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In the Pacific Northwest, Native American Communities Plan for Climate Change

Posted in Climate Change, Sustainable Design, Water Management on 05/06/2013 | 1 Comment »

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While we’ve heard a lot about the transformational climate change adaptation plans of New York City, Boston, and San Francisco, and other big coastal cities, small coastal communities are also creating bold plans for how to handle tidal surges, rising sea levels, and temperature changes. If they are smart, they are also figuring out what sustainable development opportunities can arise out of their adaptation efforts, too. At the American Planning Association (APA) conference in Chicago, Edwin Knight, Swinomish Indian Tribal Community, Camano Island, Washington; and Sean Keithly and Steve Moddemeyer, both at Collinswoerman, discussed how the Swinomish Tribe on Camano Island, a small Native American community on the Puget Sound, has taken up the twin challenges of climate change adaptation planning and sustainable development.

Knight said an examination of 650,000 years of Antartic ice data shows that “carbon dioxide emissions are going off the chart. We are currently exceeding our worst-case scenarios.” Temperatures are expected to become hotter than anything for the past 100,000 years. In this century, we can expect a 3-8 degree Fahrenheit rise in temperatures. Rising tides are also expected. In the Seattle area, they are planning for a 3-feet rise this century.

According to Knight, “changes are going to happen regardless of how much we cut carbon dioxide emissions now.” Those changes vary locally. Depending on where a community is, they could face “floods, cold snaps, heat waves, or droughts.” The big worry is that “change could come faster than we think.”

Knight said the primary fear in the Camano Island Swinomish Tribal community is “a tidal surge on top of a high tide,” which would utterly overwhelm the town’s dikes. Currently, the storm surge barriers are about 5 feet above sea level. With a tidal surge, waters could easily rise 8 feet. But even by increasing the height of the dikes, “how long can we expect protection?” Building, say, a 12-foot dike is also not a viable solution because it would be prohibitively expensive.

For a small community with limited resources like Camano Island, the challenge then becomes how to do sustainable development in the face of climate change. “There are many disciplines involved. There are complex issues in changing circumstances. Funding sources are hard to tap. There are long time frames.”

Camano Island is a rural coastal community of about 3,000. They have forested uplands, agricultural lands, and lots of residential areas, but the hub of economic activity is around the coasts, which are increasingly under threat. A few years ago, a storm surge that breached their dike system wrecked havoc. To protect against the next surge, the community secured about $400,000 in funds to conduct a climate change adaptation plan. Some 80 percent of the funds came from the federal government while 20 percent came from the tribe.

During the first year, the tribe focused on conducting an “impact assessment, scoping the strategy.” The analysis included a review of “climate data,” creating an inventory of “vulnerabilities,” which yielded a “risk zone map.” The second year focused on creating a set of recommendations and an action plan for the whole community. The plan had to account for immediate and long-term threats, sustainable development, regional access (including plans for what would happen if connections to the mainland were severed), and long-term levee maintenance.

Keithly at Collinswoerman said his team used a “values-based approach” to create the long-term development plan for the island. “Cultural values underscored everything.” The plan presents “site development opportunities” along with a master plan for future development. The team looked at residential areas along with relatively underused agriculture areas. The waterfront was a key focus area. The island is also set up for recreation so they looked at possible impacts on their key sources of tourism dollars: kayaking, wetland walks, and other eco-tourism. Beyond the natural landscape, the planning team looked at all the buildings and how to make them more resilient.

An original plan included “transition zones,” a new concept that would move coastal buildings from the land to the water through the use of pylons or even floating structures. “This is pro-active sea level rise adaptation.” Development would now be “water based, sustainable over time.” There were ideas for a floating hotel or eco-lodge as a centerpiece. Unfortunately, while the Corps of Engineers gives “some considerations for sea level rise,” water-dependent buildings still can’t be done “under current regulations.” Keithly said “a marina is OK, but proactive adaptation isn’t.” The “regulatory norms are unfortunately pretty impractical.”

So an updated plan was crafted for a mixed-use waterfront with multiple quadrants, organized based on how far they were from the water. Old sites would be raised with soils, while a new mixed-use development would also be elevated. “There will be large flex office space to bring in new commercial tenants.” Hopefully, the floating building plans will eventually be approved, too, but in the interim, a planned eco-lodge and cabins will be designed with the highest sustainable building standards.

Moddemeyer at Collinswoerman said the end goal of the planning effort was to really bring out what the Swinomish already know. They have been living off the land sustainably for thousands of years. They have gone through many cycles of “exploiting and conserving their resources,” and historically planned for “change instead of continuity.”

