"For many of us, design is invisible. We live in a world that is so thoroughly configured by human effort that design has become second nature, ever-present, inevitable, taken for granted. And yet, the power of design to transform and affect every aspect of daily life is gaining widespread public awareness." (Bruce Mau of Massive Change)

"If you keep your focus on the key design criteria -- building community resilience and reducing the carbon footprint -- you'll watch as the collective genius of the community enables a feasible, practicable and highly inventive solution to emerge." (Ben Brangwyn and Rob Hopkins in 12 Key Steps for Transition Towns)

"Collaborative design over the internet is tremendously powerful, and likely the best way forward."
Omar Yaqub from Nigeria commenting on Open Architecture Network)

"We need the moral resources to expect nothing less than design that will make this world safe for the next generation." (Jody Boehnert of EcoLabs)

If global problems like the inevitable peak oil, ongoing climate change, crumbling global economy, business as usual worries you, and you wish to do something about it from the local, or the cyber-global, Jody Boehnert pointed us to the solution: community collaborative design, which is based on systems thinking and the democratization of design.

In his paper, Should Change be Radical?, he explores three projects that tries to address the problems of the world by harnessing the collective genius of the community in designing and implementing solutions themselves.

Read the full paper at EcoLabs >>

Further readings

Here's a list of further readings for each of the projects featured in the paper:

Open Architecture Network

1. About Open Architecture Network | Read >>
2. What Housing Crisis? at ArchitectureForHumanity.com | Read >>
3. A TED Talk Video about Open Architecture Network | Watch >>

Massive Change

1. About Massive Change | Read >>
2. Stories from Massive Change in Action | Read >>
3. A Bicycle for Life. How a custom bicycle design is used to save lives in Africa | Read >>

Transition Towns

1. Natural Born Survivors by Harriet Green at The Guardian | Read >>
2. How to Wean a Town Off Fossil Fuels by Hana Loftus at WorldChanging.com | Read >>
3. 12 Key Steps to Embarking on Your Transition Journey at TransitionTowns.org | Read >>
4. Transition Initiatives Primer at TransitionTowns.org | Read >>
5. Kinsale Energy Descent Action Plan, a detailed plan on transitioning | Read >>

(Photo by by Thomas Hawk. Some rights reserved)

Quoted from the article:

"Postindustrialism is all about closing resource loops and directly meeting human need--for nutrition, access, shelter, illumination, entertainment, community, and self-actualization--in the most elegant and efficient ways possible."

"... we want 'hot showers and cold beer' and not necessarily power plants and fossil fuels. The latter are just means-to-the-end, and usually not very sensible means... by focusing on real needs, and working backwards to find the most elegant and efficient ways of meeting those needs, one could routinely dispense with lots of unnecessary supply."

"... a core characteristic of green development [is] to substitute human creativity for resources. Some have described a green economy as labour-intensive. But "people-intensive" better suggests that green work is a very different, more developmental, kind of labour than the body- and soul-destroying cog-labour endemic to capitalism."

"A holistic focus on end-use takes us beyond simple efficiency to questions of the purpose of production... In the eco-service economy, manufacturing would be kept local and subordinated to service; stuff would simply be means to the end of satisfying needs for nutrition, shelter, entertainment, illumination, communication, etc."

"Postindustrial or qualitative wealth--in contrast of the quantitative industrial wealth of standardized mass production--is specific to place and circumstance... Community is the nexus through which a green economy's qualitative wealth, organizational efficiencies, and participatory democracy revolve."

"Just as a green economy features distributed or decentralized food, energy and goods production, so also it needs distributed regulation, expressed in finance, certification, communication, education, community design, civic culture, and many forms of participation. The scale of a green community-based economy is, in itself, a key factor encouraging democracy, participation and accountability. It is no panacea, but it makes most of the other positive elements more possible or effective."

"Small values-driven businesses, while they can put social and eco-values in command, need support networks, access to finance and information, and markets. Big business has more resources and access to information, but it is far more constrained by the single bottom line. So it too needs help from the outside--be it via regulatory rules, new enterprise networks, stakeholder pressure, or certification systems."

