Research and Education

Members of the INSS Research Group have a

variety of research interests. Many focus on work that

addresses inclusivity or improving the status of less

well-off members of society, and on developing

perspectives focused on rebuilding infrastructure and

undertaking other technical projects. Active members

in the northwest, central, southwest, mid-Atlantic,

and southern United States and the UK are

undertaking research addressing local and global

issues for social sustainability. The group has

identified needs for interdisciplinary research and

shared methodologies and for composite metrics to

evaluate projects in terms of their social

sustainability. Research is also needed on improved

ways to address social sustainability in formal

engineering curricula and in informal education, for

instance regarding how organizations like Engineers

Without Borders address social sustain-ability in their

instructional activities and field projects. Attention is

also needed regarding the treatment of social

sustainability in textbooks for use in engineering

classrooms.

We have identified several research questions

and areas of exploration as high priority in social

sustainability.

1. How can research help the many social welfare

organizations in the United States to support

social justice and improved conditions for the

urban poor? Are results generalizable to social

welfare activities outside the country—and vice

versa?

2. How can long-term research on the impact of

economic drivers on environmental sustainability

be extended to explore how they can be

harnessed to advance social sustainability?

3. What factors influence how professional

organizations view or promote social

sustainability? What incentives can encourage

professional organizations to engage with their

members in the pursuit of social sustainability?

4. What kinds of interdisciplinary research—for

instance, research on sustainable cities or on

human interaction with new technologies—

address issues of social sustainability? How can

this effort be strengthened?

5. Which kinds of social sustainability

improvements are likely to occur “from the

ground up,” on a case-by-case basis, and which

can occur from the top down? How can the

phenomenon of “citizen science” play a role in

improving communication between elites and

ordinary citizens?

6. How can developments in our understanding of

social movements, human nature and

psychology, persuasion and marketing, and the

drivers of business enterprises, inform social

sustainability innovation and progress? Can

social norms evolve to promote socially

sustainable systems?


5


7. Given that it is difficult for individuals to learn

about the intimate relationship between their

well-being and the state of the planet’s

ecosystems, can we identify the attitudes and

behaviors necessary to accelerate progress

toward socially sustainable systems? What

learning and persuasion principles work and are

appropriate for attitude and behavior change?

8. Do criteria for social sustainability vary across

regions and areas, given social, economic, and

political differences? What kinds of

conversations need to occur between those living

in wealthy regions and those living in poor

regions to move toward social sustainability in

both?

9. What educational courses, workshops, and

materials provide high-quality introductions to

social sustainability?

10. What examples of successful courses in science

and engineering address social sustainability?

What can be done to enhance the adoption of

social sustainability material in appropriate

courses?

Summary and Conclusion

Of the three components of sustainability, social

sustainability is the least studied. Established to make

progress in this domain, the INSS Research Group is

exploring current knowledge as well as critical

questions that merit research priority. Historical

lessons from less-than-optimal, or even satisfactory,

outcomes demonstrate well the need to consider

social sustainability in major public infrastructure

projects and complex technological systems.

Achieving sustainability will require interdisciplinary

studies in which technical personnel and social

scientists work together. Long-term research is

critically important on issues like ensuring fairness

during the redesign of cities and striving for inclusion

in access to information on critical social equity

issues, partic-ularly those related to the natural

environment. Also needed is research on effective

and responsible ways to achieve individual and

institutional change in coming periods of climate,

ecosystem, and societal transition.

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1


ARTICLE

Sustainable dissemination of earthquake resistant construction in the Peruvian Andes Malena Serrano1, Marcial Blondet1, Álvaro Rubiños1, and Elin Mattsson2 1 Department of Civil Engineering, Pontifical Catholic University of Peru, Avenida Universitaria Cdra, 18 S/N, San Miguel, Lima–32, Peru (email: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]) 2 Uppsala Universitet, P.O. Box 256, SE-751 05 Uppsala, Sweden (email: [email protected])

Abstract

This article describes the challenges and initial accomplishments of a project developed by the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru (PUCP) to disseminate technology and to train low-income families in the Andes Mountain region to build earthquake-resistant homes made of adobe bricks. The initiative has focused on improving the livability of households through affordable seismic reinforcement of traditional construction processes to enhance the social sustainability of housing in the area. We selected the rural Andean community of Pullo as a case study because of its preponderance of non-reinforced adobe construction and poverty. The research team developed tools and methodologies for technology transfer, worked with local residents to raise awareness of the high seismic vulnerability of adobe dwellings, and introduced the concept of seismic reinforcement. This article explores the barriers to disseminating earthquake-resistant technology in the study area and presents adaptive measures to overcome these challenges. Initial results demonstrate the positive impact of educational workshops to raise seismic awareness and to introduce earthquake-resistant construction among rural dwellers. The project is deemed to have wider applicability to other communities in seismic areas with similar housing, social, and economic conditions. Keywords: adobe; housing; safe construction; technology transfer

Introduction

Researchers at the Pontifical Catholic University

of Peru (PUCP) and other institutions have been

working to improve the structural safety of earthen

houses located in seismic areas of Peru for the last four

decades (Vargas et al. 2005; Blondet & Aguilar,

2007). Research has resulted in development of

reinforcement techniques for reconstruction and

training programs by nongovernmental organizations

(NGOs) following major earthquakes (Blondet et al.

2008a; Macabuag & Quiun, 2010). Unfortunately,

efforts to encourage the uptake of these technologies

in local communities have largely failed. People

continue to build in the traditional way and not one

person in the rural Peruvian Andes has independently

built his or her house using the proposed

reinforcement techniques (Macabuag & Quiun, 2010;

Blondet & Rubinos, 2014). In an attempt to solve this

problem, PUCP has developed a new training program

in earthquake-resistant adobe construction that

incorporates a previous educational campaign to

increase acceptance among dwellers. This article

examines the value and success of this project for

disseminating new building technologies.

The research reported here contributes to

literature on sustainability education and the social

aspects of housing in the Peruvian Andes. The

intention is not to assess the sustainability of a single

reinforcement technology, but rather to investigate the

effectiveness of the technology after educating the

population about the importance of seismic

reinforcement. In particular, we address the challenges

of taking technology from the academic world, where

it is conceived in a theoretical way, and implementing

it in rural towns, where reality is much more complex

and variable. The study area is located in the Peruvian

Andes and we focus in particular here on work carried

out in the rural community of Pullo, which has been

selected because of its high seismic exposure, both in

terms of infrastructure and social vulnerability, and the

danger signaled by recent seismic events.

This article begins with background on the

initiative and the proposed technology, including the

technology-transfer tools relevant to the project. We

then identify the major challenges of technology

transfer that the research group encountered, focusing

on issues, pertinent in the rural town, of trust, literacy,

cultural differences, lack of permanent personnel, and

transportation. The article also highlights the adaptive

measures taken to overcome those challenges, such as


2


audiovisual resources, creative advertising methods,

and special private transportation for the equipment.

Next, it describes the familiarizing educational

experience and concludes with a brief discussion about

the proposed technology, the technology-transfer

experience, and the initiative’s success.

Background

To provide a more complete picture of the work

presented in this article and how it contributes to

sustainable implementation of earthquake-resistant

housing in rural Andean communities, we describe

some of the background context. This section also

discusses the relationship between social sustainability

and housing to provide a deeper understanding of the

importance of communicating about earthquake-

resistant construction. We then present the PUCP

initiative as an example of the human development-

capability approach, which provides an opportunity to

apply innovative technology-transfer tools and to

critically assess their effectiveness for future projects.

Finally, it describes the seismicity of the study area

and develops an overall characterization of its housing

conditions to create a more detailed depiction of the

Andean area of Peru.

Social Sustainability and Housing

Sustainable development of a community is based

on achieving balanced economic growth, environ-

mental protection, and social progress (McKenzie,

2004; Adams, 2006). Development should provide an

acceptable quality of life, both for individuals and

communities, and maintain healthy financial markets

while preserving natural resources by assuring that

depletion does not occur more rapidly than

replenishment (Fisher & Amekudzi, 2011). Balancing

these objectives means that the various sustainability

dimensions are not isolated, but that an integrated view

is maintained. For example, social and environmental

aspects of sustainability are interwoven because

degraded natural resources can compound social

inequity and segregation, conflicts, instability, and

dissension (Chiu, 2003).

Social sustainability is essential for sustainable

development, although there is no consensus on how

to incorporate it in practice (Cuthill, 2010; Casula

Vifell & Soneryd, 2012). Sustainable communities are

places where people want to live and work, now and

in the future (ODPM, 2006), and socially sustainable

communities need to guarantee access to basic needs

while featuring equitable outcomes, diversity,

connectivity, and democratic governance to provide a

high quality of life (WACOSS, 2002). However,

despite the importance of social sustainability, the

economic and environmental dimensions are

prioritized in planning housing and communities

(Woodcraft, 2011) and this neglect of social

sustainability is paramount in the case of housing

(Dempsey et al. 2011).

The social sustainability of housing can be

assessed quantifying the livability of households

(internal housing conditions and external residential

quality) while also considering equity in housing

distribution and consumption (Chiu, 2003). In

addition, one of the predominant physical factors

needed for a community to achieve urban social

sustainability is decent housing (Dempsey et al. 2011),

which provides shelter, basic to community well-being

(Magis & Shinn, 2009). However, beyond shelter,

housing should also promote social integration and

safeguard the environment to preserve the ability of

future generations to meet their needs (Murphy, 2012).

Furthermore, housing only promotes well-being if

planners understand what people need from the places

in which they live and work (Woodcraft, 2011).

Therefore, to achieve social sustainability at the

community scale, housing should promote well-being

and not only meet basic needs. This objective can be

achieved by improving the livability of structures,

where livability is understood to create conditions for

healthy, safe, affordable, and secure households within

a neighborhood with access to utilities, transport,

healthcare, and education (Mitlin & Satterthwaite,

1996). This article concentrates on how to implement

safe and affordable housing as a first step to improving

the livability of households and thus securing social

sustainability in rural communities of the Peruvian

Andes.

The PUCP Training Project

The technology-transfer initiative described in

this article is part of a larger PUCP training project that

aims to provide sustainable earthquake-resistant

housing for Andean communities. The effort is based

on experiences from a small-scale reconstruction

program developed by PUCP and CARE-Peru (a

nongovernmental organization (NGO) specializing in

development) after the Pisco earthquake of August

2007 (Blondet et al. 2008a). The project is

interdisciplinary, bringing together partners from

engineering, psychology, anthropology, history, and

communications with the goal of achieving acceptance


3


of seismic reinforcement among homeowners and

residents in Andean communities.

The central idea of the initiative is that people

should not be mere recipients of external aid, but

become agents of their own development by acquiring

the skills to live the life they want (Sen, 2000). In this

project, this means that people living in adobe

dwellings should learn how to build earthquake-

resistant houses by themselves. Therefore, the

program consists of training community members in

the construction of safer adobe houses using a simple

low-cost reinforcement technique. The expectation is

that the acquired skills will allow community members

to continue improving their housing conditions once

the project is over, thus enhancing their quality of life

in an ongoing and sustainable way. There is the

additional prospect that trained community members

could use their acquired skills to earn income as

technicians on construction projects.

The PUCP training initiative is divided into three

phases to increase acceptance of one seismic

reinforcement technique, ease the technology-transfer

process, and create a platform where trained people

can work on similar projects:

Phase One: Familiarizing educational workshops

that include field demonstrations using a portable

shaking table and scaled models. The main

objectives are to educate community members

about the high seismic vulnerability of their

dwellings and to show the value of building

earthquake-resistant adobe houses.

Phase Two: Training workshops that consist of

teaching community members how to build an

improved earthquake-resistant adobe house using

a simple low-cost reinforcement technique

through an illustrated construction manual. The

main objectives are to train community members

through practical skills and to provide a reference

document for future construction. The developed

skills (capacities) are applied in the construction

or reinforcement of a community building with

the collaboration of all inhabitants.

Phase Three: Assessment based on identifying

improvements for future training programs. The

project’s success is evaluated by the application

of the technique beyond the structures built during

the training (e.g., the number of independently

built or reinforced houses). Another potential

outcome to assess is the extent to which local

governments have developed similar training

programs.

The Andean Community of Pullo

Pullo is a small rural community located in the

Ayacucho region of the Peruvian Andes (Figures 1 &

2). Earthquakes are relatively common in this area

because it sits near the boundary between the Nazca

and South American tectonic plates. In August 2014,

an earthquake registering 6.6 on the Richter scale

injured around 100 people, adversely affected 55

houses, and rendered 30 of these structures

uninhabitable (INDECI, 2014). After this event,

Cáritas, a local NGO, asked the Academic Direction

of Social Responsibility of the PUCP (DARS-PUCP)

for relief aid. As a first response, an interdisciplinary

team traveled to the community and assessed the post-

earthquake situation, in terms of both structural

damage and psychological effects. The team also

identified community leaders (e.g., local and church

authorities and the Commoners’ Association) who

might serve as potential collaborators for organizing

and advertising future projects (Cribilleros et al.

2014).

Figure 1 Geographic location of the Andean community of Pullo.


4


Figure 2 Main square of Pullo.

Despite the region’s seismicity, almost 80% of

houses in the area are made of traditional adobe

(sundried mud bricks) and built without technical

assistance or seismic reinforcement techniques.

Dwellers know that non-reinforced adobe houses have

very poor seismic performance (Figure 3). However,

sadly, more than 30% of the rural population lacks

access to industrialized materials and more than 60%

live in poverty or extreme poverty without access to

utilities like water and electricity (INEI, 2007).

Therefore, adobe is the only affordable and available

housing for many families. Furthermore, lack of

awareness of construction techniques prevents

homeowners from investing additional time and

money on seismic reinforcement or repair of existing

damage (Blondet et al. 2008b; Macabuag & Quiun,

2010). As a consequence, observed damage

corresponds to lack of seismic-resistant building

techniques during construction (absence of collar

beams and presence of excessive thickness of mortar

joints) and insufficient maintenance over the years

(Cribilleros et al. 2014).

Technology

Adobe buildings are cheap to build and have good

thermal properties, but they are also highly vulnerable

to earthquakes (Blondet & Rubiños, 2014). Therefore,

several reinforcement techniques have been developed

to strengthen adobe dwellings against seismic events

over the years (Zegarra et al. 1997; Minke, 2001; Iyer,

2002; El Gadawy et al. 2004; San Bartolomé et al.

2004; Blondet et al. 2006; Turer et al. 2007; Smith &

Redman, 2009). However, the availability of technical

solutions is not sufficient because this knowledge is

mainly limited to academics (Blondet & Rubiños,

2014). Entire communities continue to build houses

with the traditional non-reinforced adobe-construction

technique, leaving them exposed to extremely high

seismic risk (Blondet & Aguilar, 2007). Therefore, the

first step toward sustainable earthquake-resistant

housing is reducing the communication gap between

academia and earthquake-prone communities. The

next section briefly presents one simple, low-cost, and

highly available seismic reinforcement, the nylon-rope

mesh, and the communication strategies and edu-

cational tools we developed to disseminate this

technology in the Peruvian Andes.

Figure 3 Inhabited damaged adobe house.

Nylon Rope-Mesh Reinforcement

The nylon-rope mesh is a recent reinforcement

technique developed by PUCP (Blondet et al. 2013).

In 2013, a pilot project demonstrated that a previously

damaged full-scale adobe model could be repaired via

mud injection combined with an external mesh made

with nylon strings (Figure 4). The reinforcement

procedure consisted of covering the walls with a mesh

made of horizontal and vertical ropes tightened by

turnbuckles; later, the meshes on both faces of each

wall were joined together by thinner ropes (crossties).

During a sequence of unidirectional earthquake

motions of increasing intensity, the structural behavior

of the repaired and reinforced model was considered

excellent. The external reinforcements worked to

maintain structural integrity and stability and pre-

vented the partial collapse of wall portions that had

separated during the shaking (Blondet et al. 2014).

The PUCP training project selected the nylon-

rope mesh due to its great potential as a sustainable-

reinforcement technique for low-cost earthen dwell-


5


Figure 4 Full-scale adobe model reinforced with nylon rope mesh.

-ings in seismic areas (Blondet et al. 2013, 2014). The

reinforcement procedure is considered simple enough

to be learned without any previous technical

knowledge in construction. It does not require extra

machinery, and it produces no additional pollution

compared to non-reinforced adobe construction.

Additionally, nylon ropes are widely available at local

stores, while most natural reinforcement materials are

not easily obtained in large quantities in the Peruvian

Andes. Furthermore, the nylon-mesh technique costs

US$120 at most for reinforcing a typical single-floor

two-room adobe house, which is less than other

industrialized reinforcements (Blondet & Aguilar,

2007; Blondet et al. 2008a).

Portable Shaking Table Demonstrations

The portable shaking table is a tool developed to

raise awareness of the high seismic vulnerability of

non-reinforced adobe dwellings and to build

confidence in reinforced adobe construction among

rural communities (Blondet & Rubiños, 2014). During

demonstration sessions, two reduced-scale adobe

models can be tested simultaneously, with the

differences in their seismic performance easily

observed (Figure 5). The non-reinforced adobe model

collapses just like traditional Andean adobe houses

during an earthquake, but the reinforced model does

not collapse even though it can suffer moderate or

severe damage. Disregarding the magnitude of the

damage, the nylon-thread mesh prevents the collapse

of the reinforced model as the nylon-rope mesh did on

the test program, thus showing the effectiveness of the

nylon-rope mesh to protect the inhabitants of adobe

houses from earthquakes.

Figure 5 Differences in seismic performance of reduced-scale adobe models.


6


Figure 6 Illustrations from the construction manual.

The Construction Manual

The construction manual is a technical document

that describes in detail how to reinforce an adobe

house with nylon ropes. Each step of the construction

process is described with familiar, simple language

and clearly illustrated with easy-to-follow drawings

(Figure 6). Furthermore, the manual presents three

types of houses that differ in the number of rooms and

shows their construction plans in detail. This

educational tool is mainly directed to masons and

residents of rural areas where informal construction

with adobe is prevalent and technical assistance is not

easily available.

Dissemination Challenges and Adaptive Measures

The reinforcement systems that the PUCP project

team has studied have proven that adobe construction

can be earthquake resistant. Indeed, the application of

technical solutions would provide enough structural

safety to prevent collapse of earthen buildings, thus

protecting human life and building social sustain-

ability into their construction design (Blondet et al.

2008b). However, despite the benefits of safer

affordable housing, disseminating earthquake-

resistant technology faces a number of impediments

among dwellers, as discussed below.

Trust

Many adobe dwellers resist changing their

building techniques because they dislike external

interference in their traditional practices (Blondet,

2011). More important, many rural projects by the

government were forced upon residents without their

consent in the past, contributing to rejection of

external interference in general (García, 2008).

Additionally, while assessing the post-earthquake

situation in Pullo, informal conversations showed us

that the idea of earthquake-resistant housing raised

suspicion and skepticism among residents. They

considered adobe dwellings extremely vulnerable to

earthquakes and only aspired to own masonry

structures considered to be “noble” and “resistant” but

unaffordable at the same time (Blondet et al. 2008b;

Cribilleros et al. 2014). Therefore, the first challenge

we found to disseminate earthquake-resistant

technology was building trust in the research group

and the proposed technology.

We employed two different strategies that

attempted to overcome this challenge. First, we

presented ourselves to community leaders and

carefully explained the motivation for the project and

what we hoped to achieve in the community. This

allowed us to establish relationships and to build trust

with the research group and regarding the project, so

that community leaders later helped engage the

population (Pérez-Salinas et al. 2014). Second, during

work sessions, we included selected motivational and

laboratory test videos from previous projects that

showed the effectiveness of seismic reinforcement in

addition to the live portable shaking-table demon-

stration.


7


Literacy

Another challenge we encountered while

assessing earthquake preparedness in Pullo was lack

of literacy. Most community members only have an

elementary school-level education and close to 15% of

the population is not able to read (INEI, 2007),

requiring explanations using simple language. More

importantly, a high illiteracy rate required us to

consider inclusiveness in the training program since

lack of skills could lead to social exclusion, lack of

access, and conflicts (Khan et al. 2015). To overcome

this barrier, we planned the educational familiarizing

and training phases of the project around audiovisual

resources, oral explanations, live demonstrations and

exercises, and step-by-step illustrated printed mat-

erials.

Cultural Differences

One obstacle during training-session planning

was finding dates and schedules that respected the

cultural expectations in the Pullo community. A

culture is a set of acquired forms and ways to

understand the world, to think, to speak, to express

oneself, to perceive, to act, to socialize, to feel, and to

value oneself as an individual and part of a group

(Heise et al. 1994). Peruvian rural villages have

different traditions and festivities from each another

and from the country’s urban areas. For instance, Pullo

has a flag-raising ceremony on Sundays, which also

serves as an open space to bring up community issues.

In addition, Andean communities have subsistence

economies based on agricultural activity and residents

prioritize certain times of day to farm and take care of

cattle.

In this context, we used several strategies to find

appropriate meeting times and places. In particular, we

considered the different civil and religious traditions

and festivities to respect community beliefs. Special

events, such as the chacco de vicuña (a traditional

Andean wool-shearing process), were avoided in

planning activities, as were agricultural working

hours. As a result, two-hour Saturday afternoon and

two-hour Sunday morning sessions were validated

with community members and main leaders.

Additionally, we followed traditional protocol by

asking local authorities to welcome participants at the

beginning of each session.

Lack of Personnel in the Study Area

Perhaps the biggest challenge that we encountered

during this initiative was the lack of university

representatives in the study area. Institutions

organizing educational workshops would benefit from

local familiarity and the ability to assemble 80 to 150

people (InWent & Mesopartner, 2005). Lack of such

an institution made it difficult to coordinate and

advertise educational and training sessions when other

communication was limited.

The project team implemented several strategies

to overcome this problem, such as conducting personal

and group interviews with community leaders to enroll

their help with advertising; greeting participants upon

arrival and departure using a megaphone; placing

posters with simple, familiar, and inviting language in

strategic places such as the main square and local

stores; making regular telephone and cellular calls to

remind community leaders of upcoming sessions; and

finally, using some specific field trips for promoting

the events. However, these adaptive measures had to

be continuously assessed to improve less successful

components.

Transportation

Transportation was a logistics challenge on our

first trip to the Pullo community because of the

number of different legs required to reach the village.

The trip entails a seven-hour bus ride from Lima to

Nazca, a two-hour minivan ride from Nazca to Acari,

and a four- to six-hour truck ride from Acari to Pullo.

The duration of the truck part of the trip depends on

the different routes, including dirt roads frequently

closed due to mudslides during the rainy season. More

importantly, transportation became a bigger dilemma

while transporting the portable shaking table, which

was too big and heavy to take in the bus or the

minivan. We had to hire special private transportation

for the first trip, and on following journeys a truck

replaced the minivan.

The difficulty reaching Pullo also highlights the

need for this project. External aid from the

government, NGOs, and other institutions is minimal

due to Pullo’s remoteness, and so its inhabitants must

rely on their own wherewithal in the face of

earthquake emergencies (Cribilleros et al. 2014).

However, knowledge of the attendant risks, and ability

to anticipate and reduce potential consequences of a

disaster (resilience), could increase the speed of

recovery after an emergency (Fitzgerald & Fitzgerald,

2005).

Familiarizing Educational Experience

In May 2015, we began the PUCP training

program in earthquake-resistant construction in the


8


district of Pullo. We assembled an interdisciplinary

team, which included three civil engineers, one

psychologist, and one communications professional,

to travel to the community. The main objective of the

trip was to conduct a familiarizing educational

workshop with participants from all ages and genders.

Attendance was free and voluntary; participants did

not receive any form of compensation. However, to

increase community interest in the educational

workshop, we conducted a small promotional

campaign on arrival.

Fifty-three community members, including men,

women, seniors, and children, attended the two-hour

familiarizing educational workshop. First, we

presented ourselves and the results from the evaluation

conducted during the first visit, then we presented the

motivation for the project and what we hoped to

achieve in the community. We were careful to avoid

misunderstanding or misinterpretation: participants

would not be given construction materials but would

receive training in earthquake-resistant adobe-

construction techniques.

As an introduction to the familiarizing educat-

ional part of the workshop, we showed a video from

the 1970 earthquake in northern Peru. The team asked

participants open questions (e.g., “How did you feel

watching the video?”) that allowed community

members to express their thoughts—and fears—about

earthquakes and how they perceived their adobe

houses. Participants confirmed the need for safer

housing in Pullo. They regarded adobe to be a brittle

material, but the only one they could afford; thus, they

feared losing their households and their lives to

earthquakes.

Next, the project team elicited responses to one

specific question: “Do you believe construction with

adobe can be earthquake resistant?” Participants

unanimously answered in the negative. Expecting this

answer, the team showed previously selected technical

and motivational videos displaying the effectiveness

of seismic reinforcement, while adding commentaries

and questions for the audience. The final video

presented the full-scale adobe model reinforced with

the nylon-rope mesh and tested in the full-scale

shaking table at PUCP. Some questions from the

participants showed their interest (e.g., “How thick do

the ropes have to be?”) while others showed

skepticism (e.g., “So those thin ropes are going to

protect my house from earthquakes?”).

We later conducted the shaking table test on the

reduced scale models in front of all the participants.

This live demonstration allowed community members

to observe up close the expected seismic performance

of a non-reinforced adobe house during an earthquake

(Figure 7). When we asked them which house behaved

like theirs during an earthquake, they identified the

non-reinforced model. After the shaking table test,

they commented on the importance of seismic

reinforcement for the enhanced model. Finally, we

repeated the description of the PUCP training project

and its main objectives and asked participants if they

wanted to register for future training workshops.

Figure 7 Dynamic test with the portable shaking table.