Their smart plan reflects this understanding of nature’s cycles, and now goes beyond climate change: it’s a tool for dealing with all sorts of variability. Improving the resiliency of the community and built environment is viewed as the primary way to deal with all this. “We need semi-autonomous systems that nest in broader systems. We need networked but independent nodes.”

Explore the Swinomish climate plan.

Image credit: Swinomish Canoe Journey / Mary Evitt. LA Conner News Weekly

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Interview with Kevin Shanley on Protecting Our Coasts

Posted in Climate Change, Environment, Landscape Architecture, Policy and Regulation, Water Management on 05/01/2013 | 2 Comments »

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Kevin Shanley, FASLA, is CEO of SWA Group and a long-time resident of Houston.

You were recently in Washington, D.C. speaking at the Renewable Natural Resources Foundation on improving the resiliency of our coasts in an effort to protect them from increasingly damaging storms and sea-level rise brought on by climate change. In the wake of Hurricane Sandy, this is an issue on the minds of just about everybody who lives on the coast. What were the lessons of this disaster?

There are several lessons. There are real-world lessons and then “should-be” lessons. The real-world lesson is that everybody is at risk. These storms don’t just happen to Florida or Bangladesh. They can hit New York City. The storm could have hit Washington, D.C., with disastrous results. We’re not ready.

The other lesson we need to learn is quite important: we forget really quickly. Katrina happened, now eight years ago. Some structural changes were made to the levee system, but all of the really great plans to re-build New Orleans as a more sustainable community, a better community, a more integrated community came to nothing. In Houston in 2008, Hurricane Ike was a near miss. The SSPEED Center at Rice University is involved with this and has been working to make sure we don’t forget what happened with Ike. If Ike had come in, it would have been a disaster ten-fold Katrina. It didn’t, so we were lucky. It swerved about sixty miles to the east and it literally wiped the Bolivar Peninsula clean, virtually every structure on the peninsula was gone. It went up Chambers County, an agricultural community, and created huge damage, but relatively light because there’s nobody there, which is a lesson to learn.

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The challenge after Sandy is to ask ourselves what’s the next thing that’s going to distract everybody? In 2001, Houston was hit not with a hurricane but with a really amazing tropical storm called Allison. It dumped thirty inches of rain in twenty-four hours. It flooded seventy-five thousand homes and ninety five thousand cars. It was an amazing flood. It actually tracked all the way up to Canada. Post-Allison, many good things started to happen and a number actually did happen. There were bigger policy changes and changes that many of us were working on, but then in September 2001, guess what happened? The national attention, the local attention, everybody’s attention totally changed and a lot of policy-changing momentum was lost.

So will there be a diversion from Sandy? Yes. North Korea is percolating, and, now we’re focused on whether or not something terrible will happen there?” As is the case with media and big events, each successive one diverts energy and intellectual focus from the present problem—in this case, Hurricane Sandy. Sandy will be forgotten in the national attention, and unfortunately at the local level, attention might diminish as well. While there will be some good policy people working at it, and the number of people personally affected won’t forget, our national focus on Sandy will fade. In some respects, the recovery is amazing. The human species is amazingly resilient. The Bolivar Peninsula was wiped clean. Today, you wouldn’t know it. People have rebuilt right there in exactly the same place. It’s phenomenal. The key is finding a way to rebuild strategically and learn lessons from these disasters to shape our future plans. We also need to find a way to take a long-term view on many of these problems.

The New York Times reported that New York Governor Andrew Cuomo wants to spend $400 million to buy up homes in New York City, demolish them, and then preserve the flood-prone land as undeveloped coastline. The idea is to spend some big bucks to turn some coastal areas into wetland or parkland. Does this approach make sense? Can this model be realistically scaled-up elsewhere in the U.S.? What are the alternatives?

It’s a potentially very powerful tool. Speaking globally, the British and Dutch have been at it for decades. It’s called “managed retreat.” It’s about getting out of harm’s way. FEMA has been funding buyouts like that for a while now. It’s a really good program to remove the most at-risk structures, particularly federally-insured structures that time after time are repeat sinks for federal flood insurance claims.

What needs to be thought about, however, if you’re talking about scaling it up, is how to replace the economic value of the development that’s being removed from harm’s way. It’s about the loss of tax revenue. There are sales taxes based on the occupants, all kinds of revenue to the community. This revenue pays for schools, sewer systems, security, and all of the other things that we take for granted in government. Coastal real estate is expensive because it’s attractive. If you take that out of the equation, you’ve got to be ready to think how to replace that. That’s the challenge facing all of us. Great ecological strategies need to be considered economically, and vice versa.