"Absolutely fundamental to creating ecological or knowledge-based economies are measures of qualitative value. It's an apparent paradox that qualitative development requires more quantification than old-line accumulation which was a pretty simple matter. Qualitative wealth requires complex information on ecosystems, communities and economies: from mass-balance accounts, to eco-footprints, genuine progress indicators, to life-cycle assessment, to social and educational indicators, to local economic multipliers, to sustainable community indicators, and many more."

Read the full article >>

Other writings by Brian Milani

1. From Opposition to Alternatives: Postindustrial Potentials & Transformative Learning (read >>)
2. Mindful Markets, Value Revolution and the Green Economy: EPR, Certification and the New Regulation (read >>)
3. Beyond Environmental Protection: Ecological Alternatives & Education for a Green Revolution (read >>)
4. (Book) Designing the Green Economy, The Postindustrial Alternative to Corporate Globalization (read review >>)

(Photo: Some rights reserved by kenwood)

"In A Conservation Economy, Economic arrangements of all kinds are gradually redesigned so that they restore, rather than deplete, Natural Capital and Social Capital."

What does a sustainable society look like?

On ConservationEconomy.net, fifty-seven patterns provide a framework for an ecologically restorative, socially just, and reliably prosperous society. They are adaptable to local ecosystems and cultures, yet universal in their applicability. Together they form what we call a Conservation Economy.

Together, the patterns form a visual and conceptual framework that can be used to inspire innovation, focus planning efforts, and document emerging best practices. A conservation economy comprehensively integrates Social, Natural, and Economic Capital to demonstrate that a sustainable society is both desirable and achievable.

What is a pattern language?

A pattern language is a structured method of describing good design practices within a field of expertise. It is characterized by

1. Noticing and naming the common problems in a field of interest,
2. Describing the key characteristics of effective solutions for meeting some stated goal,
3. Helping the designer move from problem to problem in a logical way, and
4. Allowing for many different paths through the design process.

When a designer is designing something (whether it is a house or a computer program or a stapler), they must make many decisions about how to solve problems. A single problem, documented with its best solution, is a single design pattern. Each pattern has a name, a descriptive entry, and some cross-references, much like a dictionary entry. A documented pattern must also explain why that solution is considered the best one for that problem, in the given situation. When design is done by a team, pattern names will form a vocabulary they can share. This makes it necessary for pattern names to be easy to remember and highly descriptive.

A Pattern Language for Sustainability - Toward a Conservation Economy

In A Conservation Economy, Economic arrangements of all kinds are gradually redesigned so that they restore, rather than deplete, Natural Capital and Social Capital. While A Conservation Economy functions on a global scale, it can be imagined as a healthy mosaic of Bioregional Economies forged within coherent biological and cultural units. Even in a globalizing economy, diverse Bioregional Economies that are more self-sufficient in meeting their own needs will be more competitive and less vulnerable.

Pattern Index

A Conservation Economy

Social Capital

• Fundamental Needs: Subsistence Rights, Shelter For All, Health, Access To Knowledge
• Community: Social Equity, Security, Cultural Diversity, Cultural Preservation, Sense Of Place, Beauty And Play, Just Transitions, Civic Society

Natural Capital

• Ecological Land-Use: Connected Wildlands (Core Reserves, Wildlife Corridors, Buffer Zones), Productive Rural Areas (Sustainable Agriculture, Sustainable Forestry, Sustainable Fisheries, Ecotourism), Compact Towns And Cities (Human-Scale Neighborhoods, Green Building, Transit Access, Ecological Infrastructure, Urban Growth Boundaries)
• Ecosystem Services: Watershed Services, Soil Services, Climate Services, Biodiversity

Economic Capital

• Household Economies
• Green Business: Long-Term Profitability, Community Benefit, Green Procurement, Renewable Energy, Sustainable Materials Cycles, Resource Efficiency, Waste As Resource, Product As Service
• Local Economies: Value-Added Production, Rural-Urban Linkages, Local Assets
• Bioregional Economies: Fair Trade, True Cost Pricing, Product Labeling

"Our industrial-affluent-consumer society is extremely unjust and ecologically unsustainable. The argument [in this article] is that these problems cannot be solved in a society that is driven by obsession with high rates of production and consumption, affluent living standards, market forces, the profit motive and economic growth. A sustainable and just world order cannot be achieved until we undertake radical change in our lifestyles, values and systems, especially in our economic system."