Discussion

The Technology

Nylon ropes are well known, available, and

affordable in rural areas, unlike other industrialized

materials such as polymer mesh or wire mesh with

cement mortar. On arrival in the Pullo community, the

team found the nylon ropes needed to reinforce a

dwelling at two different local stores in various colors

and sizes. While reinforcing with the nylon rope-mesh

technique increases a dwelling’s cost by US$3–4 per

square meter, this is considered affordable, as very

poor and poor families in Peru have an average income

of US$700–1,000 per year and usually invest US$20–

30 per square meter in constructing their dwellings

(Macabuag & Quiun, 2010). However, the team noted

that the metal turnbuckles used in the laboratory tests

are relatively unknown and expensive for the Peruvian

Andes; additional research at PUCP suggests that

residents could replace them with knots (Mattsson,

2015).

The nylon-rope mesh and other reinforcement

techniques studied by PUCP researchers have only

been developed for one-story buildings (Vargas et al.

2005; Blondet & Aguilar, 2007). However, in the rural

Peruvian Andes, building adobe dwellings without


9


technical assistance often leads to the unregulated

construction of two- or three-story earthen buildings

despite their illegality under the Peruvian Building

Code. Therefore, the team was concerned when

community members asked if this technology could be

applied on their already existing two-story dwellings.

Unfortunately, as of now the nylon-rope mesh has only

been used to reinforce one-story dwellings and further

research is needed to examine if this technology can

also be used with similar results for multi-story

dwellings.

Educational Experience

The educational workshop applied many

strategies to sharing knowledge about earthquake-

resistant construction in the Peruvian Andes. The

schedule for these events and the small promotional

campaign was aimed at increasing the number of

participants. In addition, the live portable shaking

table demonstration and the selected audiovisual

materials were focused on overcoming barriers to trust

while also avoiding social exclusion due to illiteracy.

Using the portable shaking table as a

communication tool generated a playful environment

that raised interest and confidence among community

members. After the live demonstration, the team asked

participants to raise their hands if they believed

earthquake-resistant construction with adobe was

possible. The answer was affirmative and unanimous

(Figure 8). Later, through informal conversation,

participants confirmed this belief to the different

members of the team. This interaction appeared to

successfully motivate Pullo’s inhabitants and establish

relationships with the team. Moreover, by bringing

elements of research into the field, the team was able

to show people the efforts made by PUCP to find

sustainable housing solutions for them. Therefore, we

considered the educational workshop successful as it

increased confidence in the nylon-rope mesh as

seismic reinforcement and raised interest in upcoming

training workshops.

Despite the initial success overcoming barriers to

trust, the number of participants represented only

approximately 1% of the total population of Pullo,

much of which is scattered across farming lands.

Therefore, we plan to repeat the educational

methodology using the live portable shaking table

demonstration to reach a wider audience and to

reinforce trust with community members.

Figure 8 Participants raising hands as a sign of confidence in the proposed technology.

Success of the Initiative

In the long term, the success of the PUCP training

project will be measured by the number of repaired

houses and new houses that use nylon rope-mesh

reinforcement. Full assessment of the technique’s

acceptance is not possible at this early stage, but one

optimistic indicator occurred at the end of the

educational workshop, when 32 out of 45 adult

participants signed up for upcoming training sessions.

Figure 9 Participants registering for upcoming training sessions.

The registration process involved community

members writing their full names, providing identity-

card numbers, and signing; illiterate participants could

dictate their information to team members (Figure 9).

In total, over 70% of participants committed to the

training program.

Conclusion

Technical solutions to reinforce adobe dwellings

exist although they vary in cost and accessibility. The

main challenge is not to develop affordable and more

sustainable solutions (Ness & Akerman, 2015), but

rather to disseminate these alternatives to commun-

ities. Greater emphasis must be placed on developing


10


educational tools and methodologies that can handle

the difficulties and unexpected challenges that arise

during the technology-transfer process.

Our initial success reaffirms the importance of a

familiarizing educational phase to achieve sustainable

dissemination of earthquake resistant construction, as

dwellers must trust seismic reinforcement in order to

incorporate it into their building practices. The

educational workshop succeeded among inhabitants of

Pullo as it raised awareness and willingness to

participate in future training sessions and learn the

nylon rope mesh technique. Therefore, we recommend

that future studies and training programs include a

familiarizing educational phase when working with

technology transfer in rural communities. More

importantly, the project team envisions that, if the

project succeeds, the communication and educational

tools that we have developed might be applicable or

adapted to be used in other seismic areas where people

build with earth—specifically in poor areas of western

South America, Central America and southern Asia—

with the hope of improving household livability for

more families.

Our work has not been easy and is not finished.

The project team continues to conduct research in rural

Andean communities and this ongoing learning

process is aimed at planning and improving

appropriate workshops. Without such understanding,

community members are unlikely to adopt the

proposed technology despite its benefits. However, the

people involved in this initiative are optimistic that

their efforts will lead to improvement of household

livability for many families and contribute to social

sustainability of housing in the Peruvian Andes.

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the staff of

PUCP’s Office for Social Responsibility (DARS)–

especially Maria Teresa Rodríguez and Ruth Nevado–for their support on this project, and the staff of the

Structures Laboratory for their help with the

experimental tasks. Special thanks are due to Nicole

Peterson who reviewed this paper and provided

insightful comments. Finally, the financial support of

the National Council for Science and Technology of

Peru (CONCYTEC) is gratefully acknowledged.

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ARTICLE

Social sustainability dimensions in the seismic risk reduction of public schools: a case study of Lima, Peru Sandra Santa-Cruz1, Graciela Fernández de Córdova2, Miryam Rivera-Holguin3, 4, Marta Vilela2, Victor Arana5, and Juan Palomino5

1 Department of Engineering, Pontifical Catholic University of Peru, Avenida Universitaria 1801, Lima, Peru (email: [email protected]) 2 Department of Architecture, Pontifical Catholic University of Peru, Avenida Universitaria 1801, Lima, Peru (email: [email protected], [email protected]) 3 Department of Community Psychology, Pontifical Catholic University of Peru, Avenida Universitaria 1801, Lima, Peru (email: [email protected]) 4 Faculty of Psychology, National University of San Marcos, Calle Germán Amézaga 375, Edificio Jorge Basadre, Ciudad Universitaria, Lima, Peru (email: [email protected]) 5 Department of Civil Engineering, Pontifical Catholic University of Peru, Avenida Universitaria 1801, Lima, Peru (email: [email protected], [email protected])

The provision of education is a vital feature of a socially sustainable system. However, students in highly seismic areas are under permanent hazard, a critical situation for student populations with high vulnerability factors such as insecure infrastructure, low teacher salaries, and poor living conditions due to social exclusion and inequity. In this article, we use community-based elements, such as institutional arrangements and a collaborative and interdisciplinary approach, to develop a comprehensive multi-scale risk model for socially sustainable seismic risk reduction in schools. We analyze the case of schools in the city of Lima, Peru, integrating aims, objectives, and methodologies based on risk-reduction strategy from previous disciplinary studies. Identifying schools that, on one hand, can be most useful during emergency-relief work and, on the other hand, educational facilities that could cause the most harm to students are priorities for a risk-reduction strategy. We identify social sustainability factors in schools, such as security and well-being of the student population, accessibility, incomes, basic service provision, and community organization. Specifying the spatial and territorial relationships within public school surroundings is essential to guaranteeing the effectiveness and efficiency of risk-mitigation strategies.

Keywords: Social sustainability, seismic risk, mitigation, community-based disaster risk management

Introduction

The effective provision of education is a main

feature of a socially sustainable system (Harris et

al. 2001). However, educational arrangements—

including students, teachers, administrators,

authorities, curriculum, equipment, and

infrastructure—in highly seismic areas are under

permanent hazard. This situation is critical for

student populations that attend public schools

with high vulnerability factors, such as insecure

infrastructure, low teacher salaries, and poor

living conditions due to social exclusion and

inequity (including populations living in

conditions of poverty and extreme poverty). The

combination of hazard, vulnerability, exposure,

and low resilience results in a high-risk situation.

Risk reduction challenges decision makers

because of the sheer number at factors and the

lack of economic capacity to attend to them

simultaneously (Freeman et al. 2003; Cardona,

2010).

Academics and international agencies have

been working for the past several decades to

develop risk-reduction strategies for educational

systems. These efforts have ranged from

programs to reduce structural vulnerability to

initiatives focused on nonstructural elements like

retrofitting building infrastructure, improving

earthquake preparedness, and contingency

planning. Although these endeavors involve

different knowledge areas, no opportunities have

been created for interdisciplinary and

mailto:[email protected]



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participatory work to create an integrated vision

of the problem.

More specifically, retrofitting measures in

schools proposed from an engineering point of

view tend to rely on a “top-down” management

(TDM) approach that prioritizes the most urgent

tasks from a multifactor standpoint based on

physical and structural risk analysis and student

numbers (Grant et al. 2007; Pina et al. 2012;

Grimaz et al. 2010; Tesfamariam et al. 2012).

Strategies focused on preparedness, especially

through the training of teachers, principals, and

administrative staff, and informing parents and

students, have shown little increase in school-

team and parent awareness about the importance

of taking precautionary actions such as

participating in emergency simulations and drills

(IASC, 2007; Rivera et al. 2016). By contrast,

strategies aimed at children have been more

successful because messages disseminated by

youngsters have a high level of acceptance among

parents (Izadkhah, 2005).

In this article, we use community-based

elements, such as institutional arrangements

(UNDP, 2015) and collaborative and

interdisciplinary approaches, to understand the

risk factors and to develop comprehensive,

socially sustainable risk reduction strategic plans

for educational systems. We aim to demonstrate

that 1) design of seismic risk-reduction strategies

should include an emphasis on social

sustainability and 2) a participatory and

interdisciplinary approach should integrate aims,

objectives, and methodologies used by previous

TDM studies in a knowledge-creation process.

Community-based Disaster Risk Management

Community-based disaster risk management

(CBDRM) is a complementary approach to TDM

(Birkman, 2007). The concept of CBDRM is

based on a multi-sectoral and interdisciplinary

strategy, experience, local knowledge-sharing,

and community empowerment and ownership by

the target beneficiaries.

Programs based on CBDRM have been used

extensively worldwide (Maskrey, 2011), mainly

to improve emergency-response capabilities,

urban planning, and disaster prevention (Chen et

al. 2006; Vilela & Fernández de Córdova, 2013)

as well as to facilitate post-disaster reconstruction

processes (Rivera, 2010; Velásquez et al. 2016).

For instance, participatory multi-sectoral

partnership and community engagement has also

been deployed by a grassroots parents group in

Berkeley, California (USA) as part of a process to

retrofit a local school (Chakos, 2004). Although

these initiatives are useful examples entailing the

empowerment of target beneficiaries, they lack an

interdisciplinary vision that can encompass all

risk-management activities in greater detail.

The community-diagnosis method is a tool of

CBDRM that enables a knowledge-creation

process that combines local knowledge and

technical know-how for implementing

participatory disaster preparedness (Matsuda &

Okada, 2006). It consists of two phases: a

diagnostic survey and a prescriptive meeting, the

latter providing space for face-to-face interaction

to share survey results and to combine the local

knowledge of various participants. The

prescriptive meeting also plays the role of

providing a community with a solution for risk

reduction.

Social Sustainability Dimensions

Social sustainability is based on two

dimensions: social equity and the sustainability of

a community itself (Bramley & Power, 2009). An

equitable society is one with no “exclusionary” or

discriminatory practices hindering individuals

from participating economically, socially, or

politically. Within an urban context, social equity

is related to access to services, facilities and

opportunities, public transportation, and adequate

infrastructure. Community sustainability

involves social interaction among community

members, including the opportunity to participate

in public life, the existence of formal and

informal organizations, as well as the presence of

interpersonal trust, security, and positive sense of

identification.

In this article, we examine an ongoing project

for developing a strategic plan for seismic risk

reduction of the student public school population

in Lima, Peru using the community diagnosis

method. Both TDM and CBDRM benefits are

integrated in a participatory manner, with a focus

on an interdisciplinary and multi-sectoral

approach to yield a risk-reduction proposal that


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takes into account the dimensions of social

sustainability.

Case Study: Student Population in Lima

Lima, Peru, is located in the seismically

intensive “Ring of Fire” of the Pacific Ocean and

has been subjected to many earthquakes over the

years (Tavera & Buffon, 1998). Since the 1950s,

Lima has grown largely on an informal basis to

an estimated population of nine million people

and today lacks adequate public infrastructure

and urban facilities including schools, hospitals,

health clinics, and cultural centers.

The city’s current residential and commercial

patterns are scattered and uncoordinated, leading

to socio-spatial segregation (Fernández de

Córdova, 2012). Informal settlements located in

the expansion areas occupy lands exposed to

hazards and poor performance during seismic

events. This configuration fails to incorporate

notions of compactness and inclusion that are

inherent in most urban models of a sustainable

city and reduces the resilience of student

residents. The large number of public schools

located in these problematic expansion areas

increases the risk to this portion of the population.

School buildings also suffer from poor

construction practices arising from a lack of

regulated procedures and quality supervision

(Blondet et al. 2004), increasing the likelihood of

injuries to students during a post-disaster

evacuation. This situation degrades resilience and

will likely delay the recommencement of school

activities following an emergency. With no

regular budget for investment in facilities, parents

frequently build schools themselves after pooling

their own financial resources. Most of the schools

in Lima were built in a staged construction

process and additional capacity has been added

when there has been money from either families

or the government (Santa-Cruz et al. 2013).

In school buildings, the presence of

unsupervised alcoves, dead ends, and narrow

corridors are prevalent due to a lack of planning.

In addition, some evacuation routes include

staircases with low parapets and are likely to

become overcrowded. Safety areas are located

near elevated water tanks, but do not meet

structural safety standards, presenting increased

risk for evacuees.

According to previous studies, if a seismic

event were to occur (similar to the one that

affected Pisco, located 250 kilometers south of

Lima, in 2007), 92% of public schools would

become inoperative and 89% of students would

be adversely affected (Santa-Cruz, 2013). This

situation is mainly due to the fact that schools

have been built in accordance with obsolete

earthquake-resistant criteria and poor quality-

control processes. For typical modules built

before 1997 (Figure 1), a shear failure in columns

(called a short-column failure) is likely to occur,

causing the structures to collapse if the event

scores higher than VII on the Modified Mercalli

Intensity (MMI) scale. More than 50% of the

school buildings in Lima require total

replacement to bring them into conformance with

the Peruvian building code (MINEDU, 2015).

Furniture and placement of doors and

windows in public school classrooms often do not

comply with the current Peruvian safety

legislation. This situation is mainly a

consequence of the staged self-build process. The

lack of technical inspections, along with

insufficient training of people involved in

construction and those responsible for use of the

space and furniture, hinder correct definition and

maintenance of safety areas and emergency exits.

Schoolchildren in Lima have been targets of

previous campaigns to raise risk awareness and

build capacity for emergency preparedness.

Elementary and high-school students have

achieved a basic level of risk awareness after

community training and monitoring activities

Figure 1 Typical school building in Lima, Peru built before 1997


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involving teachers, parents, and the students

themselves (Roca, 2011). However, government

entities, academic staff, teachers, and healthcare

workers lack the proper training required to

provide information or humanitarian aid to

students adversely affected by seismic events

(Rivera et al. 2014). The experience in Pisco

demonstrated that poor communication skills

could increase injuries and psychological

problems for students.

In summary, Lima’s student population is

exposed to earthquake risks in many aspects of

daily life and at different scales: classroom,

school building, neighborhood, and the city

(Table 1). These hazards are to physical,

psychological, and social health, including

quality of life, well-being, education, and

development. An interdisciplinary approach is

needed to help communities organize themselves

to face seismic events and to encourage

coordinated activities to foster integrated risk

management.

Community Diagnosis for Seismic Risk Reduction

in Lima’s School Population

In September 2014, Pontificia Universidad

Católica del Perú (PUCP) organized a

participatory workshop using the community-

diagnosis method to develop a comprehensive

risk-reduction and strategic plan for Lima’s

educational system. The objective was to adopt

an interdisciplinary vision in seismic risk

management and to incorporate CBDRM

elements in the diagnosis and formulation of the

plan.

Table 1 Seismic risk analysis scales and examples of main issues

(a) City

Social-spacial segregation due to diffused patterns

(b) Urban areas

Poor community preparedness and inadequate construction and land-use practices


5


(c) School building

Inappropriate emergency exits, obsolete earthquake-resistant criteria, and acceptable level of risk

awareness in some schools

(d) Classroom

Furniture does not comply with safety recommendations

Community Diagnosis for Seismic Risk Reduction

in Lima’s School Population

In September 2014, PUCP organized a

participatory workshop using the community-

diagnosis method to develop a comprehensive

risk-reduction and strategic plan for Lima’s

educational system. The objective was to adopt

an interdisciplinary vision in seismic risk

management and to incorporate CBDRM

elements in the diagnosis and formulation of the

plan.

A diverse group of primary stakeholders from

academia and the government participated in the

workshop. Participants included authorities and

decision makers, with officers from the National

Program of Educational Infrastructure (known by

its Spanish acronym PRONIED); Office of

Investment Planning; Office of Strategic

Planning; Office of Strategic Planning and Measurement of Educational Quality, Office of

Community and Environmental Education; and

researchers from the World Bank and the PUCP

Departments of Architecture, Engineering, and

Psychology. Lima school principals were

represented by officers from the Regional

Directorate of Metropolitan Lima (DRELM). The

participation of the stakeholders was possible due

to the relationship that all parties had built while

participating in research and social responsibility

projects previously implemented by the PUCP

Engineering Department.

Diagnostic Survey

The participants presented the main aspects

of seismic risk facing Lima’s student population

based on three recent studies of public schools in

Peru: 1) Short-term strategy for immediate

upgrade of the educational infrastructure in the

city (MINEDU, 2014), 2) Probabilistic seismic

risk assessment of local schools and hospitals

(Santa-Cruz, 2013), and 3) Program Vulnerability

Reduction and Emergency Disaster—PREVAED

0068 (DRELM, 2014). All of these studies

estimated risk indexes using hazard and structural

fragility factors. While the first two reports

recommended carrying out structural measures

(retrofitting or replacement) to most high-risk

schools, the third proposed a strategy focused on

school preparedness (Table 2).


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Table 2 Studies of seismic risk of schools in Lima City

Short-term strategy for the immediate attention of the

educational infrastructure in Lima

2015 (MINEDU, 2014)

Probabilistic seismic risk assessment of local schools and

hospitals Lima (Rivera et al. 2014)

Program Vulnerability Reduction and

Emergency Disaster—PREVAED 0068 “Safe

Schools in Lima” (DRELM, 2014)

Participatory proposal

Recommended actions and

prioritizing criteria

Implement some of three actions: maintain, retrofit, or replace schools prioritizing the most vulnerable and located in the most densely populated districts

Urgent structural retrofitting or replacement in schools

with highest expected

annual loss (EAL)

Distribution of basic safety kits to schools with higher risk and award to the most prepared schools

Incremental retrofitting prioritizing schools that could be more useful during emergency and could cause the most harm to students

Methodology

Establish an index of structural interventions according to ad-hoc algorithm

Determination of EAL for each school using CAPRA©

Evaluation of safety index of the schools

Multi-criteria and GIS analysis, related to weaknesses or capabilities in all risk-generation levels: classroom, school, environment, and city

Factors

Technical expertise of the constructor

Year of construction

Predominant structural system of the building

Condition of the structure

Seismic hazard

Type of soil

Predominant structural system of the building

Distance from main street and facilities

Interior free area

Structural inspection results

Basic services coverage

Expected structural performance in future events

Interior free area

Surrounding density

Accessibility

Socioeconomic class

Community organization

Basic services coverage

The last part of the diagnostic survey was

aimed at preparing a comprehensive and

participatory diagnosis of seismic risk to students

based on discussion of previous risk-analysis

studies (Vilela & Fernandez de Córdova, 2013).

To facilitate discussion, participants were divided

into groups (Figure 2) and received maps and

tables with information on the location and

characteristics of the school buildings, land uses,

routes and roads, socio-economic characteristics,

and soil types for three representative districts

located in the expansion area of Lima: Comas,

San Juan de Lurigancho, and Villa el Salvador

(Figure 3). An effort was made to create

multidisciplinary working teams to identify the

risk problems and their associated factors in a

collaborative manner from different approaches

and areas of knowledge.

Figure 2 Development of the diagnostic survey and participatory diagnosis of seismic risk


7


Based on the information analysis and the

reflections of the participants on the potential

disaster and post-disaster situation, participants

identified possible critical situations, as well as

their associated factors. Factors were found in

relation to weaknesses that would increase the

physical, psychological, and social impacts on

students, and capabilities that could decrease the

adverse effects of a seismic event. Positive

factors, that is strengths and capabilities, were

written down on green cards with negative

factors, weaknesses, and lack of capabilities, on

red cards (Figure 4).

Figure 3 Representative zones of the expansion area of Lima used in the diagnosis survey

Figure 4 Identification of positive and negative factors related to the risk of the student population

Results of Diagnosis Survey

Participants first cited factors related to the

structural fragility of buildings. Construction

prior to 1997 was the main indicator of high

structural weakness of some schools. Another

factor was the soil’s low load bearing capacity.

Buildings located in areas with soft soils were

identified as the most at risk, because poor quality

soils can amplify seismic ground motion.

Students at these schools could suffer harm from

fallen objects or partial collapses during an

earthquake.

Accessibility in a post-disaster scenario was

another factor that the workshop participants

identified. For example, the location of main

avenues in lower elevation and plain areas of the

Comas District was considered positive because

such conditions could allow for distribution of

humanitarian aid or, if necessary, evacuation of

injured victims. However, the district’s upper

areas pose serious difficulties due to

overcrowding, slope instability, and the lack of

well-maintained roads and highways. By

contrast, the large number of schools in the

vicinity was considered to be a positive factor

because the existence of these buildings could

increase the possibility that local habitants would

be able to continue classes and have a focal point

if some schools in the area became inoperative.

Participants highlighted the need for information

about the total number and built-up area of school

buildings, deemed to be relevant information

because vacant areas would be useful for setting

up prefabricated classrooms in a post-disaster

reconstruction scenario. A finding that produced

major concern was the high number of public

school buildings without property title, a result of

the informal settlement and construction process.

This is a risk factor since it could delay the

provision of financial aid in post-disaster

reconstruction process.

The working groups also discussed social

sustainability with respect to socioeconomic,

class-based, and community resilience. In the

three study areas, most of the population is low to

medium income which was considered to be a

negative factor because insufficient financial

resources are associated with a slow recovery

process. Problems of alcoholism, violence, and

crime in parts of these districts were also

identified as social gaps for community cohesion.

Workshop participants indicated that a good

relationship between the school and the

community would be a significant factor in the


8


whole reconstruction process. They suggested

that the government should provide training to

teachers to help them respond to a crisis without

allowing feelings of distress and sadness to

intervene with respect to the children and other

community members. Finally, participants

stressed the importance of the school building as

a community-meeting point, especially in areas

characterized by low socioeconomic status.

The working groups also took land-use

information into account. The arrangement of a

residential area was considered a positive factor

for responding to emergencies, together with the

presence of wide green areas in strategic locations

for post-disaster humanitarian logistics.

Likewise, isolation from industrial areas was also

considered to be helpful because such districts are

usually associated with secondary risks caused by

seismic events, like explosions and fires.

However, the workshop participants questioned

the official land-planning and land-use data

because they were not reliable given the

widespread informal construction process in

Lima. A summary of identified factors and

related problems appears in Table 3.

Prescriptive Meeting

The participants arrived at the first part of the

workshop with various forms of tacit knowledge

and this diversity of perspectives led them to

discuss a range of risk-reduction procedures for

schools. Specific topics included structural

retrofitting, planning evacuation routes and safety

areas, preparedness, community responses, and

psychological support teams. In the second part

of this session, groups worked together to

comprehensively define the aims, objectives, and

methodologies of strategic planning for seismic

risk mitigation.

With respect to risk reduction, the structural

retrofitting measures that participants presented

included adding complementary frames, energy-

dissipation devices, and enlarging columns. First,

the complementary frame technique, used in

previous interventions in other Peruvian cities,

consists of supplementing the original structure Table 3 Problems, factors, and measures identified in the participation process from two sessions

Factors Problem Measures

Soil type

Potential physical damages caused due to fallen heavy objects or partial collapses. Disruption of classes

Complementary frame technique

Structural fragility Enlargement of columns

Population density Installation of energy-dissipation devices

Specific regulation for rehabilitation of existing constructions and use of new materials

Distribution of the buildings and free areas inside the school

Potential physical damages caused by falls, crashes, and overcrowding of students during the evacuation

Upgrading corridors and ramps that do not meet the required standards

Implementation of emergency exits and safety areas

Awareness-raising activities for students to correctly follow instructions during evacuation procedures

Accessibility and closeness to main routes Deficiency and delays in

humanitarian response and difficulties in evacuation procedures during the emergency response and rehabilitation stages

Adopting urban models of sustainable cities with compactness and inclusive solutions

Basic services Improvement of water supply, electricity, and telephone communication systems

Socio-economic level related to social segregation and little compactness

Civic and social empowerment to face the disaster

Level of preparedness and commitment of neighboring communities

Psychological impact due to poor crisis management by local authorities and humanitarian aid

Training teachers, health workers, parents, church leaders, and NGO representatives through “community interventions”

Regulation of the Ministry of Economy and Finances for Public Investment Projects

Difficulty to obtain funds for retrofitting projects

Legal clearing of property


9


with a reinforced concrete frame. This technique

is suitable for low-rise structures and eliminates

the short-column problem in typical modules

built before 1997. Second, the technique of

incorporating energy-dissipation devices, like

dampers and base isolators, was considered too

costly by the experts. Finally, the enlarging-

columns alternative was questioned because it

has a very disruptive construction process.

To decide the optimum retrofitting

alternative, it is necessary to analyze all of the

options using multi-criteria decision-making

methods (Caterino et al. 2004; 2009) or life-cycle

economic assessments aimed at maximizing

benefits or minimizing costs and losses (Santa

Cruz & Heredia, 2009). The implementation of

all of these structural interventions typically

requires rapid assessment and analysis methods

for strengthening existing structures and new

technologies and materials (e.g., carbon fiber,

electro-welded meshes, geo-meshes and fabrics).