New York City seems to be seriously considering using “soft” green infrastructure instead of “hard” infrastructure, like hugely expensive seawalls, to protect against another disaster. In a recent Metropolis magazine piece, Susannah Drake, ASLA, ASLA NY Chapter president, described soft infrastructure as “transforming the waterfront from a definitive boundary into a subtly graded band.” The Dutch are already moving ahead with this kind of infrastructure, having seen the ecological damage caused by hard infrastructure. Will American policymakers ever buy into this?

Soft green infrastructure along coastal fringe areas can play a really important role in restoring ecological functions to our coastlines. Our coastlines have been severely degraded from an ecological performance standpoint. Green infrastructure as protection for urban areas needs really serious science and engineering studies to figure out the effectiveness of the interventions across different scenarios. Just how effective is a coastal marsh of several hundred yards wide? We’re not talking about miles wide. We’re talking probably several hundred yards or hundreds of feet. What is the benefit to, say, Manhattan? How does that compare to other strategies? Can we take a blended approach to soften our edges and create redundant and resilient strategies?

I’ve seen some beautiful renderings of the edge of Manhattan as it could be. There would be dramatic changes in ecological performance and a transformation in public perception about the city as a green place. There are a lot of wonderful aspects to this. But from a surge and hurricane risk-protection standpoint, we need to be careful not to set up false expectations. To what extent do coastal marshes protect us when a surge comes in that is 15 or 20 feet above those marshes? The green infrastructure could impede the wave action and the movement of the water or even exacerbate the run-up of a surge in shallow waters. The Gulf Coast of the North American continent has a long, shallow coastal run-up, which tends to exacerbate wind-driven surge.

We need to ask specific questions about where the benefits are. We need to ask our scientists, engineers, policymakers, and economists if we are looking at increased sea-level rise rates that are projected to be about a meter every 100 years (three feet every 100 years). Also, rising water levels drown coastal marshes. That’s what has happened in the Galveston Bay complex. Because of subsidence caused by groundwater withdrawal, we lost square miles of emergent coastal marsh. The bottom dropped out and it drowned the marshes. How does this progression work? One can say, “Well, the marsh will just march inland.” Well, will it? Does the actual geography allow it to just march inward? Will there be a period where there’s nothing and then it has to get above a small bluff elevation? Those are important questions to ask if we’re talking about putting really significant resources into this green infrastructure approach to improving coastal resiliency.

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Respected scientists argue that sea levels could rise four feet by 2100. If any of the recent hurricanes to hit the U.S. had occurred at higher sea levels, the damages would have been that much more extensive and costly to repair. What are you hearing about seal level rise? How does this change the timeline for action on improving coastal resiliency?

Sea level rise is like watching the hour hand move. We are like grammar school students: the hour hand doesn’t seem to move during class. Our time horizons are measured in just a few years at best. If we’re forward-thinking, we might think out 10 years. The meaningful impacts of sea level rise, the really serious impacts are happening right now, but this is a process that’s been going on for thousands of years, millennia, actually millions of years.

Are anthropomorphic forces going to increase the rate of change? It’s a really good question and there are certainly many scientists who think that the burning of all this fossil fuel is increasing carbon dioxide, which is increasing the temperature of the globe, which is melting the icecap and raising sea levels. Will public policymakers be able to think out beyond a year or even 10 years to 100-year thresholds? The dialogue is there, but I don’t see it coming down to meet real public policy changes yet.

There are outliers in the predictive scientific community who suggest the possibility that if the Greenland icecap, which is the big gorilla in the room, increased its rate of melt or disintegrated due to some threshold that we’re not sure about, sea levels could rise very rapidly within an individual’s lifetime. It could be a disaster. Would we be prepared for that? Absolutely not. As somebody who thinks about public policy, I think we should be running scenarios. We are uncertain as to the disposition of our climate and sea levels. When you’re not sure of something you should be thinking about different scenarios. You should be thinking “Well, what if it’s only three feet in 100 years? What do I need to do? But what if it’s six feet? What if it’s 10 meters, 30 feet, in 100 years? What should I do?” This dialogue should be occurring so that if the natural world presents us with an existential challenge at least some part of the community has been grappling with it and may have some appropriate paths to take.

You’ve been a long-time advocate for using natural systems to deal with water. In a recent article in The Huffington Post you write that Houston and other cities along the Galveston Bay rely on “antiquated storm-protection techniques and land practices doomed to repeated failures.” What’s needed are “policy shifts rooted in a natural systems-approach that work with nature’s tremendous forces.” What’s holding back these policy shifts? Where are the biggest obstacles at the federal and local levels?  