"The alternative we must work for is the Simpler Way, based on frugal "living standards", co-operation, high levels of local economic self-sufficiency, and zero economic growth. There is now a Global Alternative Society Movement in which many small groups are building settlements of the required kind. The final section below argues that the top priority for people concerned about the fate of the planet should be starting to build these new lifestyles and systems within existing towns and suburbs." (Ted Trainer)

Read the full article >>> (Central theme: local cooperative and participatory economic self-sufficiency)

For a more detailed account of the rationale for, and the probable shape of such alternative sociey, read:

1. The Problem of Affluence and The Values and Worldview of Consumer Society - The Biggest Problem
2. Saving the Environment - Do You Realise What It Will Take?
3. Renewable Energy Can't Save Consumer Society
4. Capitalism: A Brief Critical Outline, Is a Humane Capitalism Possible? and Why Marx Matters
5. Our Empire, It's Nature and Maintenance
6. Our Economic System - Why It Must Be Scraped
7. Conventional Development vs. Appropriate Development and Appropriate Third World Development
8. The Alternative Sustainable Society - the Simpler Way
9. The New Economy for the Simpler Way
10. Can We Set Up a Community Cooperative Firm?
11. The Radical Implications of the Limits to Growth Analysis for the Design of Settlements
12. Agriculture: Conventional vs. Alternative and Can Permaculture Save the Planet?
13. How Cheaply We Could Live and The Way I Live
14. Spiritual Significance of the Simpler Way
15. Education: A Radically Critical View and Education in the Alternative, Sustanable Society
16. Cartoons Dealing with "The Simpler Way" Themes
17. The Transition is Underway and Thoughts on the Transition to a Sustanable Society
18. The Way It Could Be: A Visit to a Sustainable Society. This is a 250 page novel by Ted Trainer describing the experiences of a person who visits a fictitional settlement that has adopted Simpler Way principles. It is in 12 parts, all of which are available online free to read. (Part 1. Part 2. Part 3. Part 4. Part 5. Part 6. Part 7. Part 8. Part 9. Part 10. Part 11. Part 12)
    

Here's an excellent definition and explanation of the concept "Sustainability":

"Sustainability is a systemic concept, relating to the continuity of economic, social, institutional and environmental aspects of human society. It is intended to be a means of configuring civilization and human activity so that society, its members and its economies are able to meet their needs and express their greatest potential in the present, while preserving biodiversity and natural ecosystems, and planning and acting for the ability to maintain these ideals indefinitely. Sustainability affects every level of organization, from the local neighborhood to the entire planet."

Accompanying this description is "a number of common principles [which] are embedded in most charters or action programmes to achieve sustainable development, sustainability or sustainable prosperity", synthesized by Hargroves, K. and M. Smith (2005) in their book "The Natural Advantage of Nations: Business Opportunities, Innovation and Governance in the 21st Century". These include:

• dealing cautiously with risk, uncertainty and irreversibility;
• ensuring appropriate valuation, appreciation and restoration of nature;
• integration of environmental, social and economic goals in policies and activities;
• equal opportunity and community participation;
• conservation of biodiversity and ecological integrity;
• ensuring inter-generational equity;
• recognizing the global dimension;
• a commitment to best practice;
• no net loss of human or natural capital;
• the principle of continuous improvement; and
• the need for good governance.

Read more at PermaWiki >>

(Photo by bb_matt)

"If you combine the increase of the oil prices and the increase of food prices then you have the elements of a very serious [social] crisis. . . ." (Jacques Diouf, head of the FAO)

Our global food system faces a crisis of unprecedented scope. This crisis, which threatens to imperil the lives of hundreds of millions and possibly billions of human beings, consists of four simultaneously colliding dilemmas, all arising from our relatively recent pattern of dependence on depleting fossil fuels.