Unfortunately, Peru has no precise regulations

pertaining to structural intervention in existing

structures so local engineers have no guidance on

which to rely when applying new techniques.

Another proposed measure was to improve

school-evacuation routes by building ramps,

removing obstacles and stairs from safety areas,

constructing additional staircases, and

strengthening walls, elevated tanks, and parapets.

For the immediate school surroundings,

workshop participants suggested enhancing road

infrastructure and removing informal facilities

and open dumps. In addition, they stated that

awareness-raising campaigns should continue as

well as preparedness activities (like the scheduled

simulations carried out by the Ministry of

Education), and regular emergency-management

workshops for teachers and students. To address

a potential post-disaster crisis, the workshop

participants proposed changes to the urban

model, including compactness, inclusivity and

social cohesion, and improvements to the water

supply, electricity and telecommunication

systems.

In terms of community organization,

workshop participants proposed mobilizing

social and human resources to respond to

potential crises through community interventions

that promote solidarity among neighbors and

their organized participation in rehabilitation and

emergency-relief processes. Due to their roles

and positive influence on the population,

stakeholders like teachers, healthcare workers,

church representatives, and employees of

nongovernment organizations (NGOs) would

also be involved in such interventions. In

addition, they noted the importance of training

potential members of the psychological support

team to identify harmful emergency-relief

practices, such as healthcare workers prescribing

unnecessary drugs or “antidepressants” to

students.

Workshop participants also proposed a third

point of intervention, namely to formalize

ownership of school buildings in accordance with

the law. This measure requires the help of

architects, engineers, and lawyers to gather

relevant data, necessitating the involvement of

pertinent professional associations.

Participants agreed that all of these measures

should include regular follow-up assessments. In

particular, contact with disaster victims was

recognized as important for identifying

intervention results and verifying whether goals

were accomplished. Table 3 includes a summary

of the proposed measures.

We now turn our attention to specific

recommendations raised at the workshop for

achieving seismic risk-reduction objectives.

According to the guidelines established by the

Ministry of Education and the objectives of the

National Risk and Disaster Management Plan

2014–2021 (PLANAGERD), the school is the

intervention target (e.g., infrastructure,

equipment and furniture, teacher training and

teaching management). The first action calls for

acknowledging the high risk levels in most school

buildings, as well as the limited resources and

time for their retrofitting and improvement. We

posed the following questions: What should the

strategic goals be? What methodology or criteria

should be followed to attain them? How can

viability of the proposals be ensured?

Workshop participants agreed that the

strategy should be to implement priority

interventions in: 1) schools likely to be most

useful during emergency-relief work and 2)

schools with the greatest risk of injury to students.

The first objective was to list buildings with


10


higher capability and preparedness in terms of

high accessibility, quality services, well-

distributed free areas, and effective community

organization. The second objective was to

prioritize the least adequate buildings by

accounting for structural weakness, poorly

planned evacuation exits and safety areas, and

segregation by socioeconomic class.

To achieve the objectives, the participants

reviewed the risk factors identified in the

diagnostic survey which could be useful to

establish an index or ranking to measure the need

for interventions. It was deemed that a list of

priority schools could be prepared later. For

instance, the project team started a qualitative

assessment of risk factors in schools located in

one of Lima’s represented districts. The year of

construction was used as an indicator of structural

weakness of school buildings and socioeconomic

class as a measure of resilience (i.e., conditions of

extreme poverty were deemed to be less

resilient). They next established a ranking and

prepared a list of the priority schools. However,

this strategy was found to be inappropriate

because in some cases highly ranked school

buildings were relatively close to each other or

lacked access. The project team therefore realized

that algorithms and multi-criteria tools for risk-

management decision-making processes in

school buildings had to be correlated with the

relationship between schools and urban systems

to be reliable.

Workshop participants identified that the

infrastructure of some school buildings could be

so severely damaged that safety could no longer

be guaranteed, risking injuries to the student

population, as happened in Pisco’s 2007 seismic

event. Thus, the group understood that

multifactorial prioritization needed restrictions,

since particularly vulnerable school buildings

need an emergency intervention owing to their

high fragility, as is the case of adobe-wall

buildings and typical modules built before 1997

(Muñoz et al. 2004).

With regard to healthcare, emergency

intervention would require an immediate measure

to stabilize patients, although that might not mean

that they could be discharged. In the case of

school buildings, an emergency intervention

would have limited objectives to stabilize the

structure. In relation to these constrained scopes,

the workshop participants agreed that it would not

be feasible to approve a structural project with

lower design performance than required in the

construction standards.

An option for implementing these

emergency measures would be to include

incremental retrofitting which entails adapting

the school to regulatory requirements in partial

interventions or stages (Krimgold et al. 2002).

Under these arrangements, an improvement

would be made in the structural performance in

every stage until the performance reached the

requirements of existing construction codes.

Some progress has occurred regarding

regulations in Peru and designers have since 2016

begun to apply this concept to existing structures.

Regarding this proposal’s feasibility, the

team members were skeptical about the efficacy

of the requirements set by the Ministry of

Economy and Finances for the approval of Public

Investment Projects (PIP), as these are too

complicated and slow to address the problems of

school buildings in need of urgent intervention.

The time that it takes for the preliminary design

and the comprehensive approach required by the

Ministry are not consistent with the timescale

associated with emergency interventions.

It merits observing, though, that there is

previous experience with rapid approval

processes in hospitals in Peru. A 2014 decree

stipulated that special measures should ensure

their operation even during seismic disasters.

Through similar measures, the national

government has been able to speed up

interventions in school buildings identified as

“representative.” The workshop concluded that

this topic required political attention and

commitment from legal and regulatory

authorities.

Conclusion

Community diagnosis is a tool that is

appropriate for developing strategic plans for

socially sustainable seismic risk reduction in

schools. In the case described here, the

prescriptive meeting provided a comprehensive

and participatory framework for risk reduction-

strategy planning and introduced social


11


sustainability dimensions into the scoping

process. This approach integrates TDM and

CBDRM benefits and can create knowledge from

previous risk studies that have been developed

separately from the perspectives of different

disciplines. Therefore, a new comprehensive

multi-scale risk perspective has been created.

Aims, objectives, and methodologies of the risk-

reduction strategy are redefined by integrating

previous studies. We have found that social

sustainability factors such as social equity and the

sustainability of a community itself must be taken

into account to achieve these new goals.

To address the situation of high risk and

limited resources, we suggest a prioritizing

methodology, one that is based on indicators or

rankings that take into account factors related to

weaknesses or capabilities at all stages of risk

occurrence: classroom, school, neighborhood,

and city. It is also necessary to analyze physical,

psychological, and social factors that may have

an impact on the student population.

During the course of the workshop,

participants prioritized two sets of schools: those

that could be more useful during emergency-

relief work and those where students faced the

greatest risk. The most highly ranked facilities

were identified through social sustainability

factors such as security and well-being of the

student population, accessibility, income,

presence of basic services, and community

organization. Identifying spatial and territorial

relationships in public school surroundings is

essential to guaranteeing the effectiveness and

efficiency of risk-mitigation strategies.

The regulation and approval processes for

public projects provide critical windows of

opportunity for proposing interventions, mainly

for urgent cases. Specific urban and construction

standards are required for more effective titling of

property, better connectivity among public

spaces, and incremental retrofitting of school

buildings. Such measures could mitigate risk to

the school population by reducing weaknesses

and increasing resilience and capability.

Likewise, political commitment is needed to

exempt emergency projects from the demanding

approval process that other public investment

projects are required to undergo.

This project was an opportunity for

interdisciplinary discussion that led to consensus

on risk management in a participatory manner

involving different areas of knowledge. It also

allowed members of the PUCP academic

community from different departments to attain a

more complete vision of the cross-cutting topic

pertaining to the safety of vulnerable students and

raised the need to continue holding similar

meetings.

The next steps are: 1) to determine a

methodology to analyze the feasibility of the

retrofitting measures to reduce structural fragility

and interventions to increase the resilience and

capacity of the education systems from a multi-

criteria point of view and 2) to develop a

methodology for risk reduction of public schools

based on the prioritization criteria presented in

this article.

Acknowledgements

The workshop described in this article was

partially funded by Common Funds 2014 of the

PUCP Academic Office of Social Responsibility

(DARS), the National Council of Science,

Technology, and Technological Innovation of

Peru (CONCYTEC), and the National Fund for

Scientific and Technological Development

(FONDECYT) within the framework of the 012-

2013–FONDECYT Agreement. We would like to

thank Nicole Peterson for her comments and

review of this article.

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ARTICLE

Achieving one-planet living through transitions in social practice: a case study of Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage

Robert H. W. Boyer Department of Geography & Earth Sciences, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, 9201 University City Boulevard, Charlotte, NC 28223 USA (e-mail: [email protected])

The per capita resource consumption for inhabitants of Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage (DR) is less than ten percent of the average American in most major categories, approximating “one planet” living in a nation that contributes disproportionately to global resource consumption. This article examines DR’s extraordinary energy and resource savings through the lens of social practice theory, which focuses on the meanings, competencies, and materials that individuals combine to form everyday practices. Participant observation and interviews with DR community members reveals how this rural ecovillage achieves remarkable energy and resource savings by transitioning away from the exclusive ownership of capital goods, investing in skills that facilitate the collective management of resources, and eliminating waste by taking advantage of locally available resources. Results suggest that local governments interested in sustainability and climate mitigation should encourage systems of collective resource management rather than maintaining a traditional focus on influencing changes in individual consumption choices. KEYWORDS: social sustainability, social practice theory, ecovillage, intentional communities, one-planet living

Introduction

During the spring of 1992, a small group of

environmentally conscious Stanford University

undergraduates decided to form an “eco-town.” After

graduation, they pooled their resources, developed

plans for a community that reflected their ideals, and

began searching for land. By October of 1997 the six

remaining founders had purchased a 280-acre former

pig farm in rural Scotland County, Missouri.

Eighteen years later, the population of Dancing

Rabbit Ecovillage (DR) has grown by nearly tenfold,

including 46 adults and 9 children.1 The experimental

community, which now includes inhabitants of

diverse ages and family composition, demonstrates

the possibilities and challenges of a lifestyle that

consumes less than 10% of the energy and material

resources of the average American in several major

consumption categories. This level of resource

savings approximates “one-planet” consumption

(BCSD, 1993; Moore & Rees, 2013; Rees &

Wackernagel, 1996), and may therefore serve as an

existing model of an ecologically sustainable

community in a nation that represents less than 4.5%

of global population, but 13.7% of humanity’s eco-

logical footprint (WWF, 2014).2

1 E-mail correspondence with Dancing Rabbit, May 14, 2015. 2 An individual or community living at “one-planet” consumption

levels consumes no more than their fair share of global biocapacity, which is approximately 1.7 global hectares per person

(Moore & Rees, 2013). Calculating the precise per capita

While DR has received abundant media attention

for its inspirational environmental and energy

accomplishments, this ethnographic study highlights

how understanding and deconstructing social

practices—the day-to-day convergence of materials,

meanings, and competencies—at DR is critical to

understanding how “Rabbits” (a local term) survive,

and by several accounts thrive, at uncommonly low

levels of energy and material throughput. 3 As

isolated units of analysis, the physical technologies,

skills, and ambitious environmental goals at DR are

neither novel nor inherently sustainable. Yet, when

the ecovillage is viewed as a site for the production

and integration (or “bundling” in the terminology of

Shove et al., 2012) of social practices like car

sharing, human-excrement composting, renewable

electricity production, and natural building, two

things become clear. First, choice-based models of

environmental change employed implicitly or

explicitly by local governments miss opportunities

for transitioning to more sustainable consumption.

Second, social competencies of interpersonal

ecological footprint of DR Ecovillage is beyond the scope of this article, and even if such data were available both the community’s

ecological footprint and global biocapacity change from year to

year. In this article, therefore, “one-planet” living is used as a symbol, and I have been careful to qualify DR’s achievements as

“approximating” one-planet living. 3 See DR’s media coverage page, which can be accessed at http://www.dancingrabbit.org/about-dancing-rabbit-

ecovillage/press/media-coverage.


2


communication and conflict resolution are critical to

sustainable consumption.

The 18-year existence of DR coincides with the

diffusion of local plans and regulations for

sustainable development (Beatley, 1995; Saha &

Paterson, 2008) and climate action (Lutsey &

Sperling, 2008; Wheeler, 2008) at multiple scales in

the United States. Thousands of local officials,

representing hundreds of millions of residents across

the country, have signaled their commitment to

lowering greenhouse-gas emissions by signing the

Mayors Climate Protection Agreement (MCPA, n.d.).

Similarly, more than 1,000 municipalities in the

country have signed on as members of ICLEI-Local

Governments for Sustainability, committing their

jurisdictions to conducting at least a baseline

inventory for sustainable development and/or climate

action. Despite these encouraging trends, progress on

the most substantial environmental issues has at best

inched forward incrementally (Betsill & Bulkeley,

2007; Culotta et al., 2015; Lane, 2015; Wheeler,

2008). Multiple studies indicate that the association

between verbal commitment to climate action and

actual investments that reduce carbon emissions in

the United States is weak or undetectable (Krause,

2011; Sharp et al., 2011; Wang, 2013). In recent

years, state and local governments have even begun

to block or abandon plans for sustainability and

climate action in the face of ideological opposition

(Frick et al., 2015; Hurley & Walker, 2004) and/or

perceived ineffectiveness (Krause et al., 2015).

Sociologist Elizabeth Shove (2010) describes

how climate action policies in the United Kingdom

and the United States have adhered to what she labels

an Attitude-Behavior-Choice (ABC) approach that

assumes improving environmental outcomes is a

matter of modifying individual preferences, and

consequently consumption choices. If only we could

change individuals’ attitudes through information

campaigns and economic incentives—follows the

ABC model—then they would choose more

environmentally benign behaviors, “doing their bit”

to address major environmental challenges like

climate change. This approach is evident in the

popularity of incentive-based energy-efficiency

standards for buildings and neighborhoods (Retzlaff,

2009; Sussman, 2008), Smart Growth programs that

rely principally on financial “carrots” rather than

regulatory “sticks” (Krueger & Gibbs, 2008; Lewis et

al., 2009) and the prominence of “voluntary” policies

for lowering local greenhouse-gas emissions

(Wheeler, 2008: 488).

The ABC approach competes with perspectives

that view reversing the most troubling environmental

and ecosystem trends as an overhaul of entire moral

paradigms (Rees, 1995) and/or socio-technical

regime transition (Rotmans et al., 2001; Voss &

Kemp, 2006). However, these ambitious visions lack

a clear picture about the day-to-day realities that lie

on the other side of a hypothetical socio-technical

transition. In other words, we have relatively few

satisfying examples of what sustainable consumption

looks like in practice. This article takes advantage of

the willing and ongoing experimentation at DR to

sketch a picture of the daily practices associated with

one version of sustainable community. While the

radical socio-material practices at DR may not

transplant directly into mainstream contexts, and DR

community members are far from representative of

individuals in the general public, extreme case

studies like the description that follows “activate

more actors and more basic mechanisms” than case

studies that claim to be representative (Flyvbjerg,

2006: 289). In other words, the DR case study offers

a window into an exceptional context that

demonstrates the multidimensional challenges that

mainstream communities may face if they aspire to

accomplish savings of a similar magnitude. The

example also contributes to existing social practice

theories by offering an in-depth ethnographic account

of sustainable practice.

The following section offers an overview of

social practice theoretical approaches. The article

then provides a background discussion of DR before

diving into a detailed discussion of the community’s

systems of cooperative automobility and human-

excrement reclamation. I argue that neither the

preferences of individual “Rabbits,” nor the strong

community environmental rules, nor the materials

employed can—as isolated units of analysis—explain

the ecovillage’s impressive achievements. Rather,

interviews and participant observation reveal that

active investments in interpersonal-communication

and conflict-resolution skills are critical to lowering

material and energy consumption. In the final

sections, I reflect on implications for policy and

planning outside this niche context.

Sustainability as Transitions in Social Practice

As discussed above, contemporary attempts to

steer communities toward more sustainable

consumption are dominated by a model of change

that focuses primarily on transforming individual

attitudes, and then behavior and choices. Social

practice theory (SPT) has emerged in recent years as

an alternative approach. Drawing heavily from the

separate work of sociologists Anthony Giddens


3


(1986) and Pierre Bourdieu (1990), SPT shifts the

ontological focus away from transforming the

preferences of individuals, without devoting attention

entirely to inescapable social structures (Shove &

Walker, 2010). Instead, SPT highlights the

production and reproduction of practices—mundane,

everyday activities like driving a car, skateboarding,

or showering—and the material and symbolic

elements that individual “carriers” of practice

combine to reproduce these practices every day

(Reckwitz, 2002).

Shove et al. (2012) simplify older social practice

models by dividing practices into three elements: 1)

materials like physical artifacts, tools, and

technologies; 2) meanings such as norms, rules,

emotions, and symbols; and 3) competencies

including skills, routines, and background

knowledge. Individual practitioners tend to

recombine these “ingredients” of social practice in

their day-to-day lives (Shove & Walker, 2010), but

individuals can reshape practices by integrating new

materials, meanings, or competencies that circulate

through space. For example, SPT understands the

worldwide diffusion of mechanical air conditioning

as inseparable from conceptions of luxury, health,

and professional attire that have diffused

internationally through specific economic sectors and

industries (Shove et al., 2013). Similarly, the practice

of daily showering has coevolved with perceptions of

propriety, freshness, relaxation, and routines

associated with the modern white-collar workday

(Shove & Walker, 2010). These and other transitions

in practice are difficult to explain by the changing

preferences of individuals or the introduction of

physical technology alone.

Watson (2012) proposes a “systems of practices”

perspective that focuses on the overlapping structures

that normalize and extend particular practices in

favor of others. Automobility, for example, has come

to dominate transportation in the United States and

most of Europe due to decades of decisions that have

extended the practice of driving while recruiting

practitioners from other forms of mobility like

walking and cycling. Automobiles-as-objects have

not simply displaced bicycles, nor do individuals

have an inherent desire to drive, but the practice of

automobility has extended itself through interrelated

changes in infrastructure, land use, safety, and the

skills required to operate a vehicle. Transitioning

away from automobility and its associated

environmental ills, then, requires a series of policy

decisions that reconfigure meanings, competencies,

and materials associated with driving, and encourage

momentum toward alternative modal options. For

example, the city of Groningen in the Netherlands

has increased the number of cyclists through decades

of mutually reinforcing policies that encourage

compact land use, restrict driving, and invest in

cycling infrastructure (Watson, 2012). These policies

have layered upon one another over many years and

can be understood alongside an enduring cultural

milestone of learning to ride a bicycle as a child in

the country. Watson explains that understanding

policy decisions as interventions in practice

“broadens the suite of potential interventions to

promote either recruitment or defection from a

practice.” In other words, policies that address major

issues like energy consumption can engage new

meanings and new skills that are typically overlooked

as outside the realm of public policy. Shove et al.

(2012), for example, discuss how a Japanese

initiative to reduce indoor-energy consumption began

by changing meanings of appropriate work attire that

promoted lighter clothing (and less need for air

conditioning) in the summer and heavier clothing

(and less need for indoor heating) in the winter.

To date, most SPT adherents have employed

historical case studies and secondary data sources to

document changes in social practices. Given the

incremental, typically long duration of transitions in

practice, such an approach is appropriate. However,

SPT stands to benefit from detailed, ethnographic

explorations of the production and reproduction of

social practices. As Tom Hargreaves (2011) explains,

“Social practice theory directs research attention

towards the practical accomplishment or ‘doing’ of

everyday practices. Accordingly, it implies the use of

methodological techniques capable of observing what

actually happens in the performance of practice such

as ethnography, rather than relying solely on the

results of either questionnaire surveys or interviews

as is typically the case within conventional

approaches.” The case study that follows employs an

ethnographic approach to illustrate the details of day-

to-day practices that allow for dramatically lower

consumption at DR. The narrative begins with an

overview of the community and continues into more

specific practices.

Methods

Data collection for this case study began with the

objective of explaining the extraordinary energy and

materials savings at Dancing Rabbit, and narrowed to

an analysis of daily social practices through

participant observation and interviews with

community members. Between the summers of 2010

and 2011, I spent a total of twelve weeks living and


4


working at DR, engaged in routines similar to

ecovillage members. In the summer of 2010, I

assisted on a small building project and in 2011

returned as an intern for a privately owned bed-and-

breakfast inn. Like most full-time inhabitants of the

ecovillage, I contributed to community-wide cleaning

duties and attended regular community dinners and

meetings. Although most days were structured by

work obligations, I found time on weekends and off-

hours to conduct semi-structured interviews with

community members. Detailed memos about daily

interactions supplemented my interviews.

Initial interviews (16 total) gauged members’

day-to-day routines and how they differed from

routines prior to taking up residence at DR. Questions

probed 1) the events that led to the decision to move

to the ecovillage; 2) a “typical day” in the

community; 3) a “typical week”; 4) the community’s

role in the larger region; and 5) sources of success

and concern at DR. Questions were designed to elicit

candid stories about resource-consumption decisions

at the ecovillage. Responses often led to lengthy

discussions and follow-up questions that explored the

challenges of cooperative resource management.

Interviews typically lasted an hour and were recorded

and transcribed. Interview participants were selected

to achieve a balance in gender, age, and parental

status, although women outnumbered men in the

sample ten to six, as they constitute a larger

proportion of the community overall. 4 Following

Corbin & Strauss (2007), initial observations were

tested against follow-up interviews, which challenged

the data’s internal consistency. I returned to DR

about once every year for four years for brief visits,

while keeping in touch with members over e-mail

and social media.

The following section presents an overview of

the environmental accomplishments of DR before

describing the daily practices that enable the

community to achieve impressive resource savings,

and ultimately into the importance of social

competencies to achieve these outcomes.

Background: Dancing Rabbit’s Ecological

Covenants

Since its founding in 1997, DR has operated

under six “ecological covenants” that impose

extraordinary restrictions upon inhabitants’

consumption behavior. The covenants (see Table 1)

4 See Appendix A for a breakdown of gender, age, and parental

status of interview subjects. The names and personal details of respondents have been modified to protect the identity of human

research subjects.

change rarely, although the community can amend

them with a consensus vote.5 Members of DR agree

that they will neither use personal motor vehicles nor

keep them on the community’s land; that they will

avoid using fossil fuels for most purposes (cooking

with propane is an exception); that they will follow

organic gardening standards; that all electricity

consumed on-site will be produced by “sustainable”

non-fossil sources or that the community will offset

any electricity it imports from the grid by returning

clean electricity back; that all structural lumber will

be harvested within the bioregion or acquired from

recycled sources; and that they will reclaim all

organic waste (including human excrement) on site.

Table 1 Dancing Rabbit Covenants

Covenant 1 DR members will not use personal motorized vehicles, or store them on DR property.

Covenant 2

At DR, fossil fuels will not be applied to the following uses: powering vehicles, space-heating and -cooling, refrigeration, and heating domestic water.

Covenant 3

All gardening, landscaping, horticulture, silviculture and agriculture conducted on DR property must conform to the standards as set by the Organic Crop Improvement Association (OCIA) for organic procedures and processing. In addition, no petrochemical biocides may be used or stored on DR property for household or other purposes.

Covenant 4

All electricity produced at Dancing Rabbit shall be from sustainable sources. Any electricity imported from off-site shall be balanced by DR exporting enough on site, sustainably generated electricity, to offset the imported electricity.

Covenant 5

No lumber harvested outside of the bioregion, excepting reused and reclaimed lumber, shall be used for construction at DR.

Covenant 6 Waste disposal systems at DR shall reclaim organic and recyclable materials.

5 As a brief example, for thirteen years DR remained proudly

disconnected from an external electricity source (e.g., it was “off

the grid”). In 2010, however, the community amended its covenants to enable a grid connection (see Covenant #4 in Table

1), which allows the community’s solar electricity cooperative to

“borrow” electricity during dark winter months and return surplus electricity to the grid during summer months. The amendment did

not receive unanimous approval as several members felt strongly

that connecting to the grid would contradict a cornerstone of the community’s mission and preclude individuals from closely

monitoring their electricity consumption. These members

articulated their disapproval of the amendment without blocking its passage, a move called “standing aside.” Such a stance is not

considered an impediment to a consensus decision.


5


DR members have developed a series of

practices to live within these restrictions and work

toward the community’s mission to “create a society

the size of a small town or village, made up of

individuals and communities of various sizes and

social structures, which allows and encourages its

members to live sustainably.”6 The results of this

experiment are encouraging. By the community’s

own calculations, inhabitants of DR consume less

than 10% of the resources of the average American

resident in categories like vehicles per person (7%),

vehicle miles traveled per person (9%), motor-fuel

use (7%), electricity use (7.5%), natural gas

consumed (8%), water consumed (9%), and still

substantially less than average in categories like

pounds of household waste per person (26%), and

square feet of housing per person (31%).7

As the following sections detail, achieving these

savings—especially in a rural county with no public

transportation—requires a level of skill and

coordination that is remarkable in contemporary

American society. According to the U.S. Census

Bureau, 95.8% of all housing units in the country

have their own “complete” kitchens, 97.5% have a

refrigerator, 97.6% have a stove or cooking range,

78.6% have a washing machine, and 76.6% have a

clothes dryer.8 By contrast, DR meets many basic

services through shared access to a limited number of

appliances. Household kitchens, for example, are the

exception rather than the norm at DR. One

community member described how beginning her

day by brushing her teeth in her own dwelling each

morning was “a luxury.” While individuals live in a

variety of custom-built dwellings—ranging from a

six-bedroom house to small individual cabins—

households typically share cooking, dining, and

gardening space in multiple food cooperatives. The

entire community of 55 people shares two clothes

washing machines that are part of a larger general-

6 The DR mission statement is available at

http://www.dancingrabbit.org/about-dancing-rabbit-ecovillage/

vision/mission-statement. The DR website clarifies that

“sustainably” means, “[i]n such a manner that, within the defined

area, no resources are consumed faster than their natural replenishment, and the enclosed system can continue indefinitely

without degradation of its internal resource base or the standard of

living of the people and the rest of the ecosystem within it, and without contributing to the non-sustainability of ecosystems

outside.” 7 These data, including explanations about calculation methods, can be accessed at http://www.dancingrabbit.org/resource-use-

average-american-vs-dancing-rabbit-2011. 8 Table C-03-AH, American Housing Survey. Available at http://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/ahs/data/2013/national-

summary-report-and-tables---ahs-2013.html.

services cooperative, with zero clothes dryers on site.