The biggest obstacle is the lack of public awareness. FEMA creates flood-risk maps or flood insurance rate maps. In the coastal areas of North America they are woefully inadequate. FEMA realizes that and they’re in the process of updating them. In our region we haven’t seen the updates. We’re waiting with bated breath. We’re not sure we’ll entirely agree with their characterization of risk. Large swaths of the community rely on this public information to advise them about the level of risk. They look at the maps and say “I’m not at risk,” whereas actual surge models being prepared show huge areas are at risk. So, first there has to be clear science that determines what defines the level of risk.

Second, there needs to be clear communication about the risks. That can be through things like flood insurance rate maps, but it also needs to be through public education and policy. There needs to be clear disclosure on every real estate transaction. There was an effort in the Clear Lake City area, which is in the Houston metro region where NASA’s Johnson Space Center is located. They actually put up signs, little colored pylons, that indicated “This is the water level for a category four storm. This is the water level for a category five storm.” These little pylons were 10 feet tall and very clear. You see it there and you would wonder, “Gee, should I buy a house here?” or certainly “Gee, should I make sure I renew my flood insurance?” A local politician, at the behest of the real estate community, insisted they be taken down.

Beyond research you’ve also made these natural systems work in real-world landscapes. The Buffalo Bayou Promenade in Houston really set the example for how to turn a trash-soaked eyesore into a beautiful piece of parkland that also supports flood control. Houston seems to really understand the value of this kind of multi-use infrastructure. What led to the changes in Houston’s approach to its waterways and green space?

Houston is just beginning to learn the value of its waterfront real estate and for Houston it’s the value of our rivers and streams (we call them bayous).

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A lot of cities around the country are actually way ahead of Houston in having recognized that value, whether it’s a coastal waterfront or a river waterfront. In Houston, the new riverfront has been the result of years of work by lots of individuals, non-profit organizations, and government agencies. Each main bayou in the city has its own citizen advocacy organizations. Some of them are fairly significant and have permanent staff, whereas others  are purely volunteer citizen groups. There have been willing ears in the public agencies. More recently, there has been support at an elected official-level, including a very supportive mayor right now. That’s very encouraging. But we have a long ways to go. We’re just starting on this effort. We have 2,000 miles of open stream channels in Harris County alone, so we’re just beginning.

You’ve done a lot of work in China. What is your impression about how they are approaching coastal resiliency? Is there a uniquely Chinese approach to these issues that we can learn from in the West?

The universe of what’s going on in China is amazing. You might think “Ah, Beijing controls everything. They can tell everyone what to do.” Well, it actually doesn’t work like that. The local government officials can have a surprising amount of independence and resistance to federal or provincial policies. There’s that normal political friction that happens between different units of government. Good policies are being generated at the federal level, at the Beijing level; good policies are being generated at provincial levels. Good policies and projects are being implemented at local municipal levels. That’s exciting news.

The country is doing great wetlands restoration projects. Wetland parks are all the rage across China. Kongjian Yu, FASLA, principal at Turenscape and professor at Beijing University, probably has a dozen wetland parks on his desk in his office at any given time. We’re working on a number of them. It puts to shame anything we’re doing here. On the other hand, one has to balance that against the unbelievable rate of urbanization and its impact on the environment in China. It’s maybe only a drop in the bucket toward mitigating the impacts of urbanization that are going on right now.

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The good thing is they’re very interested in the topic. The people that we work with, which is a very self-selected group who are willing to pay a foreign consultant to come and advise them, are already interested. I have a biased view… I could paint this rosy picture of China because we go over there and we are talking to people that share our environmental values. But there are many who don’t share those values and that are in business just like in any country anywhere in the world. They’re just trying to add value and sell that value and profit and move on to the next project.

You take the whole climate issue in China. China’s doing some of the most progressive carbon-capture energy production in the world. For a while, they were the largest producer of solar cells. They’re the largest producer of wind generating equipment. There are all these sort of extremes of what they are doing. Yet in the global sense, they’re producing more carbon dioxide than anybody on a more rapid basis. They’re increasing their carbon and energy footprints. They’re still below us on a per-capita basis, but they’re working very hard to catch up to our own huge footprints. So you will find a really mixed bag in China.

What can we learn from China? We ought to be studying what they are doing right and trying to learn from their successes. To the extent they’re interested in partnering so they can learn from us, we ought to be sharing those solutions with them. It’s a wild ride, like a rollercoaster, and one who’s end we can’t see from our vantage point.