• The first dilemma consists of the direct impacts on agriculture of higher oil prices: increased costs for tractor fuel, agricultural chemicals, and the transport of farm inputs and outputs.
• The second is an indirect consequence of high oil prices - the increased demand for biofuels, which is resulting in farmland being turned from food production to fuel production, thus making food more costly.
• The third dilemma consists of the impacts of climate change and extreme weather events caused by [fossil]-fuel-based greenhouse gas emissions. Climate change is the greatest environmental crisis of our time; however, fossil fuel depletion complicates the situation enormously, and if we fail to address either problem properly the consequences will be dire.
• Finally comes the degradation or loss of basic natural resources (principally, topsoil and fresh water supplies) as a result of high rates, and unsustainable methods, of production stimulated by decades of cheap energy.

Each of these problems is developing at a somewhat different pace regionally, and each is exacerbated by the continually expanding size of the human population. As these dilemmas collide, the resulting overall food crisis is likely to be profound and unprecedented in scope.

I propose to discuss each of these dilemmas briefly and to show how all are intertwined with our societal reliance on oil and other fossil fuels. I will then argue that the primary solution to the overall crisis of the world food system must be a planned rapid reduction in the use of fossil fuels in the growing and delivery of food.

As we will see, this strategy, though ultimately unavoidable, will bring enormous problems of its own unless it is applied with forethought and intelligence. But the organic movement is uniquely positioned to guide this inevitable transition of the world's food systems away from reliance on fossil fuels, if leaders and practitioners of the various strands of organic agriculture are willing to work together and with policy makers.

Read the full article at richardheinberg.com >>

(Photo by trazmumbalde)

Humanity is living one of its most crucial moments. The time of the great empires is in decay. There is no specific culture or country arising as a new empire, but instead there is a Global Emerging Culture. It seems that the planet is growing a new social body where all humans are connected giving birth to a global brain.

We are living in the peak of an evolutionary leap. The past century we started riding horses and ended riding to the moon. We have reached a high level of development in technology, but we haven't evolved in the same proportion in the development of our consciousness. That is indeed a dangerous formula for our planet.

Taking that in consideration the guidelines I suggest for the Emerging Global Civilizations are the following:

1. Personal Mastery
2. Social Technologies
3. Global Collective Intelligence
4. Citizens of the World

(Click "Read on" below to read the full message. Photo by big-e-mr-g)

Ideas about how the world works that don't accord with reality can be unhelpful. That's especially true about mainstream economics, which is based in part on ideas that made a lot of sense at some point in the last 250 years but that have outlived their time and usefulness. These ideas--such as the reliance on GDP as the key index of general wellbeing--still dominate assumptions and thinking about economic matters in the media, governments, businesses, and popular consciousness.

But in recent decades, economics theoreticians and researchers have suggested a variety of reforms that would make economics truer, greener, and more sustainable:

1. Scale. How big is the global economy relative to the global ecosystem?
2. Stress development over growth. That is, make the economy better at satisfying human needs, not simply bigger.
3. Make prices tell the ecological truth. For instance, climate change is arguably the result of failing to charge for dumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
4. Account for nature's services. Pollination performed by honeybees, air and water purification, soil generation, pest control, seed dispersal, and nutrient recycling, are among the many other services that nature provides.
5. The precautionary principle. Ordinary risk analysis asks, "How much environmental damage will be allowed?" But the precautionary principle asks, "How little damage is possible?"
6. Commons management. People generally believe that there are only two workable regimes for managing resources: private property or government control. But commons management regimes are a third way, one that taps the strong human impulse toward cooperation and the common good.
7. Value women. Economic systems ought to be gender-blind but they're not.

Read the full article at WorldWatch.org >>

(Photo by opaqueEpiphany)

"Don't expect to see a bird or a bear testify in court anytime soon, but there is a growing body of opinion that animals, birds, rivers, forests -- nature -- should have greater standing before the law. The concept has been around since 1972 when a professor at the University of Southern California, Christopher Stone, first hypothesized the notion; he asked in an article, Should Trees Have Standing? But legal scholars say we are still far from giving nature a solid legal voice."

"If I've got a right to life, you have a duty not to kill me. If one thinks of other species in the same way -- they wouldn't have the same rights as humans, but they would at least have the right to exist, and therefore a fundamental right to play their part in the evolutionary story."