Many of these collectively-owned appliances reside

inside the community’s common house which

includes a kitchen, offices, a small library, showers,

sinks, a children’s playroom, and a “great room” used

for social events and meetings. Similarly, the four

automobiles at DR are owned by a vehicle

cooperative that members support by paying a flat

rate proportional to the number of miles they drive.

This per-mile fee covers fuel, maintenance, and

insurance. Electricity in the community is generated

almost exclusively by solar photovoltaic panels and

delivered on a micro-grid maintained by a

community-wide cooperative called Better Energy

for Dancing Rabbit (BEDR). Services like Internet,

landline telephone, health insurance, and human-

excrement recycling (called “humanure”) are all

managed by cooperatives as well.

This type of coordination requires that

individuals commit to deliberate and ongoing skills

development, as almost all inhabitants have migrated

from settings in which consumption decisions occur

at the household or individual scale. Shared

ownership of everyday infrastructure reduces the

individual dollar cost for basic services, but

individuals also “pay” through investments in skills

and routines that appear cumbersome to an

uninitiated observer. These practices are critical for

coping with the conflict that coincides with shared

ownership of resources. After elaborating on two

specific practices below, this article discusses how

transitioning to low-consumption practices involves

changes in meaning, skills, and technologies rather

than attitudes, behaviors, and choices, as is typical at

the municipal scale.

Collective Automobility: From “Individualized

Transport” to “Community Infrastructure”

As discussed above, Rabbits navigate their rural

surroundings with a small fleet of four cooperatively-

owned vehicles: three sedans and a pickup truck. The

DR community is situated two miles from the small

town of Rutledge (population 106) and about thirteen

miles from the county seat of Memphis (population

1,822), but DR’s location offers few convenient

employment opportunities. The nearest metropolitan

center, Iowa City, is 125 miles to the north.

Fortunately, DR members have found ways to subsist

with relatively little cash income. What money they

have, they typically earn through small online

businesses and local enterprises that require minimal

travel. One particularly entrepreneurial member

explained, “I have ten jobs,” including two online-

clothing businesses and multiple small remunerated


6


duties inside the community. One couple started the

Milkweed Mercantile Eco Bed ‘n’ Breakfast, where

guests stay and attend workshops ranging from food

canning to straw-bale construction. Two women have

started a regional midwifery business that requires

only intermittent travel outside the ecovillage.

Several members have drawn from their experience

building their own homes to start independent design-

build companies, which also offer temporary work to

other members and residents.9 Other individuals have

founded small web-design and online-marketing

businesses that they operate from inside the

community.

While DR members reduce commuting trips by

earning income onsite, they still travel by automobile

to nearby towns to purchase building supplies,

borrow library books, shop for clothing, access

schooling and medical appointments, see movies,

among other reasons. For these trips, automobiles are

the most practical option. Whereas car use in the

United States is typically an act of individual

discretion, the Dancing Rabbit Vehicle Cooperative

(DRVC) approaches vehicle use as a social act that

begins with the exchange of information about the

timing and destination of each trip. Members of

DRVC can reserve a car at any point during the week

by indicating the departure date, time, destination,

and estimated return time on a clipboard stored in the

common house. Reservations are read aloud at a

weekly meeting called the “WIP” (week-in-preview),

attended by most of the community. The WIP allows

information exchange that facilitates shared trips,

which further reduces vehicle-miles traveled. As one

member named Oren explains,

Often we’ll find out [at the WIP meeting] if

someone is going into town on a certain day.

You might call the hardware store and say I

need, this, this, and this, pay for it over the

phone and have that other person pick it up

when they’re in town, and I’ll do that for

others.

Another member explained how she had recently

relied on a neighbor to return a book to the county’s

public library. In exchange for such services,

9 At DR there is an important distinction between “members” and “residents.” Members are relatively permanent inhabitants. They

can both lease land and build permanent structures it. Members

have also pledged to follow the community’s ecological covenants. To become a member, individuals must live for at least six months

at DR as a “resident,” and complete an interview process before

being accepted as a member. Residents can lease land, but cannot build permanent structures it. Both members and residents can

subscribe to any of the community’s cooperatives.

individuals can share some of the per-mile cost of the

trip or return the favor later. The system appears to

serve the community well. As discussed above, the

average DR member drives 9% the number of miles

and consumes 7% the volume of motor fuel as the

average American motorist. Oren continues,

[W]hat a relief it is to go from having to

drive everywhere [prior to living at DR] to,

ironically enough, being here practically in

the middle of nowhere where you’d think

you have to drive for anything and I get in

my car once every few weeks…And there

are days when [the cars] don’t get used.

Of course, such a system is not immune to

conflict. Decisions about maintenance and insurance

typically made by households as isolated units are

subject to a greater variety of demands when vehicles

are owned cooperatively. During my brief residence

in the community, members of the vehicle

cooperative were struggling to decide whether and

how it should accept rate increases brought on by

inexperienced drivers or members with a poor driving

record. The issue emerged as a teen raised in the

community approached driving age and wished to

join the vehicle cooperative. Was the cooperative

willing to pay for the large and imminent insurance-

rate increases as a consequence of a new teenage

member? Should the teen (or his parents) have to pay

a higher rate, or should all members of the

cooperative absorb the more expensive rate?

Addressing this conflict involved a series of

highly structured meetings. At one session, the

conversation began with an introduction from several

appointed “facilitators”—community members

trained to summarize, steer, and set the ground rules

for discussion. The facilitators of this particular

meeting spent the first twenty minutes “filtering” the

discussion, having spent the previous week speaking

one-on-one with different stakeholders, and began by

admitting that they were themselves “exhausted”

from the process. The meeting touched on a large

number of topics: insurance rates, the neurological

development of teenage drivers, different child-

rearing philosophies, intergenerational justice,

interpersonal tensions, automobile culture, and even

the morality of insurance. Advocates of each

perspective provided passionate and personal pleas.

At one point, a father entrenched strongly at one

extreme of the argument repeated, almost verbatim,

the perspective of an individual with the opposing

opinion. Such “reflection” is a critical element of

nonviolent communication (a technique described


7


below), and it ensures that discussants listen and

know they are heard.

The community did not resolve this dilemma by

the end of the ninety-minute meeting, and would

continue to discuss the topic for over a year.10 Yet

even in the midst of an emotional debate, the

gathering concluded with a reflective dialogue about

the meeting itself. Such reflection is a routine fixture

in important meetings at DR, but in a mainstream

municipal hearing such an undertaking might seem

bizarre. Open and emotional self-expression and

reflexivity is discouraged in mainstream public

hearings, which have received criticism for their

intimidating, expert-driven, and unidirectional

dialogue (Halvorsen, 2001; Innes & Booher, 2004;

Lowry et al., 1997).

Managing Excrement: From “Waste Removal” to

“Nutrient Reclamation”

Another extraordinary resource-saving practice

at DR involves the recycling of human excrement

through a network of five-gallon buckets called

“humanure” (human plus manure), or the “humey”

system. In a study of indoor-water consumption at

twelve different sites around the United States,

(Mayer et al., 1999) estimated that the average

individual uses 18.5 gallons of water per day for

flushing toilets. While federal regulations that

mandate more water-efficient toilets have likely

lowered this figure in recent years, DR members have

effectively eliminated the consumption of potable

water for sanitation by composting solid and liquid

excrement. This community-wide system transforms

the acts of urination and defecation from “waste

removal” to “reclamation,” and involves a

substantially different routine than what is customary

in contemporary water closets. A “humey” (the

alternative word for “toilet”) is simply a five-gallon

bucket capped with a typical toilet seat. Like

mainstream toilets, humeys are enclosed in indoor

stalls, often with the bucket hidden inside a wooden

fixture. Alongside the humey bucket is typically

another bucket with wood shavings or sawdust and a

plastic scoop. As one member explained, “After you

make your contribution [emphasis added], you cover

it with sawdust.” The sawdust works to mask the

odor and jumpstart the composting process. Toilet

paper is deposited directly in the humey bucket as

well.

10 The vehicle cooperative ultimately resolved to switch from a

“family” to a “commercial fleet” insurance plan, which is less

sensitive to the age of drivers. Premiums for DRVC increased $100 per year, rather than $8,000, as was projected with the family

plan.

When humey buckets are nearly full, they are

covered with a tight-fitting lid and placed in a

designated outdoor spot to await a weekly pickup.

Every member, resident, and visitor must contribute

labor, or “humey duty,” by collecting the buckets in a

wheelbarrow, depositing the excrement in designated

humanure-compost bins, rinsing the buckets (a

marginal use of potable water), and returning them to

their origin. The whole process takes a few hours to

complete. Depending on the specific humeys to

which individuals subscribe, they complete “humey

duty” as little as once a year and no more than once a

month. The individuals responsible for humey duty in

any given week receive a reminder at the weekly

WIP. Humanure compost is kept separate from food

scraps and other organic compost in the community

because it takes more time to decompose completely.

After two years, however, the compost is safe to

distribute for application on the community’s fruit

trees and ornamental plants. 11 The entire system

helps Rabbits achieve their obligation to reclaim all

organic waste onsite (Covenant #6) and offers an

organic fertilizer that allows the community to

enhance local soils without resorting to synthetic

chemicals (Covenant #3).

Discussion: New Meanings, New Skills, New

Materials

It is clear from observing practices of collective

automobility and excrement reclamation that

accomplishing these resource-saving practices

involves transitions in the “ingredients” of social

practice—in meanings, competencies, and materials.

These changes transcend the traditional ABC model

of change typical in the realm of public policy.

Transition in Meanings

The impressive savings of DRs in vehicle-miles

traveled and volume of fuel consumed cannot be

explained by individuals willingly suppressing their

use of a vehicle or choosing an alternative mode of

transportation. DR’s covenants do not restrict driving

per se; rather, they forbid individually owned

vehicles onsite. As a consequence, DR members have

accepted automobiles as components of a

community-scale transportation system, signifying an

important shift in their meaning. Since all users own

and manage the system, and pay by the mile, it is in

everyone’s best interest to limit total mileage by

11. While properly composted humanure is theoretically as safe as

commercial fertilizer, the community applies it conservatively, avoiding application with food that comes in direct contact with

what people put in their mouths.


8


“sharing” trips. One casualty of this transportation

system, however, is the symbolic “freedom of the

road” upheld as a right-of-passage to young

Americans throughout the twentieth century (Jackson

1985). The personal automobile emerged from a

sports-and-leisure niche in the United States (Geels

2005), so a pivot away from these historical roots is

significant, although in parallel with nationwide

decline in enthusiasm about driving (Delbosc 2016).

The DR automobile cooperative also demands that

individuals relinquish some privacy that exclusive car

ownership generally affords. While revealing the

duration and destination of car trips is meant

primarily to improve the efficiency of use, it also

requires a level of transparency uncommon in the

mainstream.

The humanure system is also founded on a

reinterpretation of the meaning of human excrement,

from “waste” that is typically flushed away to a

“contribution” managed and reclaimed for

agricultural purposes. Individuals in developed

countries learn from an early age that they can simply

and permanently separate themselves from their

excrement with the flick of a lever or push of a button

and no shortage of technologies have emerged to

improve the efficiency of a toilet flush. Yet by

inverting the meaning of the act of urination and

defecation, DR undermines the practice of “flushing”

completely.

Transition in Competencies

Individuals also invest time developing

competencies to manage collectively owned

resources and resolve inevitable conflicts. Both car

sharing and excrement reclamation at DR require an

atypical level of scheduling and interpersonal

transparency. These social competencies prove useful

far beyond the vehicle cooperative or the humanure

system, and are worth discussing in some detail.

A surprising portion of day-to-day life at DR is

devoted to maintaining interpersonal relationships.

The schedules of members and residents are filled

with regular “check-ins,” “co-counseling” sessions,

women’s groups, men’s groups, and other meetings

with the express or ancillary purpose of supporting

friends and neighbors emotionally. A “check-in,” for

example, is a formal technique used in the ecovillage

to increase empathy under challenging

circumstances. Different individuals practice check-

ins differently, but one typical version invites people

to verbalize physical, intellectual, emotional, and

spiritual needs (“PIES”), without time restrictions or

interruptions. Some individuals practice check-ins

only as needed, and others schedule regular check-ins

with romantic partners and co-workers. These

practices create space for emotional transparency and

allow community members to isolate interpersonal

disputes from day-to-day tasks integral to community

functioning. One member found such transparency

refreshing when he moved to DR.

If somebody was upset, they didn’t stuff it.

It came out. They’d show it, and it was dealt

with. It was okay to say, “Y’know I

understand that you’re in a hurry or

whatever, but this just really caught me the

wrong way and I’m feeling a little upset

about it, and so, I'm hoping that maybe

you’ll think about that before you do it

again.” It was powerful.

Emotional transparency is enhanced by

adherence to nonviolent communication (NVC), a

technique that most Rabbits train themselves to use

when addressing concerns with others. Perhaps

surprisingly, an individual employing NVC begins by

observing and articulating her own needs, and how a

particular action has affected her feelings. Explains

Rosenberg (2003), “NVC guides us in reframing how

we express ourselves and hear others. Instead of

habitual, automatic response, our words become

conscious responses based firmly on awareness of

what we are perceiving, feeling, and wanting.” One

interviewee explained that NVC was

[R]eally key in terms of getting along with

people in such close proximity and in terms

of, like, dealing with your own [problems]

which you also need to do to get along with

people. It’s not just listening to other people;

it’s also having to listen to yourself in a

deeper way.

A short anecdote illustrates how one member

used NVC to address a violation of her personal

living space. In the summer of 2010, a veteran

member, Shirley, left her home under the temporary

care of a young resident while undergoing medical

treatment. When she returned, she found her self-

built house in disarray. The week prior, a group of

young residents and interns—this author included—

had taken advantage of the empty space for a small

gathering and neglected to clean up the mess.

At the first community meeting after Shirley’s

return, she announced that she was “very saddened”

to arrive home and find empty bottles and dirty

dishes all over her house. She explained that she

“trusted” we would take care in her absence and that


9


she expected future visitors to show respect for her

home as if it were their own. Her message was short,

clear, and extremely powerful. Instead of accusing or

blaming, her speech focused on how the event

affected her. We had betrayed her trust and invoked

sadness in her. It was a situation I wanted very much

to remedy, and I worked consciously to respect

individuals’ space in the subsequent weeks. The

member’s choice to express her own emotions invited

the “offenders” an opportunity to rectify the situation

without feeling attacked or damaged.

Transition in Materials

Low-consumption practices at DR also involve

alternative materials, tools, and technologies.

Encouragingly, however, all physical technology is

either readily available for retail purchase or

extracted from DR’s property. Transitions in

meanings and competencies discussed above position

DR members to achieve their environmental goals

without having to import costly new technologies.

For example, Covenant #5 requires use of only

recycled lumber or wood products sourced within the

bioregion. As a consequence, Rabbits have reclaimed

lumber from abandoned barn structures throughout

depopulating northeast Missouri. Members also take

advantage of locally-sourced straw bales (a waste

product of wheat) to insulate their dwellings.

Covenant #4 restricts electricity consumption to

“sustainable” sources, which members interpret as

solar- and wind-generated electricity. In the

community’s first thirteen years, members relied on

multiple individual solar photovoltaic and micro-

wind systems. In recent years, however, DR has

received of state and federal subsidies to establish a

community-wide solar-energy cooperative and

micro-grid, which saves individuals the upfront cost

of energy infrastructure and batteries.

The DRVC has taken advantage of the

community’s solar-energy cooperative to power its

newest vehicle with electricity generated onsite,

while previously DR has deliberately chosen small,

fuel-efficient vehicles to save on the cost and

quantity of fuel consumed. Multiple case studies in

the social practice theory literature (Watson, 2012;

Spotswood et al., 2015) focus upon transitions in

practice that involve the displacement of one

transportation mode (e.g., automobiles) for another

(e.g., bicycles), yet the DR case study shows how a

transition away from the environmental ills of

automobiles is possible without eliminating

automobiles per se. This is an encouraging finding

for communities that have invested for many years in

vehicular infrastructure. Rural communities and those

without the financial capital to install new public

transit infrastructure may still find ways to achieve

climate-action goals by encouraging shared-access

systems that simultaneously lower costs and reduce

road congestion.

The practice of excrement reclamation clearly

employs new materials, including five-gallon

buckets, sawdust, compost piles, and wheelbarrows,

much of which is recycled from construction

initiatives in the ecovillage. Excrement itself is also

reframed as a new type of “material” that can be

applied in a new context and used in lieu of

petrochemical fertilizers imported from far away.

Conclusion

It is perhaps unreasonable to expect urban and

suburban jurisdictions to adopt DR’s exact practices

which have evolved to fit a specific context and

community mission. The ecovillage members unite

ideologically around sustainable living and they

agree to covenants exceptional in the United States.

DR is also a small community in a rural region with

limited land-use regulations or legal constraints on

building design or materials. Yet the DR case study

reveals a blind spot in contemporary sustainable

development and greenhouse gas-reduction efforts

which have both emerged as mainstream

undertakings in recent decades (Lutsey & Sperling,

2008; Saha & Paterson, 2008). Municipalities tend to

initiate the climate action-planning process by

reducing emissions from municipal operations, with

the intention of modeling smart practices to the

community at large (Sussman, 2008; Wheeler, 2008).

Cities and other local and regional governments

invest in fuel-efficient vehicles, increase their

renewable energy portfolios, replace aging

infrastructure, and improve public transportation

options, with the expectation that the private sector

will follow suit. When municipalities use public

policy to extend climate-action efforts beyond their

own operations, they tend to focus on changing

individual attitudes, behaviors, and choices without

challenging systems of exclusive ownership that

render even successful climate action incremental

(Shove 2010).

The DR ecovillage, as viewed through the lens of

social practice theory, reveals the possibility of

incredible environmental and economic savings by 1)

transforming individual and household practices into

collectively managed community systems; 2)

investing in interpersonal communication skills that

help guide collective management processes; and 3)


10


taking advantage of readily available, locally sourced

materials that might otherwise be considered “waste.”

Similar practices are not difficult to imagine in

“mainstream” urban settings. Because of a barrage of

new mobile applications, an emerging collaborative

consumption movement is allowing individuals

worldwide to share access to goods and services

without necessarily owning them exclusively

(Botsman & Rogers, 2010; Belk, 2014). Private and

nonprofit initiatives like car sharing (Shaheen et al.,

2009; Shaheen & Cohen, 2013), bicycle sharing

(Shaheen et al., 2010), cohousing (Williams, 2008;

McCamant & Durrett, 2011), and co-working

(Spinuzzi, 2012) allow individuals to access goods

and spaces without the expense or time commitment

of exclusive ownership. Other peer-to-peer

applications like Couchsurfing and Neighborgoods

allow shared access to living spaces and household

goods for free, reducing idle capacity and landfill

waste, respectively (Botsman & Rogers, 2010). 12

Local governments can assist these initiatives by

reforming regulatory barriers and/or encouraging

shared-access services in planning documents.

The DR ecovillage pushes one step beyond

private and nonprofit “collaborative consumption”

initiatives by investing in social skills that allow

individuals to work productively through conflict,

facilitating democratic management of limited

resources. Its members have chosen to live in an

intentional community where shared-access resources

are the rule. The skills necessary to function in such a

setting are bound to increase in importance outside

the ecovillage context as growing urban populations

confront unprecedented environmental and resources

shocks. Skills like NVC have already established a

foothold in other applied social science fields like

public education (Rosenberg, 2003a), criminal justice

(Marlow et al., 2012), and nursing (Nosek, 2012). It

is increasingly common for American municipalities

and public libraries to sponsor home-maintenance

workshops that help homeowners save on electricity

and water bills. The DR case suggests that local

governments may benefit from investing in social

skills like NVC that help residents work productively

through challenging public debates about common

resources. Watson (2012) illustrates that “transitions

in practice” begin when public policy extends certain

practices over others through small, yet mutually

reinforcing, steps. Local governments can begin to

model NVC and facilitated conflict resolution as part

12 For details on Couchsurfing, see http://www.couchsurfing.com and for information on Neighborgoods refer to

http://ww.neighborgoods.net.

of their own decision-making processes, providing a

first step toward low-consumption systems at the

local scale. To the extent that conflicting values and

competing demands are inherent in all sectors of

democratic decision making, DR’s communication

models offer local planners and elected officials tools

to navigate through myriad conflicts including, but

not limited to, social equity, economic development,

public safety, and land use.

Of course, DR’s experiment is not perfect. Some

interpersonal conflicts endure for years despite

earnest efforts to work through them, and every year

some members depart in the face of irresolvable

problems. Like any community, the ecovillage’s

residents cope with emotional fatigue, isolation, and

power imbalances. Over nearly two decades, its

specific practices have evolved as new meanings,

competencies, and materials circulate within a

dynamic population. Likewise, transitions outside the

ecovillage context are unlikely in practice to resolve

issues of resource consumption completely or

permanently. New meanings, competencies, and

materials will continue to challenge or reinforce old

practices. Yet DR illustrates that radically low-

consumption, low-waste living is possible without

abandoning democracy or relying on hyper-

sophisticated (and necessarily undemocratic)

technologies. The potential for sustainable living,

then, resides in human cooperation and empathy,

which can improve with practice.

Acknowledgements

Many thanks to the members and residents of

Dancing Rabbit Ecovillage, especially the unnamed

individuals who took time to sit down for interviews.

Thanks also to Tony Sirna and Ma’ikwe Ludwig,

who have helped with many last-minute inquiries,

and to Ted Stirling, Sara Peters, Alline Anderson, and

Kurt Kessner for hosting me in the community. Three

anonymous reviewers helped shape the manuscript

significantly.

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Appendix A: Interview subjects, gender, age, and parental status

ID# GENDER AGE PARENTAL STATUS

1 Female 33 yes

2 Male 40 yes

3 Male 57 yes

4 Female 26 no

5 Female 41 yes

6 Female 27 no

7 Female 37 yes

8 Male 27 no

9 Female 36 no

10 Female 58 yes

11 Female 26 no

12 Male 61 no

13 Female 55 no

14 Male 35 yes

15 Male 40 no

16 Female 35 yes

Males (n) = 6 Females (n) = 10 Average age = 39.6 years Parents (n) = 8 Non-parents (n) = 8


1


ARTICLE

Managing the triple bottom line for sustainability: a case study of Argentine agribusinesses Poonam Arora1, Nicole D. Peterson2, Federico Bert3, and Guillermo Podesta4 1 Department of Management, Manhattan College, 4513 Manhattan College Parkway, Riverdale, NY 10471 (email: [email protected]) 2 Department of Anthropology, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, 9201 University City Boulevard, Charlotte, NC 28223 (email: [email protected]) 3 La Asociación Argentina de Consorcios Regionales de Experimentación Agrícola (AACREA), Sarmiento 1236, Buenos Aires, Argentina (email: [email protected]) 4 Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science/MPO, University of Miami, 4600 Rickenbacker Causeway, Miami, FL 33149 (email: [email protected])

Using surveys and interviews with Argentine agribusiness owners and managers, we examine the relative importance of economic, environmental, and social goals in their planning processes. While in one survey, respondents rate these three objectives as equally important, they also prioritize economic goals over environmental and social targets when assigning points based on the importance of decisions made for various sub-categories. Discussions of specific scenarios illuminate goal importance, but also demonstrate that perceived losses can be valuable for understanding how managers think about sustainability in terms of comparative economic gains, social relationships, and different social and economic outcomes. Subsequent analyses suggest that the three categories of the “triple bottom line” are overly rigid and cannot capture the integration among environmental, economic, and social aspects of sustainability. Given these findings, we suggest future directions for research on losses, time scales, and sustainability.

Keywords: managing for sustainability, Triple Bottom Line, agribusiness, Argentina, social goals

Introduction

Businesses in many parts of the world are

discussing sustainability more than ever,

often to understand what the word means

within different organizational decision-

making contexts. Perhaps the most common

definition measures a firm’s focus and

progress along three trajectories, the so-

called triple bottom line: economic well-

being, environmental quality, and social

justice. The notion of a triple bottom line

became popular in the early 1990s following

publication of the Brundtland Report and

during intervening years an increasing

number of companies have chosen to report

non-financial measures. According to the

KPMG 2013 Survey of Corporate

Responsibility Report (which covers 4,100

companies in 41 countries), the number of

firms voluntarily reporting some non-

economic (environmental and social) metrics

to corporate sustainability rating agencies

increased from approximately 10% to over

90% between 1993 and 2013. This increase

has been fueled in part by greater stakeholder

expectation that reputable businesses are

concerned with sustainability (Sridhar,

2012).

In 2013, almost all of the top 250

corporations on Fortune’s Global 500 list

provided some type of reporting on their

corporate social responsibility (CSR)

activities. Eighty-two percent of them

referred to the Global Reporting Initiative

(GRI) guidelines which emerged from work

carried out by CERES, a Boston-based non-

governmental organization (NGO) focused



2


on encouraging the adoption of sustainable

business practices and solutions by economic

entities.1 Though GRI’s original purpose

(dating back to the 1990s), was to provide

mechanisms to determine environmentally

responsible conduct, over the years the

framework and protocols have expanded to

also include social and governance activities

(ESGs). In its latest iteration, the fourth

generation of the guidelines (called G4)

provide reporting principles and standard

disclosures. They also identify the criteria

that an organization should use to prepare its

sustainability report, including evidence of

economic, environmental, employee,

shareholder, and stakeholder impact.2

A major problem, however, is that simply

disclosing about sustainability is often

confused with actually making progress

toward being more sustainable (Milne &

Gray, 2013). While concern with

sustainability is usually accompanied by

measurement across the triple bottom line,

simply reporting ESG outcomes is not

evidence of positive overall impact on

environment and society (Sridhar, 2012).