Image credits: (1) Kevin Shanley, FASLA / SWA Group, (2) Hurricane Ike damage at the Bolivar Peninsula / Bryan Carlile, Beck Geodetix, (3) Galveston Texas Galveston Island State Park near the gulf of Mexico / Chris Cornwell. Flickr, (4) ASLA 2009 General Design Award of Excellence. Buffalo Bayou Promenade. SWA Group / Bill Tatham, (5) Fuyang Waterfront Park / SWA Group

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Climate Change Is Already Affecting Americans

Posted in Climate Change on 01/17/2013 | 3 Comments »

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According to the draft report of the U.S. National Climate Assessment, released by the U.S. climate change research program, climate change is already affecting Americans. The 1,000-page report, which was written by 240 leading climate experts in the government and from universities, contends that certain types of weather events have become more frequent and intense — including “heat waves, heavy downpours, and, in some regions, floods and droughts.” Beyond weather changes, “sea levels are rising, oceans are becoming more acidic, and glaciers and arctic sea ice are melting.” One of the scarier statements in the report: “Because of the influence of human activities, the past climate is no longer a sufficient indicator of future conditions.”

Since 2000, U.S. law requires the group to release a report every four years. The last report was issued in 2009. No reports were done under the administration of George W. Bush. To put U.S. emissions in context, the U.S. accounts for around 20 percent of total global emissions. U.S. carbon emissions are actually down to a 20 year low, in large part due to the transition away from coal to natural gas. Despite the positive trends domestically, global emissions just keep increasing, with this past year the worst on record.

Interestingly, the authors admit that some effects of climate change could have positive benefits — such as longer growing seasons — but the vast majority of changes will be “disruptive to society,” because institutions and infrastructure have been designed for the “relatively stable climate of the past, not the changing one of the present and future.” Furthermore, natural ecosystems that we all rely on will be put under enormous stress.

The report confirms what many of us have noticed: that temperatures are getting hotter, year by year. “U.S. average temperature has increased by about 1.5°F since 1895; more than 80 percent of this 21 increase has occurred since 1980.” This past year was the hottest on record. And in 2011, a deadly heatwave swept across the U.S., with temperatures pushing 110F.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t like there will be much relief. After reading the report, The Guardian wrote that “future generations of Americans can expect to spend 25 days a year sweltering in temperatures above 100F (38C).” The report goes on to say overall temperatures will also rise, “with the next few decades projected to see another 2°F 26 to 4°F of warming in most areas.” There will also be less relief at night, as night-time temperatures also increase.

The health of many American is expected be affected. “Climate change will influence human health in many ways; some existing health threats will intensify, and new health threats will emerge. Some of the key drivers of health impacts include: increasingly frequent and intense extreme heat, which causes heat-related illnesses and deaths and over time, worsens drought and wildfire risks, and intensifies air pollution; increasingly frequent extreme precipitation and associated flooding that can lead to injuries and increases in marine and freshwater-borne disease; and rising sea levels that intensify coastal flooding and storm surge.”

The elderly, children, poor, and sick are particularly vulnerable. Still other populations are vulnerable simply because of where they are located. People in floodplains, coastal zones and some urban areas are threatened, along with those in the arid Southwest. The report seems to say climate change then has major implications for the health care system: “maintaining a robust public health infrastructure will be critical to managing the potential health impacts.”

Changes will have economic implications. As an example, industries that rely heavily on water, like agriculture, will have to make do with less of it: “Surface and groundwater supplies in many regions are already stressed by increasing demand for water as well as declining runoff and groundwater recharge. In many regions, climate change increases the likelihood of water shortages and competition for water among agricultural, municipal, and environmental uses.” Extreme heat is also expected to impact crops and livestock.

Infrastructure, particularly aging systems in coastal cities, will be hard-hit, given they are expected to be taxed by nature more often. As the report authors point out with the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, infrastructure damage is already happening and the repairs are expensive. “Sea level rise and storm surges, in combination with the pattern of heavy development in coastal areas, are already resulting in damage to infrastructure such as roads, buildings, ports, and energy facilities.” As a result, landscape architects and others have been calling for increased use of green infrastructure systems to boost resiliency.

Nature herself will also change with the climate. “Climate change-driven perturbations to ecosystems that have direct human impacts include reduced water supply and quality, the loss of iconic species and landscapes, distorted rhythms of nature, and the potential for extreme events to eliminate the capacity of ecosystems to provide benefits.” 