Read full article at theStar.com >>

(Photo: Methuselah, the oldest living thing on earth by harold_davis)

"What might a governance system look like if it were established to protect the rights of all members of a particular biological community, instead of only humans?"

"Cicero pointed out that each of our rights and freedoms must be limited in order that others may be free. It is far past time that we should consider limiting the rights of humans so they cannot unjustifiably prevent nonhuman members of a community from playing their part. Any legal system designed to give effect to modern scientific understandings (or, indeed, to many cultures' ancient understandings) of how the universe functions would have to prohibit humans from driving other species to extinction or deliberately destroying the functioning of major ecosystems. In the absence of such regulatory mechanisms, an oppressive and self-destructive regime will inevitably emerge. As indeed it has."

"In particular, we should examine the fact that, in the eyes of the law, corporations are considered people and entitled to civil rights. We often forget that corporations are only a few centuries old and have been continually evolving since their inception. Imagine what could be done if we changed the fiduciary responsibilities of directors to include obligations not only to profitability but also to the whole natural world, and if we imposed collective personal liability on corporate managers and stockholders to restore any damage that they cause to natural communities. Imagine if landowners who abused and degraded land lost the right to use it."

Read full article at Orion magazine >>

(Photo by brynmeilion)

Wealth in a Nutshell

Wealth is access to well-being.

There are at least three levels of wealth:

1. Tradable Wealth: Food, shelter, services, time, are all forms of tradable wealth. We are all familiar with tradable wealth--it is the stuff we need and want, the resources that we compete for. Things we can trade are the products or the components of systems.
2. Measurable Wealth: My health is non-tradable--I can't give it to you. I can give you my blood, which may affect both of our health, but I can't give you my health itself. It is a property of my body as a whole. However, you can measure my health in lots of objective ways: the miles I run or the number of times I see a doctor. Another thing that is non-tradable is the productive capacity of a factory. I can sell you the products of the factory, or the factory itself, but not its productive capacity. But you can measure its productivity by comparing its output to the inputs it requires. Similarly the health of a forest is non-tradable. Its diversity, resilience, etc. can, as with bodily health and productive capacity, be affected and objectively measured, but it can't be traded. Bodies, factories, and forests are all examples of systems. Things we can measure but not trade are properties of systems as a whole.
3. Acknowledgeable Wealth: Friendship, beauty, freedom, civility, culture, happiness, integrity, reputation--these are all forms of acknowledgeable wealth. They are neither tradable nor objectively measurable because their impact is only felt subjectively. I can have friendships of different strengths--from an acquaintance to a best buddy--and though I can tell the qualitative difference between them, that difference is not measurable using any external scale. Rather, it is a difference in quality of relationship between one system (me) and two other systems (my acquaintance, and my buddy). Similarly my professional reputation comes from my relationships with my previous clients. As a potential client you can get a subjective sense of my reputation by talking to my previous clients, but there is no one objective standard to go by in making your choice. Those things that we can acknowledge but cannot measure or trade are inter-systemic resonances.

These levels of wealth are interdependent. Many communities are resource-poor but health- and culture-rich, but this is only possible up to a point: at some point lack of resources will degrade health and culture. Communities that are resource-rich but don't maintain their other levels of wealth will eventually degrade their capacity to maintain their tradable wealth.

Wealth Acknowledgement

When I barter a dozen of my eggs for a pound of your carrots, wealth acknowledgment happens in the act of haggling: It's where we determined how many eggs for how many carrots. When I pay you a coin for your carrots instead (because you don't want my eggs), the coin itself is the acknowledgment of the wealth transfer. The advantage is that the wealth-acknowledgment token, the coin, is redeemable elsewhere in the community. And when communities start using paper notes as wealth-acknowledgment tokens instead of precious metal, the number of transactions is no longer limited by the amount of metal available. When communities invent wealth-acknowledgment tokens for investment, like stock certificates sold by entrepreneurs, they further unlock the potential for growth of wealth.