Additionally, evidence shows that firms tend

to report cherry-picked positive ESG

activities while overlooking aspects of their

operations that have negative impacts and

connotations (Cho et al. 2015).

Nonetheless, a benefit of reporting is that

it has introduced the triple bottom line into

the conversation in boardrooms, drawing

attention to existing environmental and social

consequences of economic decisions and

introducing new levels of transparency and

changes in legislation (Wilburn, 2014).

Greater cooperation among different CSR

rating agencies also suggests a move toward

understanding that economic growth, social

well-being, and environmental quality are

interdependent (Stutz et al. 2012). However,

Norman & McDonald (2004) argue that triple

1 CERES was previously known as the Coalition for Environmentally Responsible Economies. For further

details, see http//www.ceres.org. 2 Refer to www.globalreporting.org.

bottom line accounting focuses to an overly

large degree on the economic values of

sustainability, ignoring a long history in

business of incorporating non-economic

values into decision making.

The question then remains: How do we

incorporate sustainability into business

activities, thereby moving from the realm of

talk into action? In this article, we examine

sustainability as a decision-making process in

which owner-managers make tradeoffs

among different options facing their

organizations. The concept of the triple

bottom line and discussions of tradeoffs

already suggest that sustainability is about

decisions, but this article takes this starting

point and uses real-world situations to probe

what decision making for sustainability

means in practice. We consider four aspects

of decision making and sustainability.

First, decision making for sustainability

usually occurs under conditions of

uncertainty, both in terms of the context

surrounding the decision as well as

associated outcomes and probabilities

(Chichilnisky et al. 2012). Mangers

unavoidably make decisions that affect

environmental, social, or even economic

sustainability without full knowledge of the

context or a clear understanding of causal

relationships between choices and outcomes.

To understand decision making for

sustainability requires that we examine

conditions of uncertainty.3

Second, although decision making is

frequently characterized as involving trade-

offs among the components that comprise the

triple bottom line, there is little discussion

about the relative importance and weighting

assigned to the three areas. Arguably, balance

assumes that the economic, environmental,

and social consequences (and measures) are

equally weighted in terms of significance

(Santiago-Brown et al. 2015). However,

3 All managerial and business decisions involve some form of uncertainty about causal relationships and future outcomes.

Sustainability highlights uncertainties added by environmental

and social relationships, often not made explicit in business planning.

http://www.globalreporting.org/


3


social justice and environmental quality are

not typically considered at par with economic

outcomes for businesses (Kumar, 2014), and

an unequal weighting of the three elements

effectively changes the definition of

sustainability. As the balance among the

three elements changes, so does the context

surrounding the decision maker and the

organization’s decision process, and

therefore its actual choices (i.e., the relative

weighting of the three elements of

sustainability is crucial and can depend on the

context).

Third, we consider the role of decision

priorities for choices that are made.

Traditional business measures of outcomes

(e.g., profitability) do not necessarily predict

importance, but goals can and do signal likely

choices and therefore outcomes (Krantz &

Kunreuther, 2007). We therefore focus on

how decision makers (typically CEOs of

family-run enterprises) prioritize and make

tradeoffs among economic, environmental,

and social goals given their socioeconomic

and political contexts. Specifically, we

examine whether businesses consider

elements of the triple bottom line as goals for

their decisions and the relative importance

that they give to these objectives.

Finally, we investigate the role of risk

perception in decision making. Do the

assessments of agribusiness managers

incorporate social risks as well as

environmental and economic risks? How do

social considerations in their decision making

relate to environmental and economic

factors? Given the novelty of these questions,

we ask more broadly how we can begin to

characterize the intersection of triple bottom

line accounting and risk perception.

This article considers decision making

for multiple aspects of sustainability under

conditions of uncertainty as a way to expand

ideas about sustainability in business and

decision making under uncertainty. We use a

real-world case in which uncertainties are

very important—agriculture. Agribusinesses

are ideal candidates for studying the triple

bottom line because firms need to balance

land use, technology, and labor to be

economically sustainable. They arguably also

must give credence to all three aspects to

ensure their survival; yet their primary

success measures are economic in nature.

More broadly, agribusinesses are

primary players in determining the continuity

and sustainability of agricultural systems

globally. Our work complements studies on

industrialization (Boehlje & Gray, 2007;

Drabensott, 1995) and globalization

(Pimentel, 2004) in the food and agricultural

sector and the impact of “corporatization” of

agriculture in the form of agribusinesses

(Schertz & Daft, 1994) on sustainability and

maintenance of the triple bottom line.

While clearly not representative of all

businesses, Argentine agribusiness allows us

to examine how such companies perceive the

relative risks across the triple bottom line and

prepare for contingencies under conditions of

climatic and economic uncertainty. In taking

this approach, we find that decision making

for sustainability necessarily involves a more

integrated view than is currently promoted as

a triple bottom line approach. Our research

shows that decision makers often focus on

expected losses, but in a much more nuanced

way than the literature on loss aversion

suggests. We argue that our findings point to

the need for a much more dynamic view of

decision making for sustainability.

Background on the Argentine Pampas

The Argentine Pampas is among the most

naturally fertile regions in the world (Hall et

al. 1992; Calviño & Monzón, 2009).

However, climate fluctuations, technological

innovations, and global and local economic

and political contexts have shaped the

evolution of agricultural systems in the

Pampas (Bert et al. 2011). Specifically, over

80% of the agriculture in the Pampas is rain

fed, mainly due to the high cost of irrigation.

Over the past two decades, climate change

has increased the variability in precipitation


4


(Seager, 2010) with extremes becoming more

frequent. As a result, despite its natural

fertility, agricultural outcomes in the region,

in terms of yield and profitability have

become unpredictable (Giorgi, 2002).

There have been significant changes in

land use and the structure of the farming

sector. Due to its higher profitability

compared to other enterprises, cropping-

related activities now encompass over 70%

of the cultivable land, displacing pastures and

native grasslands (Magrín et al. 2005; Pengue,

2005; Viglizzo, 2011). The growing global

demand for grains, together with local

changes in the Argentine economy, cost

savings, and the simplification of

agronomical management, have recently

enhanced the relative profitability of

agriculture in Argentina (Qaim & Traxler,

2005). Approximately 23 million hectares are

currently cropped in the Pampas, nearly 60%

by those who rent the land (MAGP, 2015).

Argentine agriculture is not a subsidized

sector and farmers accordingly take on the

full risks inherent in commodity markets;

their economic incentive is the potential

profit based on actual crop prices (Chaddad

et al. 2009). Since “losses loom larger than

gains” (Tversky & Kahneman, 1991),

agribusinesses should be highly concerned

with overcoming their initial loss (financial

outlays for, say, rent, seeds, and fertilizer)

and stemming additional losses. In other

words, the initial outlay of costs is likely to

determine choices and tradeoffs vis-à-vis the

triple bottom line.

Agriculture in Argentina currently

employs 10% of the country’s workforce

(FAO, 2012). Traditionally, farmers lived on

the land and maintained deep connections

with the local community, hiring from within

and sourcing most of their needs from

proximate sources. Recent structural changes

have altered these relationships through

changes in contract forms, outsourcing, and

external investments (Chaddad et al. 2009).

This raises issues central to social

sustainability, such as local participation,

equity, and social cohesion (Murphy, 2012).

Not only do these conceptual and practical

objectives constitute good social policy, but

research in psychology shows that social-

contextual conditions are central to the

creation of meaningful work, an essential

feature of human well-being and productivity

(Ryan & Deci, 2000).

The economic focus in the Pampas on

export crops is inexorably coupled with

environmental and social changes. Unlike

pastures, which are multi-year investments

present on the land year-round, agricultural

crops are annual choices that may remain for

anywhere from four to eight months. When

land is fallow, it collects water through

rainfall, but does not lose nearly as much

through evaporation as it would through the

evapotranspiration that occurs when plants

are in the ground. Thus, the depth of the water

table has shifted upwards throughout the

region by an estimated two meters over the

course of the last twenty years (Aragón et at.

2011), increasing the probability of

inundation from severe rainfall. Floods and

droughts have varying social and economic

implications. Floods cause greater disruption

of social life and capital, while droughts lead

to greater economic hardship.

The decision processes of agribusinesses

in the Pampas present an interesting real-

world case study because of an apparent

contradiction. On one hand, decision makers

are heads of businesses with profitability

goals for the current cropping cycle and they

have a desire to ensure their immediate

survival by preventing a loss. On the other

hand, their very existence is linked to

maintaining the long-term productivity of the

land and employees, who have the local

knowledge to help maximize each farm plot.

Environmental and social goals are therefore

inexorably intertwined with economic goals,

and essential to the long-term sustainability

of agribusiness in the region. These goals,

however, are neither easy to measure nor

direct in their impact upon the bottom line

(Sridhar, 2012). Agribusinesses thus provide


5


an invaluable opportunity to examine the

relative importance of economic,

environmental, and social considerations and

to investigate how they connect to ideas

about risk in agriculture.

Current Research

Our research reported here was

exploratory in nature and we did not seek to

test concrete hypotheses. Our goal instead

was to explore three questions. First, do

agribusiness decision makers in the Pampas

consider economic, environmental, and

social goals? Second, what is the relative

importance they assign to these goals (i.e.,

how do they make tradeoffs)? Finally, what

is the role of risk perception and losses in

their decision processes?

Although we did not have specific

predictions, we did expect to find a greater

focus on economic goals and risks compared

with social goals. Based on prospect theory

(Kahneman & Tversky, 1979), which posits

that decision makers are motivated

differently in the domain of gains versus

losses and likely to show loss aversion having

experienced a loss, we expected minimizing

losses beyond the initial financial outlays to

be a priority. Since the initial investment

would be experienced as a loss prior to a

cropping cycle, our decision makers would

likely prioritize maximizing economic gains

ahead of their social obligations to employees,

family, and community. Since profitability is

connected to land quality, we expected

environmental goals to be important,

although perhaps less so than economic goals,

particularly given the longer time scale for

environmental outcomes. We anticipated that

issues of human capital development, such as

creation of social capital, concern with

education, and maintenance of long-term

employees, to be a lower priority.

We examine the three questions outlined

above in two studies—a field survey with

4 For information about AACREA, refer to http://www.aacrea.org.ar.

decision makers from agribusinesses in the

Pampas and a series of in-depth interviews

with fifteen agribusiness CEOs. The

following sections discuss our methodology

and results, as well as theoretical and policy

implications.

Study 1: A Field Survey

We used the thirteen goals (five

economic, three environmental, four social,

and one personal) relevant to typical Pampas-

based agribusiness or farm development

(Arora et al. 2015) as the starting point of our

analysis. Although we collected data on

importance ratings for all objectives (see

Arora et al, 2015), we only report results for

the twelve goals (listed in Table 1) that we

deem to be relevant to the triple bottom line.

The personal goal of simplifying life,

although it can be thought of as a social

objective, maps on to a different factor and

hence we do not consider it here. Participants

also made tradeoffs across six pairs of goals

(Table 2), two each for economic vs.

environmental goals, economic vs. social

goals, and environmental vs. social goals.

Our first study surveyed ninety

Argentine agricultural decision makers

regarding their business goals. Participants

were attendees at one of a series of

workshops hosted by the Asociación

Argentina de Consorcios Regionales de

Experimentación Agrícola (AACREA), a

non-profit farmers association (the largest in

Argentina) that supports farm efforts through

dissemination of information and

technology. 4 Their membership includes

medium to large farms and agribusinesses

(smaller farms tend not to be sustainable in

the Argentine Pampas—see Bert, 2011 for a

review) that are involved in growing crops,

dairy-related activities, ranching for beef, or

some combination of these three activities.

Thus, though all participants were members

of the same organization (although with some

selection bias), we contend that the inherent

http://www.aacrea.org.ar/


6


Table 1 Mean, Standard Deviations, and 95% Confidence Interval for Participant Self-reports of Importance of Goals in Service of the Triple Bottom Line in Study 1 (N = 64 participants)

Goal Mean Standard Deviation

95% Confidence Interval

Lower Bound (M-2SD)

Upper Bound (M+2SD)

Economic Goal Meet or exceed profit objectives 3.30 0.683 1.93 4.67 Maximize productivity 3.28 0.723 1.83 4.73 Manage yield variability 3.19 0.664 1.86 4.52 Expand farm/grow agribusiness 3.08 0.762 1.56 4.60 Manage price obtained for crop 2.75 0.836 1.08 4.42 Average economic goal 3.12 0.435 2.25 3.99 Social Goal Fulfill immediate responsibility to

others 3.66 0.511 2.64 4.68

Create a learning organization 3.45 0.641 2.17 4.73 Create local social capital 2.97 0.755 1.46 4.48 Attain status 2.91 0.811 1.29 4.43 Average Social Goal 3.25 0.477 2.30 4.20 Environmental Goal Preserve land quality 3.50 0.667 2.17 4.83 Ensure future viability of

farm/business 3.44 0.794 1.85 5.03

Avoid environmental damage 3.34 0.739 1.86 4.82 Average Environmental Goal 3.43 0.619 2.19 4.67

Note: Ratings are assigned on a 4-point scale where 1 = not at all important and 4 = very important.

Table 2 Points Assigned Out of 100 Where Number of Points Reflects Relative Importance of Each Goal in Six-Goal Pairs Used to Test Tradeoffs Between Goals in Study 1 (N = 64 participants)

Pair First Goal Type &

Goal in Pair

Average Points

Assigned out of 100

Second Goal Type & Goal in Pair

Average Points

Assigned out of 100

Paired Sample T-

test

1 Economic: Meet or exceed profitability goals

56.09 Environmental: Maintain productivity of land

43.91 t = 3.22 p = 0.002

2 Economic: Expand farm operations

56.88

Environmental: Preserve and maintain land for future generations

43.13 t = 2.57 p = 0.013


56.48 Social: Create social capital in community

43.52 t = 4.11 p < 0.001


66.87 Social: Meet obligations to employees and family

33.13 t = 6.99 p < 0.001

5

Environmental: Preserve and maintain land for future generations

57.27 Social: Create social capital in community

42.73 t = 3.46 p < 0.001

6 Environmental: Maintain productivity of land

62.07 Social: Meet obligations to employees and family

37.93 T = 8.07 P < 0.001


7


diversity of the membership makes the

results credible. Participants were either

provided a link to an electronic version of the

survey or given a paper copy, as per their

preference. Both options allowed for

anonymity.

Sixty-four participants returned surveys

that were sufficiently complete for our

analysis. To best capture underlying goals

that influence decisions, we targeted the main

decision maker, the owner or a CEO-manager.

In addition, 60% of the total land in the

Pampas is farmed on a rental basis, so our

participants included those who own, rent, or

both own and rent the land used in their

agribusiness. Typically, crops are grown on

rented land while owned land is used for

multiple activities, such as growing crops,

maintaining pasture for dairy, and beef

ranching. Specifically, respondents who

rented over 50% of their land grew crops on

74.7% of it, while those who owned over

50% grew crops on only 41.2% [t(45) = 2.373,

p = 0.022]. This pattern is typical of the

Argentine pampas (MAGP, 2015). There

were no other statistical differences based on

tenure (rental vs. ownership) status of land.

We asked respondents to consider the

main agricultural decisions that they had

made during the most recent cropping cycle

(e.g., whether to rent additional land, how to

allocate land use mix, and what crops to

grow) and to rate the importance of all goals

on a scale of 1 to 4 (where 1 = not important

at all or not considered in decisions and 4 =

extremely important or always considered in

decisions). Thus respondents focused on the

critical decisions that ensure the

sustainability of their agribusiness, requiring

them to balance all three areas of the bottom

line—economic prosperity, environmental

well-being of the land, and social capital and

learning within their organizations.

Participants then divided 100 points between

two sets of goals such that the points assigned

to each reflected the relative importance of

that goal in their decision process, a

methodology shown to have validity (Arora

et al. 2012).

Importance Ratings

As a starting point, we calculated the

mean (M), median, and standard deviations

(SD) for the importance ratings provided by

the participants for each of the twelve

relevant goals included in the survey. As

Table 1 shows, the overall ranges, means, and

standard deviations did not vary significantly

across goals. We tested this finding by

calculating the 95% confidence interval (CI)

for each goal rating as the M ± 2 x SD for

each goal. All goal means fall within the

ranges calculated for all other goals, so that

all importance ratings are statistically similar.

Table 1 also provides the 95% CI for each

goal. Since ratings were on a 4-point scale,

and all goal ratings were above 2, all were

rated as important to very important in the

decision process.

To further test this uniform rating of

importance across the three categories of the

triple bottom line, we averaged the

importance ratings across the four economic

goals, three environmental goals, and four

social goals to create average scores for each

criterion. The average importance scores are

3.12 (SD = 0.43) for economic goals, 3.25

(SD = 0.48) for social goals, and 3.43 (SD =

0.62) for environmental goals. All three

average importance scores fall within ±2 SD

of each other, or within the 95% CI,

suggesting that their relative importance to

the participants is not significantly different.

Respondents self-reported that they treat all

three aspects of the triple bottom line equally

in their decision processes.

Tradeoffs Among Goals

We were interested in exploring how the

importance ratings translated into decision-

maker choices when tradeoffs were required.

Respondents assigned points to each goal in

the six pairs shown in Table 2, out of 100

total points. Table 2 shows the average

number of points assigned to each goal type


8


vis-à-vis the other goal type as well as the

results of a paired-sample t-test for each pair

of goals. The points assigned reflect the

relative importance of each goal in decision

processes. We created an average point score

for economic goals when paired against

environmental goals by considering the two

pairs that compare economic and

environmental goals. We calculated similar

point scores for all three combinations—

economic vs. environmental, economic vs.

social, and environmental vs. social goals.

This allowed us to conduct a paired-sample t-

test for each set of averaged point scores.

In general, and as is seen in trends with

individual goal pairs, more points were

assigned to economic goals [M = 56.48, SD

= 12.63) when paired with environmental

goals (M = 43.52, SD = 12.63, t(63)= 4.11, p

< 0.001), and a similar pattern was observed

for points assigned to economic goals (M =

62.07, SD = 11.97) when paired with social

goals (M = 37.93, SD = 11.97, t(63 )= 8.07, p

< 0.001]. Thus, economic goals, which serve

the financial bottom line, appear to be the

main priority for the decision makers. We

also measured environmental goals against

social goals to be able to conduct a complete

three-way comparison. Average points

assigned to environmental goals (M = 60.74,

SD = 15.59), compared with those assigned

to social goals (M = 39.26, SD = 15.59), were

significantly higher [t(63) = 5.51, p < 0.001].

If all goals are equally important, as

suggested by the explicit importance ratings

for each goal in Study 1 (see Table 1), then

points assigned to each goal in a pair should

be closer to a 50–50 point split. A statistical

difference in points assigned suggests that

importance ratings may be more like

aspirations, or even “cheap talk,” while

actual choices may be made based on a

relative ranking: the three aspects of the triple

bottom line are likely not implicitly valued

identically. Specifically, economic goals

clearly are considered more important than

the other two categories, and environmental

goals are considered more important than

social goals. A hierarchy of importance

emerges: economic goals, followed by

environmental goals, and finally social goals.

Since goals serve outcomes (Kruglanski &

Kopetz, 2009), there is likely a similar

hierarchy in outcomes: economic

sustainability is considered most important,

followed by environmental sustainability,

and in third place, social sustainability (see

also Santiago-Brown et al. 2012).

Agribusinesses, however, are arguably more

reliant that other enterprises on

environmental and social sustainability to

ensure economic sustainability. Thus, in

Study 2, through qualitative interviews, we

sought to understand the process by which

decision makers prioritize the three

categories of the triple bottom line, and to

explore how the explicit assignment of equal

importance to all goals from the survey

contrasted with the implicit hierarchy across

the three categories revealed by the forced

assignment of points.

Study 2: In-depth Interviews Our second study consisted of in-person

interviews with the CEOs of fifteen

agribusinesses in the Argentine Pampas.

Specifically, we wanted to determine if these

individuals actually considered all three

categories of the triple bottom line during the

decision process and, if so, whether they also

followed the hierarchy observed in Study 1.

We wanted to avoid inadvertently priming

our respondents to consider all three

categories, so that we could see which

categories of goals emerged implicitly, and

their natural ranking in the decision process.

Therefore, we only asked open-ended

questions about the main factors that

mattered to interviewees during their

planning process.

Our respondents were all male (typical

and therefore representative of the region),

and each was the main decision maker (CEO)

of a family owned Argentine agribusiness

that employed between two and twenty

people with the specific number associated


9


with the size of their specific land holdings.

Net worth varied between US$20–200

million. All but two interviewees were

members of AACREA, and all of them

volunteered their time.

We conducted interviews in Spanish or

English depending upon the respondent’s

preference and all authors of this article are

either fluent in or have a working knowledge

of both languages. Meetings were held at a

location chosen by the respondent, such as

their office, home, or a restaurant, in various

towns in the Pampas, or at the offices of

AACREA in Buenos Aires. We recorded all

interviews with the consent of the

respondents and we gave them as much time

as they wanted for each response to learn

about their underlying motivations without

any external priming or elicitation. If, in a

response, an interviewee did not mention a

specific category of goals (economic,

environmental, or social), we asked him to

clarify his answer. We encouraged

respondents who were very succinct in their

initial responses to elaborate as an open-

ended follow-up question. Initial questions

were often followed with additional

clarifying or probing questions. The

interviews averaged 65 minutes, ranging

from 46 minutes to 89 minutes.

Interview questions were open-ended

and covered the following topics:

1. Main factors and goals in the planning

process (description, ranking, and

comparison with neighbors).

2. Information regularly tracked pertaining

to major decisions (e.g., prices, rainfall,

groundwater, crop selection).

3. Understanding of the environmental

consequences of land use and crop

selection strategies on groundwater

available, including main sources of

water for crops.

4. Concern about floods versus droughts.

5. Perceived changes in water availability

over the past decade.

6. Changes in operations or decisions based

on inputs about economic, environ-

mental, or social factors.

Land use, which is often economically

driven, affects groundwater availability. We

therefore focus on the understanding of water

availability and impact of human actions on

land use and water availability.

Four coders initially listened to the

recorded interviews and identified general

themes. They then discussed these themes to

identify main trends, after which the same

group conducted a second round of coding to

tabulate responses to specific questions to

better analyze them. There was general

agreement among the coders on the

tabulation of responses.

We wanted to understand our

respondents’ criteria for land-use plans,

which would in turn determine their

economic profitability for the current year,

environmental outcomes such as ground

water levels for the next year, and social

outcomes such as continued employment.

We therefore asked them to describe and

prioritize these factors. All interviewees

mentioned economics (including commodity

prices, soybean demand, global economic

concerns, and foreign exchange issues) as

key considerations, and all but two

respondents mentioned inter-annual crop

rotation to maintain environmental quality.

Other considerations included political

context (seven mentions), crop yields (seven

mentions), soil quality (five mentions),

climate (five mentions), and social

considerations (five mentions).

Six interviewees listed economic factors

as the primary consideration, while another

six ranked yields in first place. However,

since yields determine how much crop can be

sold, and thus overall profits for that year, we

combined profits and yields to create a

category of economic concerns. We

separated yields from soil quality, which

would be another determinant of how well

the crops grow, but is clearly an environmen-


10


Table 3 Total Number of Unprompted Mentions and Rankings for Triple Bottom Line Categories by Interviewees in Study 2 (N = 15 Interviewees)

Ranking provided by interviewee*

Economic concerns (e.g. prices, costs,

yields, consumption)

Environmental Concerns (e.g. inter-annual crop rotation,

soil quality)

Social & Human Concerns (e.g., quality of life,

local community)

Other Factors (e.g. political

climate)

1 12 5 0 1

2 4 7 2 2

3 3 5 2 2

4 0 1 1 2

Total Mentions* 23 21 5 7 *Note: Some factors were ranked at similar levels. Also, some mentions raised during the interview are included above, but were not ranked.

tal concern and was identified separately by

the interviewees. We combined soil quality,

climate issues, and crop rotation to create the

category of environmental concerns. Table 3

shows both the number of mentions by triple

bottom line category, and the number of

times each category was ranked in first place.

Respondents mentioned economic and

environmental concerns 23 and 21 times

respectively, suggesting that they view both

as equally important. Concerns for

employees and other stakeholders were

mentioned only three times, while other

factors like the political situation were

mentioned seven times. These results

replicate findings from our first study (see

above), namely that when interviewees are

asked to discuss goals, they mention

economic, environmental, and social ones in

that particular order.

To test perceived differences in

importance, we asked respondents to rank the

factors that they listed. As Table 3

demonstrates, economic concerns are ranked

in first place twelve times, while

environmental concerns are given that status

only five times. Interviewees never ranked

social factors first, but political factors are

listed once. Thus, when it comes to rankings,

we duplicate the tradeoffs observed in the

first study among the categories of the triple

bottom line—economic concerns come first,

followed by environmental concerns, with

social concerns in last position.

As a final step, we explored how triple

bottom line considerations might affect

decisions in a real-world scenario. We asked

participants how they would respond to

drought and flood, to get a better sense of the

economic, environmental, and social impacts

of these events. We presented our

respondents with a scenario requiring them to

choose between buying insurance that

protects against floods versus drought. They

could only choose to cover one potential risk,

thus revealing their greater concern. As

shown in Figure 1, ten of the fifteen

interviewees chose drought insurance over

flood coverage. Socially, floods disrupt life

when standing water inhibits the movement

of people, perhaps more so than droughts.

Economically, however, participants view

floods as having a lower potential for causing

a total loss, since the higher level of water

makes otherwise dry land productive,

providing sufficient harvest to break even, or,

in some years, make a small profit.

Participants perceive droughts, in contrast, as

leading to a full economic loss as land ceases

to be productive, leaving no feasible path to

break even or to achieve profitability. Five

respondents discussed the potential of losing

land to floodwaters, though only two were

sufficiently worried to select flood insurance.