Climate change, along with human-imposed changes to landscapes and ecosystems, makes those ecosystems more vulnerable to “damage from extreme events while at the same time reducing their natural capacity to modulate the impacts of such events.” The natural infrastructure systems we rely on, “salt marshes, reefs, mangrove forests, and barrier islands,” to defend coastal ecosystems and infrastructure, including roads and buildings,” are also being further weakened by “coastal development, erosion, and sea level rise.”

Furthermore, extreme weather events can degrade the effectiveness of crucial green infrastructure like wetlands, whether natural or man-made. “Floodplain wetlands, although greatly reduced from their historical extent, absorb floodwaters and reduce the effects of high flows on river-margin lands. Extreme weather events that produce sudden increases in water flow, often carrying debris and pollutants, can decrease the natural capacity of ecosystems to process pollutants.”

The report authors call for communities to “proactively prepare for climate change” and begin aggressive adaptation planning programs. Smart adaptation, of course, will also work to mitigate carbon emissions. Think of urban forests that not only cool and clean the air, but also store carbon.

Perhaps President Obama will get the report’s message, too. Current efforts by the administration were described as “not close to sufficient.” Obama has said that climate change is one of his top three priorities for his next administration. The president may even host a bipartisan summit at the White House early in his new term to launch a “national climate action strategy.” Apparently, Democrats in Congress will also try to pick up climate change legislation but focus it on efforts to strengthen coastal communities against future “superstorms,” reports The Guardian.

Read the executive summary or see the whole report to see how your region will be affected.

The draft version is open to public comment. The report is important, as it’s supposed to guide federal, state, and local efforts on climate change mitigation and adaptation. The voice of designers and planners of all kinds should be in the mix. Submit your ideas by April 12.

Image credit: NYC taxis submerged in floods / RT.com

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Cities Advance on Climate Change

Posted in Climate Change, Green Buildings, Policy and Regulation on 11/21/2012 | 1 Comment »


According to a panel of environmental officials from some of the most sustainable cities in the world, cities make up 2 percent of the world’s landmass, but account for two-thirds of the world’s energy and 70 percent of the carbon emissions. As a result, mayors play a central role in alleviating the climate crisis and leading the world to more sustainable patterns of development. In a session at the 2012 Greenbuild in San Francisco, officials from member cities of the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group — Vancouver, Melbourne, San Francisco, Tokyo — discussed how their cities are taking action now to deal with climate change, reduce energy use, and make the built environment greener.

Rohit Aggarwala, advisor to the C40 group, said a majority of the 63 cities that make up the C40 group “want to focus on green buildings.” These mayors want to “encourage green building retrofits now.” Aggarwala added that mayors, who are “managers, and by nature impatient,” are looking for “smart, pragmatic solutions.”

Sadhu Johnston, City of Vancouver (and former chief sustainability officer for Chicago), said his city’s population has grown 27 percent and jobs have grown 18 percent since 1990. However, during the same time frame, carbon levels have been reduced. “At 4.6 tons of carbon per person per year, we have the lowest emissions per capita in North America.” Vancouver’s success is in part due to programs that capture landfill gas for energy, expand public transit, and build mixed-use communities. Johnston said there has also been a focus on increasing density downtown: “There’s been a 75 percent increase in people downtown.” The city has seen a 48 percent increase in LEED-certified buildings, and now there’s now a minimum LEED gold certification level for new buildings.

Still, the big challenge is to reduce carbon emissions by 33 percent by 2020, which isn’t far off. How can the city do this? Johnston says LEED-Neighborhood Development (ND) Platinum “districts” have acted as a key catalyst, leading to a new energy system based off old infrastructure. These new super-sustainable districts are now ”connected to the sewer mains” where they capture heat from the existing legacy system. “The idea is to reuse waste heat and reuse the legacy steam systems of the city.” The private-owned systems are now being connected to more and more developments. Indeed, new developments have to make a connection, while older developments can make one on a voluntary basis. Johnston said a key to the program’s success was that the Vancouver city government tested it first. “You have to lead by example. You have to do this before telling the private sector to do it. Running your own utility system, you find the issues first.”

For Krista Milne, City of Melbourne, getting to carbon neutral by 2020 will be a challenge because the city doesn’t have the power to limit carbon emissions from all sources. The city government also has to deal with the state and national governments. In Melbourne, 53 percent of emissions come from buildings, so retrofitting buildings is a key goal. Over the next 10 years, the city aims to revamp 1,200 buildings. This is expected to require some $2 billion in investment. But the program is expected to create some 8,000 new jobs.

Milne said the city has discovered an “information barrier – the business case for private property owners isn’t clear.” Banks also thought fnancing for these building retrofits was risky given many of these buildings already have large mortgages. So the city council recently created a new scheme for “environmental upgrade financing” that enables financiers to off-set the risks. Essentially, the city guarantees that the financing will be paid back, which lowers the cost of financing. Property owners are also now allowed to pass on some of the costs of upgrading buildings to tenants, as “they benefit too.”