These examples show how the evolution of wealth-acknowledgment systems prepares the ground for the growth of wealth. They also show how wealth-acknowledgment systems are adopted by communities to reduce their risk in making transactions. Bartering is not risky because the wealth is immediately exchanged, but what if I don't need your carrots? Accepting a token allows me to give without immediately getting wealth in return, because I know I can use the token to get wealth later. Stocks and bonds work similarly in higher-risk situations. Thus wealth-acknowledgment systems evolve in a feedback spiral with social cohesion and trust. They require some level of trust and cohesion to function, but they generate much greater cohesion and trust, which allows new wealth-acknowledgment systems, and the loop continues.

Grant-making, endowments, charitable trusts, and donations (what we call philanthropy), are all efforts to increase measurable or acknowledgeable wealth. Organizations that seek to increase measurable and acknowledgeable wealth in communities almost always suffer from the lack of money. To increase our ability to cultivate these levels of wealth, we need a wealth-acknowledgment system that moves beyond money. That's where open money comes in.

(Click the title or "Read on" below to read the rest of the article)

"Continued human progress now depends on an economic transformation that is more profound than any seen in the last century."

Environmental Action Driving Global Economy

Environmental issues were once regarded as irrelevant to economic activity, but today they are dramatically rewriting the rules for business, investors, and consumers. Around the world, innovative responses to climate change and other environmental problems are affecting more than $100 billion in annual capital flows as pioneering entrepreneurs, organizations, and governments take steps to create the Earth's first "sustainable" global economy.

In State of the World 2008: Innovations for a Sustainable Economy, researchers with the Worldwatch Institute and other leading experts highlight an array of economic innovations that offer new opportunities for long-term prosperity.

In Chapter 1 of State of the World 2008, project co-directors Gary Gardner and Tom Prugh highlight seven principles of a sustainable global economy, which underlie the work of innovation pioneers concerned about environmental degradation and widening income inequality:

1. Adjust the scale of economic activity to fit within boundaries set by the natural environment
2. Make prices tell the ecological truth, by incorporating environmental costs into the price of goods and services
3. Shift the goal of economies from growth to development, by focusing on generating greater levels of well-being
4. Account for nature's economic contributions through a full assessment and valuation of nature's services
5. Apply the precautionary principle to economic activity
6. Revitalize ancient principles of commons management to govern resource use in an increasingly crowded world
7. Properly value the extensive contributions women make to any economy

Some examples:

• In 2006, an estimated $52 billion was invested in wind power, biofuels, and other renewable energy sources, up 33 percent from 2005. Preliminary estimates indicate that the figure soared as high as $66 billion in 2007.
• Carbon trading is growing even more explosively, reaching an estimated $30 billion in 2006, nearly triple the amount traded in 2005.
• Innovative companies are revolutionizing industrial production while also saving money: for example, chemical giant DuPont cut its greenhouse gas emissions 72 percent below 1991 levels by 2007, saving $3 billion in the process.

Breakthrough Environmental Initiatives

Some of the most powerful players in today's economy have announced breakthrough environmental initiatives in the past two years, including Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, McKinsey & Company, and Wal-Mart. And many large companies are putting their political muscle where their investment capital is. Twenty-seven major corporations, including Alcoa, Dow Chemical, Duke Energy, General Motors, and Xerox, are actively urging the U.S. Congress to pass legislation regulating greenhouse gas emissions, something that would have been unthinkable two years ago.

Another sign of dramatic change is the 575 environmental and energy hedge funds now in existence, most of them formed in the last few years. "Clean tech" has rapidly grown to be the world's third-largest recipient of venture capital, trailing only the Internet and biotechnology. And 54 banks, representing 85 percent of global private project finance capacity, have endorsed the Equator Principles, a new international standard of sustainability investment.

State of the World 2008 cites recent studies that conclude that the damage from global climate change could equal as much as 8 percent of global economic output by the end of this century. The report also notes that, according to the World Bank, some 39 countries experienced a decline of 5 percent or more in wealth when accounting measures also included environmental losses, such as unsustainable forest harvesting, depletion of non-renewable resources, and damage from carbon emissions. For 10 countries, the decline ranged from 25 to 60 percent.