Several of the interviewees who selected

the hypothetical drought insurance

mentioned their fear that with drought, “one

loses everything, and with flood, at least in

the high areas I can recuperate.” Another


11


Figure 1 Insurance Choice, Perceptions of Risk and Loss, and Changes in Frequency for Floods and Droughts by Interviewees in Study 2

respondent stated that he would “Always

[buy] drought [insurance], because in floods

there is loss from flooded land, but there is

better yield in the higher lands from

additional water. In a drought, there is

nothing. There is no yield and the animals

suffer. It’s just bad.” While four respondents

mentioned total loss from drought, only one

highlighted total loss from flood and felt it

was a bigger economic danger. When asked

whether floods or droughts had increased in

frequency over the past two decades, six

answered “floods” while another six said

“droughts.” We asked this question to

ascertain whether our interviewees were

aware of the increasing level of groundwater,

which has the potential to increase the

probability of flooding and hence the

likelihood of small but more frequent losses.

Three were not sure and chose not to respond.

What is not evident from the above

responses, however, is the underlying

motivation for avoiding economic losses

from droughts—is it simply a concern with

economic sustainability, or are other factors

involved? We asked our respondents to

elaborate what occurred during droughts. The

most common reply referred to the total

suffering inflicted upon all in a drought—

they expressed concern about their inability

to take care of their employees, families, or

even animals. Although the explicitly stated

reason here is economic in nature, the

prevention of a monetary loss, preliminary

evidence suggests that implicit social

concerns underlie that economic focus.

The respondents did not just compare

losses between drought and flood, but also

engaged in social comparison and concern

with their own expectations to define a loss.

One interviewee discussed loss in terms of

not gaining as much as others: “I would

prefer if everyone gained…not that I gain and

another loses…” Another respondent

described loss in terms of not getting

expected results, particularly in comparison

0

2

4

6

8

10

12

ControllableRisk

Fear of TotalLoss

IncreasingFrequency

InsuranceType

Flood

Drought


12


to others, and the fear this created: “That I

lost what I expected one year, I see that from

this perspective, that is the loss I have even if

I made money”. Thus the perception of loss

or potential loss is perhaps more important

than the actual amount of loss itself. Here too,

the underlying reason for this concern is the

inability to meet obligations for family and

employees. Concern with economic loss

appears linked to the consequences of that

loss on other variables, particularly social

ones. This corresponds to much of the work

in psychology on decision making under risk

(e.g., prospect theory) and the role of

emotions in driving priorities and tradeoffs

when making choices (Lowenstein et al.

2001).

Conclusion

Although we find that decision makers in

Argentine agribusinesses assign similar

importance ratings to economic,

environmental, and social goals, when asked

to reflect on the relative importance in a set

of tradeoffs, they do not treat the various

dimensions of sustainability in equal terms.

We expected economic concerns to dominate

environmental and social considerations

mainly because money spent at start of the

cropping cycle on agricultural inputs such as

seeds, is thought of as a loss to be recouped,

and losses, psychologically, loom “larger.”

We see this in our first study, where despite

explicit statements of equal consideration of

all three goals, the points assigned do vary by

category. Similarly, in the second study,

although economic and environmental

factors are mentioned with equal frequency,

economic considerations are consistently

ranked higher. However, probing deeper

through interviews and scenarios reveals that

the economic focus is often motivated by a

concern for fulfilling social obligations to

family and employees, as well as doing well

in social comparisons.

In our interviews that informed the

second study, we found that the risk of

drought narratives reveals a dominant loss

frame, perhaps because of the initial outlay of

funds, making the potential for loss a key

decision parameter. It is further the case that

economic, environmental, and social

sustainability are framed in terms of losses,

often of total versus partial impairment, that

affect how decisions and trade-offs are

understood. While assessing potential losses

through measurement may be challenging,

our respondents found ways to communicate

their loss perceptions in ways that complicate

a separation of economy, environment, and

society. Losses for them are relational and

relative, not absolute, and include animals

and neighbors, as well as social status. Others

have found that relative positioning is

important for loss aversion (Gill & Prowse,

2012), though our study suggests that it is not

just about competition, but may even be

about social standing and self-concept (e.g.,

being someone who fulfills obligations).

Understanding decisions may depend on loss

perceptions, which in turn may be more

difficult to quantify due to the social

implications of losses.

We also find business owners are

concerned about losing local knowledge and

livelihoods, though these appear to be of

lower importance. Perhaps the importance

ratings reflect an aspiration to value equally

all goal types, or are simply social impression

management, and therefore “cheap talk.”

Brown and colleagues (2009) argue that the

accounting focus of “the triple bottom line”

prioritizes measurements usually unavailable

for environmental or social aspects,

providing no easy way to incorporate them

into planning. It is as if, because the social

elements are not the measured reasons, they

are also not stated as top-of-mind, but are not

entirely missing either. Perhaps this is an area

for future research and, drawing on work in

behavioral economics, possible opportunities

for policy-based “nudges” for increasing

social responsibility.

Our research suggests that Argentine

agribusiness owners consider economic,


13


environmental, and social factors in their

decision making, though these are not easily

separable, as when economic outcomes are

desired for social reasons. Other research

suggests that some indicators, like aesthetics

or community health, may be linked to


concerns at the same time (Santiago-Brown

et al. 2015). In our study, examining ideas

about losses helps clarify these relationships

by highlighting the perceived relative nature

of losses (to past or expected outcomes of

selves or others) and the importance of

meeting obligations for ideas about loss

across economic and environmental

considerations.

These results challenge the idea of a

triple bottom line as a set of separate issues—

Argentine agribusiness owners clearly see

them as integrated. Talking about losses

provides a sense of how these might be

integrated, but also suggest next steps for this

research. First, the focus on loss as a

dominant frame in the decision-making

process may highlight a deeper psychological

variable. It may not be the amount of the loss

that matters, but its impact on the decision

maker and others, and its degree of

controllability. Thus, even as floods become

more likely, and multiple years of floods

might result in greater losses than those

caused by a drought, decision makers may be

focusing on droughts as a cause for greater

concern because they perceive the

accompanying circumstances as beyond their

influence and droughts leave them unable to

meet immediate social obligations.

Understanding how loss is perceived, both

economically and psychologically, becomes

an important next step.

A second research direction is to

empirically test whether the immediate

economic focus is indeed supported by a

second order of logic that includes

environmental and social concerns. The

open-ended responses provide some

preliminary evidence, but subsequent

research is necessary. Understanding the

decision process both behaviorally and

motivationally will allow us to grasp more

fully how to use the triple bottom line as a

tool for creating sustainable organizations

and, eventually, a sustainable society.

Third, the impact of the temporal scale of

the decisions and quantifiable nature of the

outcomes needs to be clearly delineated.

When approaching a decision, temporal

framing influences the options evaluated and

strategies pursued. Asked to consider their

decision cycle, our participants focused on an

annual timeframe since that is the average

length for agribusiness decisions, and also the

average period for relatively quantifiable

economic outcomes. Environmental and

social outcomes and consequences are not

only harder to quantify and measure, they

frequently lag behind the annual economic

cycle (Boström, 2012). This begs the

question of whether underlying motivations,

such as concern with fulfilling social

obligations, would manifest themselves

explicitly if the decision timeframe were

longer—say five to ten years. The importance

of social elements for decision making also

highlights the continuing challenge to

measure, calculate, and assess the triple

bottom line in a more integrated manner

(Norman & McDonald, 2004).

In conclusion, sustainability needs to

encompass all three aspects: economic,

environmental, and social. Although there

appears to be a hierarchy in descriptions of

the decision process, discussions of loss bring

elements together in new and provocative

ways. Understanding the multi-faceted

manifestations of sustainability that may not

be sufficiently captured or resolved by a

simple tripartite definition is a vital next step.

This research illustrates that decision makers

already view the various dimensions as more

integrated than the conventional demarcation

suggests. There are, however, many

challenges in how we handle the integrated

considerations. Moreover, if the final choice,

due to metrics or timescales, places one

dimension above others, then the value


14


derived from an integrated approach is

diminished. Perhaps the perception of losses

gives us a window into how the triple bottom

line and other contextual variables are

currently integrated by agribusiness owners

and others.

The interdependencies among

environmental, economic, and social goals

has implications for how agriculturalists and

others might envision and pursue

sustainability at various scales for the

creation of agricultural sustainability, or

sustainability more broadly. Although

sustainability is best conceptualized at the

level of the collective (be it organizations or

communities), decision makers are

frequently individuals making choices that

have interdependent consequences. Here,

psychological motivations that govern how

interdependencies are incorporated within an

individual choice process affect the creation

of sustainable agribusinesses in particular.

This lesson likely applies to a variety of

businesses, balancing their own sets of

related variables. Understanding business

decisions regarding sustainability requires a

focus on how goals are understood within

specific contexts of uncertainties, potential

losses, and obligations.

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ARTICLE

The social lab classroom: wrestling with—and learning from—

sustainability challenges

Danielle Lake, Hannah Fernando, & Dana Eardley Liberal Studies Department, Grand Valley State University, 241 Lake Ontario Hall, Allendale, MI 49401 USA (email: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected])

Unlike the traditional disciplinary approach to research and problem-solving still common in higher education, this article explicates and recommends an interdisciplinary, holistic pedagogical approach that takes seriously the interconnectedness of our wicked social sustainability challenges (e.g., poverty, global climate change, food access, among others). We argue that educators can better prepare students to tackle such wicked problems by requiring they engage with locally based problems connected to large-scale systemic challenges. By discussing the design and outcomes of the course “Wicked Problems of Sustainability” from both the students’ and instructor’s perspectives, we seek to extend and enhance effective pedagogical strategies. As a laboratory for sustainability education and innovation we have developed a transdisciplinary, community-engaged, upper-division undergraduate course that engages students in participatory research on the inextricably linked dimensions of social sustainability. Collaborating with community partners to work across networks, disciplines, and institutions, students have the opportunity to ameliorate real problems in the local community. In doing so, the course confronts students and the instructor with a series of robust challenges from intensive collaborations, to logistical and time-management dilemmas, to real-world execution issues. This article details the obstacles associated with messy inquiry, participatory research, and community engagement and provides recommendations for overcoming them.

KEYWORDS: social sustainability, education, wicked problems, pedagogy, innovation, community

Introduction

Efforts at increasing our social sustainability

(SS)—at establishing systems, products, and services

designed to better the overall health and well-being of

all community members for the long-term—are

frequently stymied by the “wicked” nature of our

collective problems. For instance, poverty, climate

change, and food insecurity, as wicked social phe-

nomena, are dynamically complex, interdependent,

high-stakes dilemmas with no simple or evident

definition (let alone any simple or obvious solution).

These problems evolve with high levels of uncertainty

in situations where both action and inaction carry

serious and long-term consequences (Rittel & Webber,

1973; Salwasser, 2004; Brown & Lambert, 2013). The

need to act and act now must be grounded in a general

stance of epistemic humility and openness, a

willingness to return and reconsider, revise, and redo.

According to SS scholars, when addressing such

challenges we must be cognizant of how our actions

affect issues of justice and equity, infrastructure,

governance, and capital (Cuthill, 2010). For instance,

justice requires that we develop infrastructure and

employ capital so as to meet the basic needs of a

community. We should similarly govern so as to

ensure access, opportunity and capacity, health and

security, diversity and inclusion, as well as overall

well-being (Boström, 2012); and we should do so in

an inclusive manner across generations (Dujon et al.

2013). Yet our dominant educational practices in the

United States (focused on linear, disciplinary

progression) and common abstract pedagogical

strategies (focused on narrow problem solving) fail to

prepare students with the tools to collaboratively and

iteratively act on wicked problems (WP). Therefore, it

is imperative that educators do more to empower

students to become effective “change agents”

(Svanstrom et al. 2008).

With these concerns and commitments in mind,

this article describes lessons learned from a specific

undergraduate course entitled “Wicked Problems of





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Sustainability.” As a transdisciplinary, community-

engaged, upper-division undergraduate course at

Grand Valley State University, this course focuses on

fostering collaboration, integration, and problem-

solving by bringing interdisciplinary teams of students

together with community partners seeking to tackle

local sustainability problems.1 Topics in the course

range from WPs to design thinking, environmental

justice, food systems, policy, and citizen science (Lake

& Fauvel, 2015). Students study local SS challenges,

thus far having addressed issues of food insecurity and

urban farming in the inner city, sustainable funding for

local nonprofits, K–12 student-lunch policies,

sustainability education programs, local farmers’

markets, along with issues of food waste and access,

among a host of other projects.

The course was offered for the first time in the fall

of 2013, again the subsequent semester, and most

recently in the winter of 2015 (undergoing three

iterations and substantial revisions). Paralleling the

evolving nature of the course described, this article

evolved through deep and sustained dialogue among

the teaching apprentice (and a graduate of the

inaugural course), an alumna of the course’s most

recent iteration, and the designer and instructor. The

struggles emerging from each version of the course

confirmed both the need and value of working directly

with students to iteratively and collaboratively revise

its various dimensions. Through our experiences

researching, designing, teaching, taking, and assisting

in “Wicked Problems of Sustainability,” we address

the following two questions: How can we better tackle

SS challenges within undergraduate courses? What

pedagogical methods can help students respond to

interdependent, high-stakes systemic problems? In

answering these questions we show how the strategies

emerging from our collective experiences align with

and extend sustainability teaching practices

recommended in the literature. We ultimately

conclude that courses designed to address our social

sustainability problems can and must do more to foster

epistemic humility, “creative confidence” (Kelley &

Kelley, 2013), and “open-minded advocacy” (Shrader-

Frechette, 2002).

We begin by laying out the methods used to arrive

at our recommendations and then briefly describe the

nature and scale of wicked problems. We then

1 Grand Valley State University (GVSU) is a public university

committed to combining the ideals of liberal education with

practical, professional learning. Situated in the western part of Michigan, the main campus is located just outside of the Grand

Rapids metropolitan area in a rural farming community. Across its

summarize the underlying framework supporting the

course, its learning objectives, and the assignment and

assessment strategies found to be most valuable (for a

full list of assessments see Table 2). In place of an

exhaustive chronological description of course

content, we next highlight the value of the key

pedagogical strategies employed, specifically

detailing the importance of a problem-framing and

reframing process, the necessity for revision and

iteration, and the importance of asking students to

disseminate their work in the real world. Following

these recommendations, we candidly discuss the

obstacles involved in such a pedagogy and its potential

to contribute to tipping points in local sustainability

efforts. Finally, we offer possible measures for judging

the “success” of such courses. By providing a flexible

framework, a set of tools, and a diverse set of

perspectives on those tools, we ultimately hope to help

instructors and their students collaboratively tackle SS

challenges within their own fields and communities.

Methods

As a case study, this article analyzes the course

“Wicked Problems of Sustainability” using a holistic,

single-case design and a wicked-problems framework

(Yin, 2012; Lake et al., 2015). The authors—the

designer of the course, the teaching assistant, and a

recent student alum of the course—used qualitative

research methods to study the merit of the pedagogy

described. This included analyzing student findings,

reviewing student and community-partner surveys and

anonymous end-of-semester evaluations, observing

student interactions during course time and team

meetings, and conducting ethnographic interviews.2

Interviews with students and community partners were

largely unstructured, resulting from anecdotal

discussions during office hours, community-partner

meetings, and volunteer hours in the community.

Following discussions with students and community

members, we recorded comments by summarizing key

themes and consistent concerns. In addition, we

elicited student perspectives through various

assignments throughout the semester, a final synthesis

essay detailing student insights on the course, self- and

peer-assessments, and publication of student-team

action plans in an open-access ScholarWorks

main and satellite campuses, GVSU currently enrolls approximately

25,000 undergraduate students. 2 The findings are derived from reflections on normal classroom activity and are exempt from Internal Review Board oversight under

category one: normal classroom activities. In addition, students have

signed a release form agreeing to the publication of the findings.


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repository. The findings, described below, were then

compared to prominent themes emerging from a

review of the literature on wicked problems, social

sustainability, and pedagogical practices surrounding

change-agent skills. Aligned with recommendations

emerging from systemic-action research, this

collaborative, hands-on approach allowed the authors

to assess the different perspectives involved in this

course as the semester unfolded (Burns, 2014). Given

that interventions on local wicked problems are likely

to yield unforeseen or unintended consequences, these

emergent research practices encouraged reflection on

the effectiveness of the course in real time. As we

show next, opportunities for iterative interventions are

essential for ameliorating dynamic wicked problems.

Scaling Wicked Problems

Whereas simple problems are easily defined and

amenable to replicable, formulaic interventions,

complex problems often involve high levels of

uncertainty, undergo change over time, and require the

coordination of a wide range of expertise (Snowden &

Boone, 2007). As the intricacies increase, we see that

the problem is interconnected with many others, that

the stakes have risen, and that the level of

disagreement among stakeholders has intensified

(Brown et al., 2010; Brown & Lambert 2014). As we

move along this sliding scale, we reach a wicked level

of messiness, finding ourselves confronting “mega-

crises” like the healthcare quagmire in the United

States or the 2007–2008 housing crisis and subsequent

global recession (Alpaslan & Mitroff, 2011). At this

level, problems resist standard efforts designed to

yield final, ideal solutions (Rittel & Webber, 1973;

Norton, 2005). Table 1 illustrates this continuum of

complexity and wickedness along seven factors.

Juxtaposing Table 1 with SS literature shows that

efforts to move social sustainability forward have been

stymied by vague and fluid definitions of key terms,

differences in how various stakeholders measure

success, numerous unknowns, sporadic and

fragmented funding, and limited stakeholder support

(Factors 1, 2, and 3 in Table 1) (Cuthill, 2010;

Boström, 2012). Stakeholder values are not only

frequently in tension, they are often diametrically

opposed under the highest of stakes (Factors 4 and 5).

For instance, while we fail to meet the most basic

needs of many across the globe, we simultaneously

encourage extreme, unsustainable consumerism and

opposed under the highest of stakes (Factors 4 and 5).

For instance, while we fail to meet the most basic

needs of many across the globe, we simultaneously

encourage extreme, unsustainable consumerism and

waste (Dujon et al., 2013). Aspirations for triple-

bottom-line “wins” often ignore unavoidable, on-the-

ground tradeoffs (Fitzpatrick, 2011).

Both the SS and WP literature warn readers: we

must give up on the idea that technological innovation

or expert intervention is enough (Factor 6 in Table 1).

Rather, inherently context-dependent and emergent SS

requires broad social inclusion, demanding that we

continuously uncover and weigh the merit of our own

and others’ assumptions, values, and goals (Fischer,

2000; Wynne, 2007; Hiedanpää et al. 2012; Dujon et

al. 2013).3 Furthermore, both SS and WP scholars

emphasize that the implementation of effective

processes in one region cannot simply be replicated in

Table 1 Contrasting Simple, Complex, and Wicked Problems.

FACTORS SIMPLE COMPLEX WICKED

1. Definition Easily defined Messy Chaotic

2. Variation Static and linear Dynamic and emergent Host of “unknowns”

3. Learning Process Replicable answers No “one” formula; no guarantees Cannot replicate; inherent tradeoffs

4. Values Alignment Tension Conflict

5. Stakes Low Higher Highest

6. Intervention Lay intervention Expert and technological intervention helpful

Technological innovation and expertise not enough

3 Both sets of literature also highlight current struggles to cooperate

regionally and globally, systematically and comprehensively.

Failure to cooperate means general lessons learned from local

efforts often go unreported.


1


7. Solution Ideal resolution Ameliorative and adaptive responses possible

No ideal solution; impending crisis

Example Baking bread Space travel Global climate change

another (Factor 7). Since our social lives are

comprised of vastly differing habits, customs, and

laws, a flexible SS framework is necessary (Boström,

2012). We need new narratives; we need to consider

what processes and institutions will foster “mental and

emotional models for experiencing a good life for

everyone”; we need, that is, to expand our ethical

framework, develop a greater capacity for change, and

create broad participatory practices (Lorek et al.,

2012). Since actors seeking to develop more socially

sustainable systems and processes confront WPs,

Cuthill (2010) argues that we cannot fruitfully

segment our SS challenges into university disciplines.

Indeed, even a cursory overview of these fields

illuminates the urgent need for the recommendations

that follow, for “engaged scholarship, a collaborative

and integrative educational model, and more

transparent and participatory democratic” practices

(Lake & Fauvel, 2015). As we show next, the flexible

framework we developed for this course encourages

more comprehensive and iterative problem framing

from which more equitable student-with-community

actions are likely to emerge.

The Framework

Where to Begin? Issue-Framing, Re-Framing, and

Re-Re-Framing… As the course was focused on WPs, students

ultimately wrestled with and enacted various

definitions of sustainability. In general, students were

challenged to consider how we can live “in such a way

that there are enough resources to live well in an alive,

diverse, thriving environment—indefinitely”

(Jeavons, 2012).4 In large measure, the value of the

course came from not only studying, but also enacting,

these various definitions.

The overarching learning objectives of the course

asked students to:

1. Identify and apply the WP literature to the course

topic;

2. Study a complex local problem through different

disciplinary and value lenses;

4 As Werkheiser & Piso (2015) note, sustainability requires actors

who are willing and able to do the work of sustaining.

3. Facilitate deliberation with stakeholders on

possible action plans;

4. Synthesize research with deliberative conclusions

and propose action efforts;

5. Engage in local action; and

6. Disseminate the results.

These objectives build upon the five key

sustainability competencies synthesized by Wiek et al

(2011) as well as in Marzano & Kendall’s New

Taxonomy of Educational Objectives (2008). For

instance, the first and second objectives move students

quickly through their first three educational objectives,

requiring that they retrieve, comprehend, and analyze

the local issue through a WP lens. As authentic tasks

necessitating investigation into systems thinking and

anticipatory competencies, they align knowledge

acquisition with its use. In practice, these first two

objectives prevent narrowly framed, inflexible

problem definitions, which are likely to leave us blind

to multiple facets of the problem and mistaken about

the assumptions under which others are working

(Norton, 2005; Thompson & Whyte, 2011).

The third and fourth learning objectives—that

students present action plans, facilitate deliberation on

their merit with local stakeholders, and analyze their

conclusions—require that students specify their goals

and clearly articulate their values (metacognitive

objectives highlighted by Marzano & Kendall, 2008).

The fifth objective, specifying that students engage in

local action, entails experimental problem solving and

decision making. The final objective, that students

publically disseminate the results of their work,

encouraged the examination of the overall merit of

their efforts through both public forums and scholarly

presentations and publications. These systemic

engagement practices required issue framing and

reframing. They also inspired students to seek out on-

the-ground stories from community members, experts,

and other stakeholders, observe—if and when

appropriate—facets of the problem first-hand, and

share the insights gained, mind-mapping the

dimensions of an issue. Mind maps, like rich pictures,

soft systems modeling, and other tools, ask students to

visualize their understanding of complex issues as they

study them (Burns, 2014; Morris & Warman, 2015).


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In general, these practices furthered students’

collective understanding and, where possible, helped

them to integrate across perspectives. In recent years,

SS scholars have consistently argued that such

engagement work is the critical first step toward just

and equitable sustainable development (Ling et al.

2009; Cuthill, 2010; Dujon et al. 2013).

Through these objectives, students began to

acquire the framing and tools from which they could

reconstruct—or map—aspects of SS situations. For

example, the first two sections of the course asked

students to confront issues of access to local and

healthy foods for school-age children. The WP

framework required students to consider the varying

degrees of complexity. To begin, students explored the

wide-ranging list of individuals invested in and

affected by the problem that they were seeking to

address, as well as their conflicting perspectives,

implicit assumptions, and values. Students also

explored the uncertainties involved in the issue, the

high stakes, and the need for (and limitations of)

various forms of expertise. They sought out local

narratives, expert perspectives, and organizational

knowledge, speaking with school-age children,

teachers, and administrators, as well as nutritionists,

farmers, distributors, food-justice advocates, and, in

one case, a food-service director.

The action projects that emerged from the

learning outcomes fostered epistemic humility,

“creative confidence,” and “open-minded advocacy,”

building students’ capacity to “span boundaries”

(Shrader-Frechette, 2002; Kelley & Kelley, 2013;

Ramley, 2014). For example, after engaging

stakeholders from across these disparate perspectives,

one student team concluded that “it is in the deep

reality of a community that we…connect with one

another…and make progress with the messy, intricate,

wicked problems of that neighborhood” (Fernando et

al. 2015). Since epistemic humility, creative

confidence, and open-minded advocacy are essential

for effectively ameliorating our large-scale systemic

sustainability problems, intentionally encouraging

their development in students is critical (Kolb, 2003;

Alpaslan & Mitroff, 2011). For example, epistemic

humility is necessary for open listening across

differences, lifelong learning, stakeholder

5 Within the design-thinking process, creative confidence is defined

as “the ability to come up with new ideas and the courage to try them out” (Kelley & Kelley, 2013). 6 With a motto to “hear, create, and deliver,” design thinking is

biased toward action, encouraging “radical collaboration” (Miller, 2015). As a process, it “focuses on users and their needs, encourages

brainstorming and prototyping, and rewards out-of-the-box thinking

collaboration, and integrative outcomes. This stance

encourages individuals to begin with “the

particularities of a situation in order to get in sync with

it,” instead of beginning with “prescriptions” already

in mind (Frodeman, 2014).

Creative confidence, by contrast, can prevent the

move from naïve optimism into apathetic cynicism

that often accompanies education on wicked

problems.5 To foster this confidence, students

considered how their own education, experience, and

skill sets were valuable to their team and their

community work. Open-minded advocacy promotes a

more widely inclusive search for information-at-play,

motivates public engagement, and encourages careful

reflection on the uncertainties at hand (Shrader-

Frechette, 2002).

Scholars and practitioners have developed a

number of methods and facilitation techniques to

encourage these mind-sets. One such method is

“design thinking,” an iterative, project-based, and

collaborative problem-solving process that seeks to

move students from a predetermined state of mind

about the situation that they are confronting, toward a

more open stance of perplexity.6 The process begins

with empathetic listening, and this—as one student

team wrote in their analysis—was integral to their

efforts to “come alongside those already working with

the community.” It was their community engagement

that ultimately led them to see “the transformative

power of this [nonprofit gleaning] initiative” and “to

find a means to support their efforts” (Cook et al.