To date, some $5.6 million in deals have been made. Just 2-3 years into the 10 year program, Milne said some 10 percent of the goals have been accomplished. But the most valuable impact may be that the governments of Sydney and New South Wales are now following Melbourne’s model. Another big push will focus on “decarbonizing the energy supply,” in the same way Vancouver has.

San Francisco has an equally as ambitious program, befitting its status as the greenest city in North America (see earlier post). This hub of new technology development on the west coast seeks to reduce carbon emissions by 25 percent by 2017 and 80 percent by 2050. A key target in its program is greening buildings, which account for 53 percent of all emissions. The city’s new “world class green building policy,” said Melanie Nutter, San Francisco Department of the Environment, means “all new buildings will be LEED gold.” Nutter also said the “existing green building ordinances” mean property owners have to “report energy use to the city every year and audit their energy systems every 5 years.” This “transparency helps inspire the use of retrofits.” The city has a retrofit financing policy, too.

Nutter focused most of her talk on the city’s innovative zero-waste policy, which is truly one of the most ambitious in the world. Currently, the city has a 80 percent diversion rate — which means that 80 percent of trash is not going to landfill, but is being turned into compost or recycled. The city has partnered with a set of private firms to implement its programs but new policies and regulations have also helped. Plastic bags and styrofoam containers have been totally banned. All retailers have to participate in mandatory “composting and recycling programs.” Small and medium businesses now get “financial incentives” to improve their compliance with composting and recycling measures. “They can offset their garbage bills by 70 percent.” Some 65 percent of building demolition waste is also now diverted from landfills. To reach a 100 percent total diversion rate, the city needs to improve its compliance rate, Nutter said.

In Tokyo, Teruyuki Ohno, Bureau of Environment, Tokyo Metropolitan Government, said a new cap and trade system has been used to encourage the growth of green buildings. The building sector there accounts for some 48 percent of total emissions. Under the city’s cap and trade system, a 6-8 percent reduction in emissions is required by 2014, and another 17 percent of reductions are needed by 2019. Some 1,300 buildings are also now being targeted for retrofits. 

Tokyo now has a mandatory reporting system. Ohno said the system was voluntary in the past, but that proved not to be enough. So reductions — and the reporting needed to measure real reductions — are now required. “A reporting foundation was necessary. You need data.” 

Image credit: ASLA 2011 Student Collaboration Award of Excellence. Plant Lab / Rockne Hanish, Ileana Acevedo and Chris DeHenzel

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Majora Carter: “Greater Environmental Equality Will Lead to Greater Prosperity”

Posted in Climate Change, Policy and Regulation, Technology on 11/14/2012 | Leave a Comment »


At the opening session of the 2012 Greenbuild conference in San Francisco, the co-hosts of “Morning Joe,” Mika Brezinski and Joe Scarborough, hosted a series of panels with leading environmental experts like Majora Carter and Paul Hawken; technnology and product innovators such as Biz Stone, a co-founder of Twitter, and David Kohler, The Kohler Group; and policymakers such as Newark Mayor Cory Booker, California Lt. Governor Gavin Newsom, and former New York governor George Pataki. While Morning Joe seemed a bit obsessed by the losses of his Republican Party (he says he’s on the libertarian side of the spectrum), the morning show team still ably led the panelists through a fascinating, wide-ranging discussion on the business and ideological forces pushing forward the sustainability movement and the policy actions that enable or impede it.

Perhaps the most powerful statement to come out of the session was from MacArthur “genius” Majora Carter, who said that movements for “greater equality lead to greater prosperity for all.” Following up on USGBC President Rick Fedrizzi’s argument that the green building movement is indeed a movement and comes in a long of line of movements that have expanded rights for women, African Americans, and gay Americans, Carter said “environmental equality” was the next frontier. With environmental improvements for all, “we all benefit” and the economy grows as new jobs are created.

Hawken, the author of four bestselling books on how ecology and commerce can be better integrated, said that groups like the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) are critical because they are places “where ideas have sex.” However, both he and Carter argued that “everyone needs to be in the room: poor, rich, black, white.” When everyone is in the room, “the questions become important,” and they also change because they address the needs of the underserved. Also, Carter added that “we need to preach outside the little temple we’ve built for ourselves” and truly link jobs to environmental equality. “This will be huge opportunity, one that can be embraced by all,” not just the environmental movement.