Reforms Needed

To avoid economic collapse at the global level, the authors of State of the World 2008 call for major reforms of government policy to steer investment away from destructive activities such as the extraction of fossil fuels and toward a new generation of environmentally sustainable industries. Specific recommendations include making prices tell the ecological truth by reducing subsidies and adopting environmental taxes. The report also urges a full assessment and valuation of the "free" services that nature provides to the human economy and describes efforts to create markets to protect biodiversity

"We have the tools today to steer the global economy onto a sustainable path," say project co-directors Gary Gardner and Tom Prugh. "The task now is to bring them together and scale them up so that they become the norm across today's economies."

State of the World 2008 finds growing evidence suggesting that the global economy is now destroying its own ecological base. It quotes former World Bank chief economist Nicholas Stern, author of the acclaimed Stern Review on the economics of climate change, who describes the changes now under way in Earth's atmosphere as "the greatest and widest-ranging market failure ever seen."

"Continued human progress now depends on an economic transformation that is more profound than any seen in the last century," says Worldwatch president Christopher Flavin. "We should be practicing a sustainable approach to economics that takes advantage of the ability of markets to allocate scarce resources while explicitly recognizing that our economy is dependent on the broader ecosystem that contains it."

Read the Foreword >>

Listen to audio summaries >>

Read the overview of innovations >>

Copyright 2007, Worldwatch Institute

Nature is nothing if not extravagant. Four billion years of natural design, forged in the cradle of evolution, has yielded such a profusion of forms we can barely grasp the vigor and diversity of life on Earth. Responding to unique local conditions, ants have evolved into nearly 10,000 species, several hundred of which can be found in the crown of a single Amazonian tree. Fruit trees produce thousands of blossoms-an astonishing abundance of blossoms-so that another tree might germinate, take root and grow. Birds, too, seem to have a taste for the extravagant: Who could say the wood duck's plumage is restrained?

For most of our history, the human response to the living earth, to particular places, has expressed the same flowering of diversity. Bearing the unique human ability to imagine and create, we entered the show and developed our own extravagant gestures. We built not just shelter, but beautiful, elegant responses to locale; the breathing, shade-providing Bedouin tent along with the ornate, aspiring temples of cool, coastal Japan. We designed not just wraps against the wind but tailored garments for ritual, celebration, and our own delight. We spoke and moved not just for utilitarian ends but to make drama and poetry, Balinese dance and Shakespearean verse-human creations stoking the fire.

Though human industry in the past 150 years has resorted to brute force rather than elegant design, commerce, too, could become a wellspring of creativity, productivity, and pleasure. Think of the thriving marketplaces that have enlivened the world's great cities, the cherished objects and materials that transform shelter into soulful dwelling. These need not be sacrificed to protect our forests, rivers, soil and air. Indeed, human industry and habitations can be designed to celebrate interdependence with other living systems, transforming the making and consumption of things into a regenerative force. Design can perform and preserve the extravagant gesture-in the marketplace, in the human community, and in the natural world.

Read the full article >>>

Buy and watch the movie: "The Next Industrial Revolution" >>>

This article takes us on a journey from the destructive Industrial Revolution, to Eco-Efficiency as a futile measure to mend it, and into the NEXT Industrial Revolution that will harmonize Equity, Economy and Ecology. Some quotations from the article:

If someone were to present the Industrial Revolution as a retroactive design assignment, it might sound like this:

Design a system of production that:

• puts billions of pounds of toxic material into the air, water, and soil every year
• measures prosperity by activity, not legacy
• requires thousands of complex regulations to keep people and natural systems from being poisoned too quickly
• produces materials so dangerous that they will require constant vigilance from future generations
• results in gigantic amounts of waste
• puts valuable materials in holes all over the planet, where they can never be retrieved
• erodes the diversity of biological species and cultural practices

Eco-efficiency instead:

• releases fewer pounds of toxic material into the air, water, and soil every year
• measures prosperity by less activity
• meets or exceeds the stipulations of thousands of complex regulations that aim to keep people and natural systems from being poisoned too quickly
• produces fewer dangerous materials that will require constant vigilance from future generations
• results in smaller amounts of waste
• puts fewer valuable materials in holes all over the planet, where they can never be retrieved
• standardizes and homogenizes biological species and cultural practices

The Next Industrial Revolution can be framed as the following assignment: Design an industrial system for the next century that