2015). Ethnographic interviewing, mind-mapping,

and stakeholder mapping (among many other

processes recommended within this method) helped

students wrestle with (instead of avoid) the

complexities of WPs.

Taken together, these learning outcomes provided

students with opportunities to integrate their

experiences with their education and then—in

collaboration with others—apply their findings in the

community. Such goals better prepare students to take

on the role of an integrator and “boundary spanner”

(Ramley, 2014) while aligning with outcomes

identified as essential within the sustainability

literature (Svanstrom et al. 2008).7 Collaborative,

project-based learning and participatory action are the

that takes ‘wild ideas’ and transforms them into real solutions”

(Morris & Warman, 2015). According to Tim Brown (2009), it requires that we willingly embrace “competing constraints” and

consider what is desirable, feasible, and viable. 7 Svanstrom et al. (2008) argue skill building, attitude development, integration across the disciplines, and systems thinking are essential


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means by which students met these objectives and

iteration was the path by which their projects unfolded.

To support them in developing these skills and mind

sets, we designed a host of scaffolded activities,

practices, and projects. Table 2 provides a

comprehensive overview of course assignments. The

table aligns these assessments with both the course

learning objectives and the sustainability

competencies promoted within the literature.

Iteration Iterative methods are, the WP literature confirms,

essential to effectively addressing wicked problems,

since any conclusion is likely to be partial and any

action implemented to have unintended consequences

(Norton, 2005; Ramley, 2014). That is, intervention

efforts are, at best, partially wrong and, at worst,

entirely mistaken. Engendering this fallibilistic and

flexible mindset has been particularly challenging. We

have found that students often begin the semester with

a plan of action in mind and are reluctant to subject

this initial vision to critique and revision. For example,

seeking to help a local nonprofit gleaning initiative

promote their cause and transport their produce in the

winter of 2015, one team posited the creation of a

mobile food bus, simultaneously expressing

apprehension about sharing this vision with their

community partner and thereby exposing it to

criticism. However, this critique was ultimately

essential to their plan. The team had not fully

considered simple, real world constraints nor the

potential drawbacks of their initial idea: a bus would

be difficult to maneuver through the initiative’s target

neighborhood; it also requires a special license to drive

and a special parking space. After overcoming their

aversion to criticism, the team was able to integrate the

expertise of the nonprofit, ultimately allowing them to

create a more practical and implementable proposal: a

mobile food cart. With the WP recommendations and

this narrative in mind, we advocate that courses

support students work on real world problems through

iterative feedback loops, providing them with ample

to sustainability efforts. They provide educators with a long list of skills valuable to this work, including tenacity, commitment,

passion, assertiveness, and persuasiveness. These skills are

juxtaposed alongside the development of patience, emotional intelligence, empathy, self-awareness, curiosity, resiliency,

competency, and optimism.

8 These processes also tend to foster a broader understanding of what

counts as legitimate knowledge, requiring that students not simply

conduct traditional academic research, but also seek out diverse narratives by listening to community-member stories and

institutional perspectives. Students in the second iteration of the

course, for instance, ultimately shifted their efforts after receiving

opportunities to revise. As students seek to address

WPs, it is helpful to emphasize that various levels of

initial failure are to be expected and revision rewarded.

There are, in fact, a number of methods to

encourage collaborative and iterative problem solving,

including strategic doing, Kolb’s experiential learning,

Brown & Lambert’s collective learning for

transformational change, and design thinking. These

processes generally require students to consider what

they could do, then what they should do, what they will

do, and when they will do it.8 The processes encourage

visualizing, enacting, and testing various problem

definitions and interventions, ultimately inspiring a

wider range of creative ideas. Since iteration is a

particular challenge, and since it requires consistent

opportunities to learn-by-doing, we next discuss how

we incentivized reflective action throughout the

semester.

Reflect, Act, then Reflect and Act Again As students’ action plans emerged, they shared

their plans with key stakeholders and begin to

implement—and thus test—aspects of their ideas. For

instance, with their revised vision of a mobile food cart

in mind, this group of students sought out engineering

faculty to discuss the merit of various cart designs.

Weekly “seven-seven” commitments to help students

move through an iterative and action-oriented learning

process included conducting traditional research,

interviewing community stakeholders, canvassing the

neighborhood, attending community events,

prototyping their team plan, crafting promotional

media services, devising K–12 curricula, designing

community events, and so forth. Team members

returned to the next class session to discuss the results

of their actions and to strategize about the most fruitful

next steps. These seven-seven requirements turned big

ideas into concrete, manageable weekly actions

subject to real-time reflection. In essence, these

commitments took the demand for cautious action that

“preserves options for continual course correction”

direct feedback from school-age children about the origin of their food. Asking elementary school children to talk about and illustrate

their understanding of the food cycle led to the insight that local

school children often do not realize that food comes from the land. These insights shifted the nature of the curriculum students wanted

to design (Haapala et al., 2014). For example, one team in the third

iteration of the course researched crowdfunding methods and best practices for their nonprofit partner, ultimately putting together a

how-to pamphlet on crowdfunding. When the students shared their

work at the final dialogue event, several nonprofits and community members in the audience expressed interest in gaining access to their

findings, recommending the team widely disseminate the pamphlet

(Cook et al., 2015).


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seriously (Cohen, 2014). The weekly movement

among collaborative brainstorming, action, and

reflection also motivated the teams to rapidly

prototype their ideas within the limitations of one

semester, encouraging accountability and

counteracting procrastination. Since a single semester

is a relatively short period for addressing the

objectives outlined in the methods and framework

section, the use of practical, weekly accountability

measures increased the quality of the projects that

were ultimately submitted.

Where to End? Community Dialogue At the end of the semester, students shared their

efforts with a wide array of stakeholders from across

the university and the community. This exercise

bridged the divide between the production of ideas and

their use, helping to develop the partnerships necess-

Table 2 Course Assessments.

Assessments Description Objectives Competencies

Point-of-view Presentation

Articulate how experiences, disciplinary training, skills, and values contribute to one’s perspective on issue.

Study different disciplinary and value lenses

Systems-thinking (ST), Normative, Interpersonal

Team Charter Align vision, goals, and roles; communication plan; conflict resolution strategy.

Integrate disciplinary and value lenses

Anticipatory, Normative, Strategic, Interpersonal

Team Guide (Agenda and Notes)

A system for collaboration, capturing ideas, integrating information.

Reflect on actions; analyze and integrate findings

ST, Anticipatory, Normative, Strategic, Interpersonal

Seven-seven Commitments

Weekly team-member action commitments and reflections.

Collective action and reflection, accountability, time management

Anticipatory, Normative, Strategic, Interpersonal

Midterm Essays demonstrating comprehension and application of issues.

Identify and apply WP literature

Anticipatory, Normative, Strategic

Community-Partner Presentation and Dialogue

Draft visions detailing: What is at stake? What could and should be done? How it could be done?

Disseminate ideas and revise findings


Team Evaluations Evaluate collaborative efforts in relation to charter; revise policies and actions

Reflection, feedback, and improvement

Normative, Strategic, Interpersonal

Team Poster Presentation

Visualize and talk about action efforts, elicit feedback

Present findings and facilitate deliberation.


Team Project Analysis

Formally summarize efforts, open-access publication

Disseminate findings ST, Anticipatory, Normative, Strategic, Interpersonal

Synthesis Paper Synthesis of the course Reflect on lessons learned

ST, Anticipatory, Normative

-ary for sustainable change (Lake & Fauvel, 2015).

Students presented their work and elicited feedback by

1) framing the issue that they were seeking to address,

demonstrating that they had a comprehensive

understanding of its wicked dimensions, 2)

highlighting the research they conducted, and 3)

describing the work they chose to pursue and the

reasons for it (making clear their team values and

goals). They also detailed 4) the concerns they had, 5)

the constraints they faced, and 6) the resources they

needed. By inviting a wide range of community

stakeholders and experts, students could then elicit

feedback that was critical to the future implementation

of their projects. In general, we found that this final

dialogue event was rewarding on a couple of fronts,

creating a celebratory space for students’ work and

fostering networks essential for effective and

collaborative local action.

The Challenges and Rewards Community-engaged project-based courses on

WPs are likely to confront students and the instructor

with a series of robust challenges, from intensive

student-team and community-partner collaborations,

to logistical and time-management problems, to real-

world execution issues. Course outcomes indicate that

students often struggled 1) to identify and define

problems through integration across epistemological,

political, and ethical divides, 2) to reach out to and talk

with real-world stakeholders, and 3) to execute action


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plans once established. These obstacles are detailed

next.

You Think You Know, But You Don’t Know Confirming the value of experiential learning, it

was not until students put the theories and methods

surrounding WPs into practice that they began to

viscerally appreciate the nature of social issues. The

process of engaging in collaborative, local action

made it quite clear why society is struggling to

progress on complex, interdependent problems of

sustainability. To foster collaboration among diverse

perspectives, students were placed in five-person

interdisciplinary teams representing at least three

different majors and two different colleges from across

the university. For instance, one of the teams was

comprised of students majoring in natural resource

management, sociology, environmental studies,

education, and entrepreneurship. Not only were

students joined with one another, they were also

partnered with a nonprofit organization seeking to

address local sustainability challenges. While early

collaborative partnerships were helpful in providing

context for brainstorming and implementing action

plans, with no similar previous educational

experiences, most teams struggled to begin.

Through this confusion, students realized that

addressing their collective problems required that they

first address each other. Furthermore, effective

collaboration requires more than understanding the

relevant disciplinary perspectives of each team

member; it entails that they acknowledge one

another’s positionality: the values, personalities,

motivations, learning preferences, and organizational

practices each individual brings with them. Thus,

initial point-of-view presentations, team charters, as

well as commitment to in-class team time, a team

guide, and evaluations all helped students to foster

normative and interpersonal competencies that experts

say are needed for this work (Marzano & Kendall,

2008; Ferkany & Whyte, 2011).

Returning to the “Glean Ride” example illustrates

this point. In being forced to revise their initial vision

from a mobile food truck that could collect and

distribute freshly gleaned produce to target

neighborhoods in the city, the team concluded that,

“our most exciting idea...simply was not a viable

option… given the overall cost to operate and to

insure, as well as the need for a special operator’s

license and location for parking” (Dorking et al.,

2015). They discovered it was imperative to

understand the perspectives of project stakeholders in

order to make real-world progress. Coming to know

one another and their community partners was

ultimately crucial to the development of trust and

camaraderie, which was necessary for uncovering

assumptions, working effectively across disciplinary

and personality differences, building networks in the

community, integrating across differences, and

prioritizing local action (O’Rourke & Crowley, 2013).

Motivating Action and Reflection Collaborative and interdisciplinary teamwork was

also effective because students entered the class with

vastly ranging motivations and commitments to the

issues engaged in the course. For instance, they

studied the wicked dimensions of economics, politics,

food, culture, the environment, sustainability, and

water in addition to immersing themselves in various

democratic practices, technologies, science and ethics,

policy issues, network analyses, and collaborative

problem-solving processes. As assignments escalated

and the semester unfolded, a lack of ownership, a fear

of creativity, and a reluctance to “act” was noted

across a number of student teams. Upon reflection,

their motivation seemed contingent upon an

understanding of 1) the content of the course, 2) the

local issue being addressed, and, most importantly, 3)

how the content and the issue are relative and

important to each of us. That is, while students were

exposed to literature clearly exemplifying the urgent

need to address WPs and to a host of tools for

ameliorating these issues, making sure they invested

time in reflecting upon the material’s relevance proved

difficult. Verifying these insights, research shows that

respecting student perspectives, demonstrating the

practical relevance of their learning, and integrating

student experiences into the course tends to motivate

transformational learning (Wlodkowski, 2008). Thus,

instructors should emphasize the wider social

relevance of the issues, but also consistently connect

(and reconnect) students to the systemic issues they

are seeking to ameliorate.

Learning in the “Real World”: Working with the

Community Rather than developing ideas and concepts in the

classroom setting and then attempting to “apply” them

in the community (a one-way flow of knowledge

production to action), in our class students were

partnered with a community organization from the


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beginning.9 Forming these relationships early

encouraged a “working with” model, grounding

students’ efforts in the context of the local situation.

This option better fosters reciprocity as well as more

comprehensive and socially aware action plans (Lake,

2014).

While at first intimidating to co-develop new

ideas with community leaders, doing so can lead to

more realistic and comprehensive plans as well as

deeper learning than is likely when plans are seeded

within the classroom’s narrow confines. These early

partnerships can be effective because nonprofit

directors and community leaders can articulate a

number of areas in which they could use help, frame

initial visions for effective interventions, and make the

issues the course addresses very real, contextualizing

the work and its value. For instance, one community

partner, hoping to develop a self-sufficient farm to

foster sustainable and healthy farming practices and

communities in western Michigan, said he could use

help developing partnerships with other organizations,

assessing the community’s needs, and creating

business plans that incorporate stakeholders’

perspectives. This initial list of possible entry points

provided a broad structure from which students could

then brainstorm. While community-partner prompts

for aid narrow the scope of possible action plans, broad

recommendations from local stakeholders can still

give each student team ample freedom to formulate a

plan of action that aligns with their own hopes, values,

and goals.10

Following Through: Learning-by-Doing In trying to develop and implement an integrated

plan of action, teams experienced both constructive

and destructive collaborative processes. Increasing

both the number of stakeholders involved in the

project (e.g., the professor, the nonprofit director,

community members, local experts) and the creative

license afforded to students increased their collective

anxiety, leading to worries that ideas were “off the

mark.” With conflicting goals and amorphous

objectives, “success” becomes a tricky and daunting

target. Noting this very issue, scholars suggest that

9 For example, in the last iteration of the course, both community

partners served as directors of newly established nonprofits in Grand

Rapids, working on initiatives to address problems with the local food system. Through these partnerships, students focused on food

justice and literacy, nutrition education and health, equity, food

access, and waste. 10 The inaugural course did not provide student teams with

community partners, nor did it provide students with a framework

for possible community actions. Without any scaffolded framing,

overcoming fear, denial, and resistance is key to

effectively managing WPs (Alpaslan & Mitroff,

2011).

While resistance may be common, it is also

troubling. The classroom can be an incredibly

effective and safe space for practicing collaboration on

WPs, requiring students to tackle their fear of failure

head-on before they move to engaging their own

professional realm. To some extent, team structures

and deliberative processes help them acclimate to the

messy nature of this work. By selecting a team leader,

breaking up larger tasks into manageable and

measurable weekly actions, and coordinating regular

meetings, students experience tangible progress.

An anonymous end-of-semester survey confirmed

that these facilitation techniques were effective at

encouraging self-efficacy. For instance, when asked

whether the community partnerships helped them

understand how the issues of the course applied to

real-world problems and situations, every student

answered affirmatively. They all also confirmed that

the participatory engagement requirements helped

them to recognize that issues can be viewed from

multiple perspectives, improved their communication

and collaborative skills, and increased their awareness

of cultural differences. All but one student confirmed

that community work enhanced their ability to

evaluate real-world programs and processes. Finally,

all but two of the eighteen respondents also agreed that

the community partnerships were valuable, that they

were more likely to participate in community work

because of this course, and that they would enroll in

another course requiring similar participatory

practices on real-world problems. Given the often

overwhelming and depressing, intractable nature of

our SS challenges (i.e., that they can often be

categorized as wicked), we suggest these responses are

a limited but powerful affirmation of the practices

recommended within these pages.

Defining Success: Contributing to “Tipping Points” Given the enduring and dynamic difficulties

surrounding these problems, there is a tendency to

question the ultimate merit of this experiential,

students struggled to decide how to intervene in the community and

were largely unable to move beyond formulating and publishing

more abstract and idealistic future plans for action. Nevertheless, one team’s vision became an experiential and community-engaged

food course for local middle-school students after a team of students

in the subsequent semester read the initial published plan, sought out a local middle-school teacher interested in the proposal, and co-

designed and implemented it (Lake & Fauvel, 2015; Bell et al.,

2013).


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community-engaged pedagogy at numerous points

throughout its three iterations. However, the nature of

WPs encourages us to question traditional

perspectives on what counts as effective. According to

service-learning expert Barbara Jacoby (2010), we can

judge the outcomes of community-engaged courses by

considering whether students have 1) grown “to

understand the interdisciplinary nature of problems

and solutions,” 2) learned “about the complexity of the

social fabric,” and 3) come to see “how they can be

part of the solution instead of part of the problem.” The

pedagogical strategies and methods employed in the

course moved students along a sliding scale toward all

three of these goals.

In addition, the course offered students the

opportunity to influence local issues and to meet real

needs, to develop community partnerships, and to

establish networks potentially valuable to their life

after graduation. On this front, such courses can be an

additional factor in moving toward local tipping points

by drawing in “supporters”; they can contribute to

what becomes a “critical mass,” replacing “the

dominant attractor of the status quo” (Burns, 2014).

These long-term potential of these efforts should not

be easily discounted or quickly dismissed. Tipping

points depend on using an iterative and participatory

process of reflective action subject to “real time”

assessment and adjustment and “rooted in

relationships” (Burns, 2014). In our view, the

pedagogical strategies recommended here are

consistent with these aims.

Using a separate metric culled from the literature

on WPs, we recognize a similar need for judging the

relative success of student efforts. In this metric, we

can weigh the value of such courses by reflecting on

how students’ final analyses 1) comprehensively

frame the issue they seek to address and 2)

acknowledge the inherent conflicts and uncertainties

in their work. We should also consider 3) who is

involved in—and left out of—the planning process, 4)

what types of evidence are examined, 5) whose

perspectives are influenced, and 6) how reality has

been (or could be) changed because of student efforts

(Turnpenny et al. 2009). Judging the effectiveness of

the pedagogy on either rubric leads to the conclusion

that this course is not just about the application of

particular methods, but is more broadly about

character building. According to Frodeman (2014),

11 As one commentator on this work at a recent conference noted, it

may often be the case that our efforts to stymie many of our public crises are stalled by “wicked” people (those who hold narrow, self-

serving agendas; unexamined, convenient assumptions;

action efforts require “openness to new perspectives, a

willingness to admit the inadequacies of one’s own

point of view, to be wrong and to play the fool, and

generosity in interpreting the position and motives of

others.” Using the terms proffered here, effective

collaboration on sustainability challenges fosters

change-agent skills and encourages a host of real-

world competencies, ultimately requiring epistemic

humility, creative confidence, and open-minded

advocacy.

Conclusion

Participatory skills and virtues (like team

building, active listening, collaboration, and

integration) must be fostered to empower more

effective and just co-action on WPs. In fact, we

suggest a failure to foster these skills and virtues is at

the core of many current social struggles.11 The

university should and could be a prime place for

practicing such skills. The personal stakes and risks of

working to ameliorate our collective shortcomings are

likely to increase post-graduation, as students move

fully out into the “real world.” When traditional

coursework occurs in isolation from other courses and

from students’ larger lives we forego key opportunities

to integrate and test the knowledge and skills that they

learn. The traditional model of education encourages

an ever narrowing of focus, specialization but not

integration, leaving students with dangerously

incomplete perspectives and a host of unexamined

assumptions.

Empowering students to take responsibility for

aspects of our WPs forces us to confront the current

educational paradigm. Given the nature of our shared

SS challenges, educators can and should play a vital

role in helping students come to terms with, and

practice, failure. College, as a stepping stone from

childhood into adulthood, offers one of the last

relatively risk-free environments in which to learn-by-

trying. Thus, we recommend pursuing pedagogies that

incentivize wrestling with real-world issues without

predefining the problems or routing the plan of action

in advance.12

Since courses studying SS challenges are

addressing WPs, they present a prime opportunity for

encouraging students to “work with” others across a

diverse span of interests—even when these interests

contradictory and incomplete knowledge; as well as who lack

participatory virtues and skills), not WPs. 12 The authors also believe universities should do more to provide

the space, opportunity, and incentives for instructors to pursue

messy, community-engagement practices in their courses.


86


seem to be at odds—to foster change. By integrating

recommendations from the literature on WPs,

experiential and community-engaged learning, and

processes and methods designed to deal with our

challenges (like strategic doing and design thinking),

SS instructors can offer students opportunities to

engage and affect real problems in the community.

The strategies recommended, from mind-mapping, to

ethnographic interviewing, to facilitation techniques,

and seven-seven action commitments, help students

develop the skills and foster the virtues necessary for

collectively tackling our high-stakes public problems.

These skills and virtues include—but are not limited

to—epistemic humility, creative confidence, and

open-minded advocacy. In the end, courses designed

to respond iteratively to place-based SS challenges

have the unique opportunity to foster not only the

capacities necessary for tackling our large-scale social

dilemmas, but also the disposition to try.

Acknowledgement

We would like to thank Sarah King for her insightful

feedback on a previous draft of this article as well as

all the Wicked Problem students that have come

before.

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88 Sustainability: Science, Practice, & Policy | http://sspp.proquest.com Spring 2016 | Volume 12 | Issue 1

ARTICLE

Systems of access: A multidisciplinary strategy for assessing the social dimensions of sustainability

Christopher Wolsko1, Elizabeth Marino1, Thomas Joseph Doherty2, Steve Fisher3, Amanda S. Green4, Briana Goodwin5, Ryan Reese1, & Andrea Wirth6

1 Graduate and Research Center, Oregon State University‒Cascades, 650 SW Columbia Street, Bend, OR 97702 USA (email: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]) 2 PO Box 3174, Portland, OR 97212 USA (email: [email protected]) 3 886 53rd Street, Unit E, Oakland, CA 94608 USA (email: [email protected]) 4 Environmental Studies Department, Davidson College, Davidson, NC 28035 USA (email: [email protected]) 5 Strand Agriculture Hall, Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR 97331 USA (email: [email protected]) 6 UNLV Libraries, University of Nevada‒Las Vegas, 4505 Maryland Parkway, Mailstop 7012, Las Vegas, NV 89154 USA (email:

[email protected])

The concept of access to natural resources has been a specific concern of economists and ecologists and is a distinct component in recent models of social sustainability. Using a series of conceptual and empirical examples, this article extends the notion of access broadly to social institutions and sociocultural norms. We argue that access may be usefully construed as an analytic tool that has direct applicability to many sustainability issues as it allows for cross-disciplinary and public engagement. Here the concept of access, linked to Amartya Sen’s theory of capabilities, also makes visible the multi-scaled and interconnected social processes that influence the material world and from which certain individuals and communities are excluded. This article examines access as a set of culturally appropriate and equitable engagements that promote social sustainability with a series of four examples: access to actions necessary to reclaim a polluted river; access to restorative natural environments; access to information and research findings; and access to decision-making processes. Insights from these examples are integrated within the wider discourse on sustainability. KEYWORDS: social sustainability; access; power; sociocultural norms; equity; public discourse

Introduction

When scholars from a variety of disciplines

gather to discuss the social dimensions of

sustainability they inevitably encounter chall-

enges finding relatable concepts, terminology,

scope, and methods of assessment. Depending on

the vantage point of the discipline and the

individual researcher, social sustainability can be

conceived of as the health and well-being of an

individual psyche (psychology), the individual

attainment of basic needs (economics,

engineering), the well-being of the self within a

healthy social context (public health), the well-

being and health of a cultural group or commun-

ity (anthropology), or the larger social system

itself as robust and long-lasting (sociology,

economics), among others. This article is an

explicit attempt of a diverse group of social

scientists to identify similarities in theoretical and

empirical approaches to social sustainability with

the goal of improving the clarity of cross-

disciplinary and public discourses.

Comparing research across our disciplines,

one concept emerged, around which multiple

disciplinary methods of assessment remained

coherent and legible. That notion is the idea of

“access.” Across disciplines, we find that access

acts as a common theme of engagement within

which multi-scaled systems of inquiry can

evolve, and around which compounding systems

of inequity and unsustainability can be discussed.

For the purposes of this article, we define access

as the ability to influence processes and lay claim

to resources that create, alter, or maintain social

systems (including social institutions and

sociocultural norms) across scales.

Access has been previously used as a starting

point to critically analyze social systems and

complex problems, and with great success. It has

been more than thirty years since Amartya Sen

(1981) identified “famine” not as the absolute



lack of food available in a given community or

geographical space, but as the “result of [one’s]

inability to establish entitlement to enough food.”

From this premise, Sen reconceptualized ideas of

poverty, famine, and even drought as the “lack of

access” to the resources necessary to sustain

oneself and one’s quality of life. In other words,

those entitled to food did not die of starvation and

malnutrition, even under conditions of

insufficient water and the deterioration of crops.

Conversely, those without entitlements to food—

entitlements enacted and maintained through

social and economic systems—did die of

starvation and malnutrition.

Furthering the argument, Sen insisted that the

entitlements framework is not necessarily about

entitlement/access to objects (food) or income

(wealth), but rather that it exists to point out a

prerogative to capabilities, decisions, and actions

that realistically allow one to achieve goals. Who

has the capability to earn a livable wage? Who

has the capability to work enough hours, at a high

enough salary, to provide food for one’s family

during times of drought? Who is ultimately free

to pursue that which has value (Sen, 2001, 2005)?

Sen’s observations corroborated research

from 1980s disaster literature that even extreme

natural disasters are experienced as such because

of the social constructions of vulnerability that

take place prior to and during a hazardous event

(see Hewitt, 1983; Oliver-Smith, 1996, for

reviews). In this conceptualization, hazardous

events are not threatening in and of themselves,

but are made dangerous when they come into

contact with vulnerable communities. Disasters,

therefore, are social constructions created by

flows of power, lack of access to systems of

protection, and political marginalization over

time, which can result in significant harm to

vulnerable communities (Oliver-Smith, 1996;

Oliver-Smith & Hoffman, 2002; Cutter et al.

2003).