• introduces no hazardous materials into the air, water, or soil
• measures prosperity by how much natural capital we can accrue in productive ways
• measures productivity by how many people are gainfully and meaningfully employed
• measures progress by how many buildings have no smokestacks or dangerous effluents
• does not require regulations whose purpose is to stop us from killing ourselves too quickly
• produces nothing that will require future generations to maintain vigilance
• celebrates the abundance of biological and cultural diversity and solar income

Read the full article >>>

Buy and watch the movie >>>

Introduction of the book

The overall goal of the Decade of Education for Sustainable Development (DESD) is ?gto integrate the values inherent in sustainable development into all aspects of learning to encourage changes in behavior that allow for a more sustainable and just society for all?h. A key question that often emerges is: what are the values inherent in sustainable development that could help us, as human beings, to realize the vision of sustainability?

Increasingly, more groups and individuals around the world are recognizing the Earth Charter as an empowering and practical source of these values. The Earth Charter resulted from a decade-long, worldwide, cross-cultural civil society dialogue to identify the widely shared values and principles of sustainability, and is being used as a values-based educational tool to guide humanity towards a sustainable future.

As a matter of fact, UNESCO, during its 32nd General Conference in October 2003, adopted a resolution recognizing the Earth Charter "as an important ethical framework for sustainable development". The resolution affirms member states' intentions to ?gutilize the Earth Charter as an educational instrument, particularly in the framework of the United Nations Decade for Education for Sustainable Development?h. So, how is this being accomplished? This publication has been envisioned to offer stories -- case studies from around the world -- that highlight how groups and individuals are using the Earth Charter as a tool for education for sustainable development. These stories come from non-formal and formal educational settings and describe a variety of experiences, including the development of guidebooks for primary school teachers, the inclusion of sustainability values in universities?f departments of education, law, engineering and general studies; the reshaping of local, regional and national curricula; and, the creation of vital and engaging programs and workshops for children and youth.

The richness and diversity of these stories demonstrate that the Earth Charter?fs integrated approach can help to clarify the vision of a more just, sustainable and peaceful world at the same time as it broadens this vision. These stories also show that there is no single ?eright way?f of approaching this task -- the methods used for bringing the values of sustainability into educational practices depend on the context, creativity and the level of engagement of those involved.

In the process of preparing this publication, a set of criteria were developed to select these stories which best responded to the purpose of the "good practices" series, of which this publication is now a part. The following criteria were used for selecting the stories:

* Are values-driven experiences that use the Earth Charter as a framework or tool

* Promote transformative learning -- characterized mainly by:
- Promoting ?elearning?f more than ?eteaching?f
- Concentrating more on the construction of meaning than on communicating the message
- Promoting the mutual transformation of teachers and learners
- Focusing on local knowledge and community-based decisions and actions
- Orienting learning more towards process than product/result
- Use constructive and participatory methodologies
- Use multiple methods and integrative approaches
Experiences that use interdisciplinary approaches to assess and address issues, drawing upon a variety of
methods: writing, art, drama, debate, scientific analysis, etc.
- Are context specific and action oriented
Experiences where teachers and students (and/or community members) are learning about regional,
national and global issues while carrying out actions through field trips, projects, and community service opportunities.
- Are on-going experiences that can also offer ?elessons learned?f

This publication includes twenty-seven illustrative stories from countries around the world. Each one is written by a different author -- a schoolteacher, community activist, youth worker, university member, minister of education, law professor, teacher trainer, art instructor -- and each brings a different experience to light. To build some continuity in sharing these experiences an effort was made to organize the content of each story around three main sections:

1. A general description of the experience, including its objectives, duration, target group(s), and information about the leading organization(s) involved;
2. A detailed explanation of the methodological aspects and activities of the experience; and
3. A final section on the conclusions and lessons learned from the experience.

The stories in this collection share a common objective -- to contribute to building sustainable societies. We hope that you will enjoy the wide variety of contexts, objectives and methodologies presented in this publication. Furthermore, it is our hope that these experiences will stimulate and inspire new efforts to integrate the values of sustainability into education and into all educational settings across the globe.

UNESCO & Earth Charter International

Download the book here (169 pages PDF file)