Both of these literatures articulate the

processes that render human injustice in some

communities while sparing others. Sen’s (2005)

argument largely applies on the individual scale,

or in reference to the capabilities of people based

on personal differences, while the disaster

literature is widely used to assess community-

and city-scale vulnerabilities and sociocultural

trends that underpin disaster outcomes (Cutter et

al. 2003, 2010). This article encompasses both of

these research traditions, but expands the notion

of access to the sustainability literature and

broadens the concept of access to point out the

complex, intersecting, and multi-scaled flows of

power, decision-making, and other social

systems, processes, and cultural norms that carve

out vulnerable geographies, vulnerable

communities, and vulnerable individuals. We

argue that it is the sum of these limits to access

that ultimately inhibits social sustainability.

In the remainder of this article, we show that

the concept of access has wide applicability to a

range of issues falling under the rubric of the

social dimensions of sustainability. While access

to natural resources has been a specific concern

of economists and ecologists (Hardin, 1968;

Berkes et al. 1989; Ostrom, 1999; Ostrom, et al.

2002) and has been discussed as a distinct

component of recent models of social

sustainability (Cuthill, 2009; Dempsey et al.

2011; Vavik & Keitsch, 2010), here we extend

the concept broadly, arguing that access is a far-

reaching analytic tool with direct applicability to

many sustainability issues.

To best articulate our arguments, we start

with a poignant example of the sociocultural

construction of vulnerability due to obstacles to

access in the community of El Salto, Mexico.

Second, we apply our conceptualization to better

understand how culturally appropriate access to

green spaces is a form of equitably distributed

health benefits. Third, we assess the state of

access to information as an investigation into the

culture of information and research,

conceptualizing “open access” in information and

research as an emerging embodiment of social

sustainability. Finally, we look at the

development of a wave-energy test site to

understand access to decision-making processes

as contestations among individuals, communities,

and stakeholders. We chose the examples listed

above because they illustrate how access interacts

substantially with the social dimensions of

sustainability and because they highlight the wide

applicability of the concept across geographic

spaces, social circumstances, and research

disciplines. We conclude with a discussion of

how the concept of access can make visible the



multi-layered obstacles to social sustainability

that exist across scales and can act as a common

language for researchers to speak to one another

and engage the public.

Un Salto de Vida

The Santiago River runs through the

community of El Salto in the Mexican state of

Jalisco. Its toxicity level is unknown, but it is

generally accepted by local residents that the

river is intocable, or untouchable. On January 25,

2008, Miguel Àngel Lopez Rocha, a young

school boy, fell from the banks of a canal close to

its confluence with the Santiago River while

playing with friends and was submerged in river

water. Rocha was quickly retrieved, but allegedly

died eighteen days later of arsenic poisoning.1

Community activists of El Salto, best

exemplified by 24-year old Atawalpa Sophia,

protested in the wake of Rocha’s death for

changes to the way industries in the Guadalajara

region near El Salto handle environmental waste.

Sophia wants the river cleaned of the

contaminates that are locally believed to cause

cancer and other sickness, but considerations

about how to detoxify the river lead to a rabbit

hole of social, economic, political,

environmental, and legal obstacles. This example

provides us with a profound illustration of a

“wicked” problem, marked by the social and

situational complexities that lead to an

entanglement of power, inequity, neoliberalism,

and environmental degradation that define many

of the world’s greatest challenges (Rittel &

Webber, 1973; Blanco, 1994; Head, 2008;

McCall & Skrtic, 2009). Here, the industrial

corridor that lines the Santiago River has grown

substantially in and around Guadalajara since

implementation of the North American Free

Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in 1994.

Environmental protection is mandated, yet while

it is generally accepted that the river acts as a

waste dump for industry, between 2005 and 2011

no fines were imposed on any of the more than

300 industrial facilities in the region for being out

of compliance. Protests from community

1 This determination is premised on research by co-author Steve Fisher.

members themselves, aligned under the name Un

Salto de Vida, went completely unheard north of

the Mexican border, where a majority of the

manufacturing firms that line the river are based.

This news story, in fact, is in the process of being

broken to an American public as we write (Fisher

& Jaacks, 2015), decades after the contamination

began and seven years after Miguel Rocha died

of exposure to toxic levels of arsenic.

The social dimensions of sustainability

encompass the social, political, and cultural

infrastructure that must be in place to both

prevent and mitigate “wicked” problems. Where,

then, can we locate the systemic cracks in

institutional and other social processes that enact

sociocultural and political obstacles to

community-driven desires for change? As stated

earlier, we think the lens of access is a useful way

to frame this and other sustainability issues.

In the case of El Salto, Sophia lacks access to

the large-scale political power that has enabled

Guadalajara to become a friendly locale for

American firms. Sophia and her community also

lack access to the justice system, meant to enforce

the environmental regulations that do exist. They

lack access to research and biomedical

information that could substantiate their claims

about the disastrous health effects of the river, to

a source of uncontaminated water for drinking

and irrigation, and to a safe, natural place for

recreation and communal gathering. In the wake

of environmental abuses, the community lacks

access to broad public attention and media

exposure. Finally, the community also lacks

access to defining the sociocultural norms of

decision-makers which currently underlie

neoliberal economic assumptions about what is

best for the region. Sophia does, however, have

access to her community and the relationships of

solidarity that she has created within it. Finally,

she has access to journalist Steve Fisher, which

enables the beginning of a conversation about the

ecological and social sustainability of the

Santiago River, and provides potential links to the

world of decision-makers outside of her

community.



Access to Restorative Natural Environments

In El Salto, individuals suffering from

pollution and poor health embody the

community’s inability to access change through

formal institutions; however, the inability to

access and alter sociocultural norms that underpin

economic models of growth and urbanization is

equally in play. In the field of ecopsychology,

furthermore, many scholars argue that the

cultural norms of neoliberalism and the

imperative for economic growth not only

compromise the health of ecological systems, but

also undermine the health of human communities

(Ryan et al. 2007; Kasser, 2009). This may occur

through a variety of mechanisms. Perhaps most

centrally, individuals who have higher

materialistic value orientations, or who place a

higher priority on financial success, not only

engage in an array of less friendly environmental

behaviors (Sheldon & McGregor, 2000; Brown &

Kasser, 2005), but also experience a range of

negative psychosocial consequences, including

having shorter, more conflictual interpersonal

relationships, engaging in fewer prosocial and

more antisocial activities (for a review, see

Kanner et al. 2007), and display lower levels of

psychological well-being (Dittmar et al. 2014).

Additionally, the highlighting of financial

success, image, status, and fame in

advertisements has been shown to harm viewers’

self-esteem (e.g., Kasser, 2005).

Heightened consumer behavior, increased

immersion in mass media, and reduced time spent

in nature also tend to mutually reinforce one

another. For example, individuals in the United

States and Japan spend a shrinking percentage of

time engaging in, and enjoying the documented

health benefits of, nature-based recreation

(Pergams & Zaradi, 2008). In conjunction with

this trend, individuals devote an increasingly

large percentage of time to electronic media

indoors: the average adult in the United States

devotes approximately five hours per day to

watching television, and an additional 2.5 hours

on non-work related viewing of smartphones,

tablets, personal computers, and other screen

devices (often using more than one device

simultaneously) (Nielsen, 2014). The sedentary

nature of such viewing greatly harms health and

leads to premature mortality (Owen et al. 2010).

In familial contexts, greater television usage also

predicts an increase in children’s levels of

consumer behavior, which then contributes to

poorer relationship quality with parents (Schor,

2004).

In the context of widespread urbanization,

consumerism, and indoor immersion in electronic

media—of reduced access to natural

environments—it is not coincidental that we now

see a robust emerging literature demonstrating

extensive mental, behavioral, and physical health

benefits of exposure to natural environments.

“Exposure to natural environments” or “exposure

to green spaces” has been operationalized in

numerous ways, including having designated

parks in one’s neighborhood (Mitchell &

Popham, 2007), having plants and other natural

features in and around the house (Wells & Evans,

2003), gardening or participating in horticultural

programs (Wichrowski et al. 2005), viewing

nature through windows or in photos (Ulrich,

1984; Berman et al. 2008), experiencing higher

levels of biological diversity in local parks (Fuller

et al. 2007), and walking outdoors (Hartig et al.

2003).

The empirical health benefits of exposure to

nature are extensive, including increased capacity

for directed attention and reduced mental fatigue

(Tennessen & Cimprich, 1995; Kaplan, 2001),

improvements in cognitive functioning for

individuals with attention deficits (Cimprich &

Ronis, 2003; Taylor & Kuo, 2009), increased

positive emotional experiences (Fuller, et al.

2007; Van Herzele & de Vries, 2012), reduced

anxiety and depression (Gonzalez et al. 2009),

reduced stress along with stress-related illness

(Leather et al. 1998; Wells & Evans, 2003; Van

den Berg et al. 2010), improved recovery from

surgery (Ulrich, 1984; Park & Mattson, 2009),

lower disease morbidity (Maas et al. 2009), and

lower mortality, including mortality related to

income deprivation (Takano et al. 2002; Mitchell

& Popham, 2008). In addition to directly

facilitating psychological and physiological

health (e.g., via stress reduction), natural

environments also have indirect positive effects

on health by providing attractive locations for

physical activity (Kaczynski & Henderson, 2007;

Hartig, 2008) and for enjoying higher quality



social interaction and social support (Coley et al.

1997; Shinew et al. 2004).

Additionally, active engagement with nature

has been shown to contribute to a coherent,

meaningful sense of connection with the natural

world, which in turn is positively associated with

a variety of mental health indices (Wolsko &

Lindberg, 2013; Zelenski & Nisbet, 2014). In

specific cultural contexts, the mental and physical

health benefits of this existential connection with

the natural environment are due to a life in nature

that is not only recreationally enjoyable, but is

also pragmatically imbued with rich sociocultural

value, for example through the spiritual, social,

economic, and physical ramifications of

subsistence practices in indigenous communities

(Izquierdo, 2005; Wolsko et al. 2006; Labun &

Emblen, 2007).

While this literature on exposure to nature

and health is encouraging, the distribution of

natural spaces favors ethnically and racially

privileged communities (Wolch et al. 2014).

Certain ethnic minority and low socioeconomic

status communities, already suffering from

numerous mental, physical, and behavioral health

disparities, also tend to live in neighborhoods

with less access to green space and greater

exposure to environmental toxins (Adler &

Newman, 2002; Heynen et al. 2006). Even when

access to natural spaces is available, the

normatively sanctioned manner of access is

frequently directed by affluent, ethnically and

racially privileged voices (Kessel et al. 2009).

Byrne (2012), for example, explored the

perceptions of barriers of a Latino community’s

access to parks in Los Angeles. Many research

participants reported that they felt unwelcome or

out of place, and some also felt discriminated

against based on their way of using a park, which

favored a large gathering over quiet hiking. Byrne

concluded that there appears to be a “dominant

nature narrative,” which he termed “white

nature,” that may serve as a barrier to some

communities accessing parks for fear of being

judged and/or discriminated against. Butler and

Richardson (2015) reported similar findings in

their investigation of national park use by black

South Africans. In particular, many of the

participants indicated feeling unwelcome and

stated perceptions that they were unsure what “to

do” in national parks.

While we understand the research on nature

and wellness to date to be valuable, it is

paramount for researchers and institutions (e.g.,

parks and recreation departments, urban planning

commissions) to begin identifying how their own

conceptualization of recreational engagement

with the natural world may influence outcomes

for diverse communities. Much of the literature to

date focuses on access to green spaces as a means

to reduce stress and facilitate the restoration of

mental processes, largely through “appreciative”

and often solitary recreational experiences in

nature (see Wolsko & Lindberg, 2013), which

might conflict with the worldviews of some

communities, especially those that have been

historically oppressed. Multicultural competency

in environmental health-related research and

policy decisions can be promoted through

dialogue, consensus, and community-based

participatory methods to formulate meaningful

research questions and to determine relevant

outcomes and policy decisions for specific

communities. Thus, access issues in this case

revolve not only around access to green spaces,

but also on the ability of specific communities to

access and alter the sociocultural norms of

acceptable behavior within such places.

Access to Information

Increased access to information and

knowledge, underpinned by universal

literacy, is an essential pillar of sustainable

development (IFLAI, 2014).

Education is a critical component of social

sustainability, alongside healthcare, housing, and

food access (Cuthill, 2010). Education inherently

relies on access to information, an essential

component of information literacy. In fact, the

International Federation of Library Associations

and Institutions (2011) provides specific

recommendations for governments, which stress

how access to information is critical to a global

society, lifelong learning, and individual well-

being, stating that “Media and Information

Literacy is a basic human right...and promotes

greater social inclusion.” Such access is essential



for individuals to be information literate and, by

extension, to fully participate in conversations

and decisions about issues that affect their lives.

While the Internet has increased global

access to information of all types, a significant

portion of research-based information remains

unavailable to many people. Research literature is

often reserved for those affiliated with

organizations that pay for access, a model held

over from a pre-Internet, print-based information

society. And even though not every individual

can benefit directly from research publications,

the widespread communication of such work is

critical for ensuring that scientists, students,

politicians, stakeholders, and other engaged

individuals can use the best information

available.

Recent shifts in scholarly publishing are

creating a more openly accessible

communication system that encourages the use of

research findings by non-traditional audiences

(those outside academia and other research

institutions). Authors, libraries, organizations,

governments, and publishers are making “open

access” to information a priority. Open Access

(OA) in this context refers to scholarly research

that is made freely available to anyone with an

Internet connection and is free to use, adapt, and

redistribute so long as the original “authors

[retain] control over the integrity of their work

and the right to be properly acknowledged and

cited” (Chan et al. 2002). It should be noted that

open access to natural resources (e.g., Schlager

& Ostrom, 1992) is quite distinct from the

conceptualization of open access to information

discussed here. The genesis of OA to scholarly

research derived from a number of interrelated

concerns, including the consideration of

information as a public good, the recognition that

the current subscription-access model is

unsustainable given decreasing library budgets,

and authors’ interest in communicating their

research to both their peers and a wider audience.

Even traditional publishers, while slower to

embrace OA as a publishing model, are

increasingly making open access an option for

their authors, typically by asking authors to pay

an article-processing charge either in a fully open

format or a hybrid journal in which some content

resides behind a paywall and some is free (e.g.,

Springer’s Open Choice option). The number of

publishers that embrace OA (only) is growing in

number and, in some fields, these journals have

the highest rankings (e.g., PLOS).

Researchers (used here to refer to anyone

seeking access to scholarly information) have

long been stymied by requests to pay for access

to online journal articles. Even scholars and

students at research institutions that provide

subscription-based access are frequently

frustrated by complicated systems that require

authentication (Schonfeld, 2015). However, the

barriers for access to those unaffiliated with

research institutions are much higher because the

only route to research literature for most is by

costly payment.

The United States, the United Kingdom,

Australia, South Africa, and many other countries

acknowledge the inequalities in access to

research and the problems associated with the

subscription model. These issues are currently

being addressed through policies developed by

funding agencies (governmental and otherwise).

For example, in the United States, the White

House’s Office of Science and Technology

Policy (OSTP) (2013) issued a directive to

federal agencies that “[s]cientific research

supported by the Federal Government catalyzes

innovative breakthroughs that drive our

economy. The results of that research become the

grist for new insights and are assets for progress

in areas such as health, energy, the environment,

agriculture, and national security.” In other

words, access to research fuels more research,

creativity, innovation, and empowerment. With

OA, a small business can have the same

information as a large corporation, and an

informed citizenry can have access to the same

science covered by news media and cited by

policy-makers. The OSTP directive requires

agencies to develop plans to ensure that the

published results and data generated by research

they fund is available to everyone (typically after

a brief embargo period).

Education, which is inherently dependent on

accessing information, is essential to an informed

and engaged society, whether it be for access to

current healthcare information or to accurate

climate-change research. One argument against

public distribution of scholarship is that



individuals without disciplinary training will not

understand, and therefore be unable to benefit,

from access to research literature. However, the

“public” includes medical practitioners and

others who can improve their practice through

enhanced access (O’Keeffe et al. 2011; NIH,

2014). One example of the general demand for

access is the “We the People Petition” (2012) to

“[r]equire free access over the Internet to

scientific journal articles arising from taxpayer-

funded research,” which gathered over 65,000

signatures (at a time when only 25,000 were

required for a response from the White House),

underscoring that access to scholarly information

is something people do indeed view as a right.

Like the examples before, examining access here

serves as an analytic tool to assess the ability of

multiple publics to acquire a resource (in this case

research and other information); and the ability to

change the status quo—the social and economic

norm of publication companies making large

profits from publishing the research literature.

Access to Decision-Making Processes

Access to healthy ecosystems, restorative

natural environments, and educational

information can be enhanced only when engaged

stakeholders are given meaningful access to

decision-making processes. However, who has

access, how one establishes and protects the

“right” to access, and who gets counted as a

“stakeholder” are often profoundly contested

matters. Our final example illuminates how

access becomes contested due to different claims

of ownership and in terms of the degree to which

one has a stake in development plans.

These access issues are examined in the

context of a 2011–2012 effort by the Northwest

National Marine Renewable Energy Center

(NNMREC) and Oregon Sea Grant (OSG) to

carry out a community-based process to choose

the site for North America’s first full-scale, grid-

connected wave-energy test facility (called the

Pacific Marine Energy Center–South Energy Test

Site, or PMEC-SETS). The siting process,

developed by NNMREC and OSG and

independently evaluated, included stakeholder

engagement along the Oregon coast and

ultimately sought proposals to host the site from

two communities—Reedsport and Newport.

When examining access to decision-making

processes, it is essential to first identify the

stakeholders in the process. Freeman defines a

stakeholder as “any group or individual who can

affect or is affected by the achievement of the

organization’s objectives” (1984). In contrast to

Freeman’s broad definition, Clarkson (1995)

defines stakeholders as those who may be put at

risk by a manager’s decision. The point here is

not to determine which definition is the more

correct, but rather to illustrate that identifying

stakeholders can be a contentious process.

In the context of the Oregon coastal regions

in which we (Goodwin and colleagues) have

examined access to decision-making processes,

oceans formally fall under the Public Trust

Doctrine, “the legal concept that the government

holds the common water resource in trust for the

public and regulates the commons in the public

interest” (Scanlan, 2006). Under Freeman’s

(1984) definition, the stakeholder list for ocean

management would include all citizens of the

United States. Using Clarkson’s (1995)

definition, the stakeholder list would be more

explicit. For example, commercial fishermen,

who have made significant investments in their

businesses, would be primary stakeholders

because placing a wave-energy development in

prime fishing grounds would put them at risk for

declining income. Likewise, if a nearshore wave-

energy facility were placed in sight of a luxury

hotel, the owner could be vulnerable to losing

business due to diminished views.

Considering the potential impacts of ocean-

management decisions on “stakeholders” and the

legal requirement to allow public comment on

those decisions, an effective decision-making

process has to contend with multiple challenges.

One is creating reasonable access, or the

capability of stakeholders to participate in

decision-making processes (Sen, 2005). Another

is wrestling with who among the public is

considered a “stakeholder” in the first place.

With regard to the first challenge, we see that

access to decision-making processes can be

hindered in multiple ways. Not having access to

comprehensible information can hinder a

stakeholder’s ability to engage in a decision-



making process (Bryson et al. 2013; Dalton,

2006). Additionally, the ability to participate can

be stifled when the avenues for involvement are

not accessible. Specifically, relying on electronic

means of input severely limits access by ethnic

and racial minorities and those with lower levels

of education and socioeconomic status

(Mossberger et al. 2006). Furthermore, physical

access to a process can be hampered by the

location and timing of public deliberations (Tuler

& Webler, 1999; Bryson et al. 2013). For

example, holding a meeting in a place

inaccessible by public transportation is likely to

limit attendance. Similarly, scheduling a meeting

during a standard workday precludes

stakeholders who work at that time.

Regarding the problem of delineating

stakeholders, Mitchell et al. (1997) proposed a

theory of stakeholder salience to explain “the

degree to which managers give priority to

competing stakeholder claims.” Stakeholder

salience is based on the stakeholder’s perceived

power, legitimacy, and urgency. Power is defined

as “the ability...to bring about the outcomes

[stakeholders] desire” (Salancik & Pfeffer, 1974),

legitimacy is “a perception or assumption that the

actions of an entity are desirable, proper, or

appropriate” (Suchman, 1995), and urgency is

“the degree to which stakeholder claims call for

immediate action” (Mitchell et al. 1997). The

amount or type of attention paid to a stakeholder

is generally based on these attributes. Definitive

stakeholders are those who possess all three

attributes, and they often, but not always, receive

the most consideration from managers, and are

therefore most likely to gain access to decision-

making processes.

Viewed through this lens of stakeholder

salience, our research (Goodwin and colleagues)

indicated that commercial fishermen were

definitive stakeholders in the PMEC-SETS

process, as they possessed power, legitimacy, and

urgency. However, the priority given to the

commercial fishermen marginalized other

members of the local community. In interviews

conducted by Goodwin and colleagues, one

participant reported that commercial fishermen

“put some pretty serious constraints on the

locations that they’d ‘allow’” and other

participants were not comfortable enough to

make alternative recommendations. Another

participant recognized the importance of the

commercial fishing industry, but said, “the

fishermen do not own any ocean areas or

bottom…these places are instead owned by the

public and should be treated as such.”

This example demonstrates that access as

such is not necessarily a “good” in and of itself,

but that legitimate access to decision makers and

decision-making processes will be continuously

contested. Investigating these processes of

contestation is also a vehicle for understanding

social sustainability. As in our other examples,

we find that access to the sociocultural norms that

underpin social processes, in this case the process

of defining the term “stakeholder,” is paramount.

Conclusion

As noted in the introduction, using access as

an analytic tool to investigate issues of social

sustainability brings to mind Sen’s theory of

capabilities. However, as our examples have

shown, explicitly identifying whether or not an

individual or group has access to governance

systems, sociocultural norms, and decision-

making processes extends the implications of that

perspective. Sen (2005) defines capabilities as,

“the opportunity to achieve valuable

combinations of human functionings—what a

person is able to do or be.” Because the locus of

his investigation is necessarily on the individual,

Sen (2005) continues, “they [capabilities] fall

short of telling us enough about the fairness or

equity of the processes involved, or about the

freedom of citizens to invoke and utilize

procedures that are equitable.”

In all four examples presented above,

individuals and communities must do just that—

to instigate change or to promote the social

dimensions of sustainability they must

simultaneously negotiate multiple sociocultural,

political, and institutional systems or processes.

In these cases, access—the ability and means to

catalyze change in or maintenance of social

systems, which have material and social

consequence—is limited by various obstacles and

in diverse ways. In the cases of access to research

findings (literature) and to green space, both

actual goods and/or services may be limited for



certain individuals and groups, along with access

to processes that may alter the sociocultural

norms that prioritize, for example, the profit

motives of publishers and the preferred outdoor

recreational experiences of dominant cultural

groups. More insidiously in the case of El Salto,

norms that exclude the well-being and desires of

marginalized groups pose complex obstacles to

access, with serious material and social

consequences.

As in the equitable management of common-

pool resources, in some instances it may be in the

interest of social sustainability to limit access,

while in other cases social sustainability rests

directly on opening up processes of decision-

making and development. Recent work by Klain

et al. (2014) shows the political and cultural

challenges involved in striking this balance of

access in the context of marine-resource

management. In the El Salto example and in the

development of a wave-energy test facility, there

is public debate surrounding what constitutes

equitable and legitimate access to decision-

making processes. The persistent discourse over

“who has the most to lose” in the development of

the wave-energy project remains unresolved.

Some of the examples that we have described

help inform parts of others. Limits to the open

access of information and research affect

Atawalpa Sophia’s ability to gather information

that could help her community understand the

biochemical makeup of the river, which in turn

could be used to access public, political, and legal

support. Conversely, increasing access to

information and experts via the Internet provides

opportunities for Sophia to meet and engage with

journalists and filmmakers. While arsenic

poisoning and the public health consequences of

living along a polluted river have reasonably

garnered the most attention from community

members in El Salto, lack of access to green

spaces might have longer-term consequences to

mental and physical well-being that community

members have yet to address.

Most helpfully, framing the issue of social

sustainability around access allows us to use

common language to talk about the

interrelatedness of our research. The notion of

access, unlike the concept of capabilities, gives us

an analytic platform from which we can assess an

individual’s or a community’s ability to evoke

change in and across social, economic, and

ecological systems. The term is distinct from

conceptions of empowerment in that it locates the

analysis and prospective changes within the

systems themselves instead of in vulnerable or

historically disenfranchised communities. The

tool is also distinct from notions of participation,

because “access” allows us to discuss both

material capital and social capital using the same

analytic concept. Because access can be deployed

across material, social, and ecological systems

and because it can assess both individual- and

community-level engagement, it becomes

particularly helpful for discussions of

sustainability.

From a pragmatic perspective, talking about

access is a way to articulate complex analyses

using a simple term from the vernacular that had,

and has, meaning outside of research traditions.

In this case, the access concept allows for

immediate engagement among researchers and

has the potential to facilitate involvement outside

of academic circles. We anticipate that using the

common term, “access” will make it possible to

discuss critical research on social sustainability

with the public, and across publics in a

comprehensible way while maintaining

situational complexity. In other words, we can

talk immediately with the public about the ability

or inability of individuals and communities to

access systems of power and change without

having to translate academic jargon. This

increase in transparent communication is in line

with the focus of participatory action research on

improving the accessibility of language used to

convey research findings and was a specific goal

of our collaborative effort (see also Kemmis &

McTaggart, 2006).

Finally, using access as a mechanism for

understanding sustainability also shifts focus

away from goods and/or steady-state social and

ecological systems and refocuses the broader

sustainability discourse on processes of change

(see Dillard et al. 2012). This approach is in line

with current social science research across

multiple topics, such as in the study of

environmental migration (see Marino, 2013). The

world, writ large, is in a state of flux and

uncovering who has access to systems of change,



and systems in stasis, is a vital social science

contribution to the sustainability discourse.

Authors’ Note

Co-authors Doherty, Fisher, Green, Goodwin,

Reese, and Wirth are listed alphabetically, as they

contributed equally to this manuscript.

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