Stone succeeded in making the case that technology – whether in the Internet or green building realm — can be an enabler if used to create more understanding. He quoted Einstein, who said that “information is not knowledge.” With the rise of the Web and big data, there’s more and more information out there, but it needs to be “turned into understanding and then action.”

Lt. Governor Newsom believes that the new digital divide exists between society and the private sectory on one hand and the government on the other hand. “Technology hasn’t radically altered governance yet.” Tools like Twitter help people “amplify their voice, connect, form new coalitions.” However, government is still using an old model: one-way communication. To really connect with young people, “two-way communication is needed.” Stone added that “technology democratizes and enables us to empathize with people across the world.”

Both agreed that technology enables policymakers to better listen and “find patterns” that can be turned into support for green programs. Technology can also improve transparency so people understand what they are buying and using everyday.

For Mayor Booker, all of these new approaches and technologies need to be harnessed so they support a grand holistic vision. “Green thinking affects everything, not just the environment. The American dream must be a green dream.” He said in Newark he has started projects saying that “green is our value, but what is the multiplier effect?” As an example of the type of projects he wants with significant multiplier effects, he pointed to a new program that puts ex-offenders to work building urban gardens, which also has huge urban heat island reduction benefits.

Governor Pataki said incentives can also help create that multiplier effect. In New York, he put out a $300 million bid for “clean hybrid buses.” His advisors told him he was crazy because “they don’t exist.” Pataki said his bid actually created the market, because, sure enough, a NY-based firm stepped up and created a solution. “Someone is now making these buses. They weren’t before. That’s leadership.”

Still, Brezinski seemed to ask the telling question, which the policymakers didn’t seem to answer at all: How do you incentivize real change when the change required is a ”hard sell?” For example, New York City never built out those sea walls to protect the city because they were expensive and a “hard sell.” Climate change mitigation may be another one. The true test of the innovative new approaches and technologies will be those hard sells.

Image credit: 2012 ASLA Professional Residential Design Award of Excellence. Drs. Julian and Raye Richardson Apartments. Andrea Cochran Landscape Architecture / Bruce Damonte photo copyright.

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USGBC’s Fedrizzi Takes Aim at Detractors: “We Are Right”

Posted in Active Design, Climate Change, Education, Green Buildings, Policy and Regulation on 11/14/2012 | 1 Comment »


In a full-frontal attack on the “so called journalists” behind a recent USA Today investigative report, which called into question the effectiveness and integrity of the U.S. Green Building Council, along with other “cynics, scoundrels, and detractors,” Rick Fedrizzi, founder and president of the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) argued that the green building movement is “right” at the opening of the 2012 Greenbuild conference in San Francisco . Comparing the green building movement to the movement for human rights, women’s pursuit of the right to vote, equal rights for African Americans, and marriage equality for gay Americans, Fedrizzi argued that “LEED [its rating system] is not perfect but evolutionary by design.” He also stated that “no one can deny that the built environment is far more healthy and hospitable than it was 20 years ago.”

Fedrizzi asked, “so you can’t wear a business suit and be an environmentalist at the same time?” USGBC members can “do their core businesses – green buildings — more responsibly while also doing well.” In fact, “in capitalism, growth is essential.” Any movement that “creates new markets and jobs” while improving the health of well being of people living and working within buildings “must be doing something right.” He said detractors argues that “toxins are just a fact of life.” Fedrizzi said USGBC members want “teachers and students to be in schools that keep everyone healthy. Our focus is on the people working within these green buildings, not the emblem on the front of the building.” The U.S. green building movement also aims to “reduce carbon emissions and energy use while creating millions of new jobs.”

The head of the USGBC also took aim at climate change deniers, arguing that Hurricane Sandy clearly demonstrates that rising sea levels can have a significant impact. Unfortunately, the presidential candidates “hardly mentioned climate change at all during the last campaign, and from 2009 to 2011, stories that featured climate change fell by 42 percent.” He applauded Bloomberg BusinessWeek‘s latest cover story, “It’s Global Warming, Stupid.”

With President Obama elected to a second term, the shift now needs to be on improved environmental governance. “Obama needs to do more to push green buildings forward.” In a political segment featuring images of Rush Limbaugh, Fedrizzi said the administration and USGBC also needs to “attack special interests” who are holding back progress. But perhaps the overall message was bipartisan: “This can’t be about blue or red states, but green states.”

USGBC members can help “break the cycle of denial” about the environment. As an example, he argued that only with a campaign for increased transparency can we understand the impact of unhealthy materials in the built environment. He pointed to asbestos, asking whether building designers and contractors would “use this material given what we know now.” Volatile organic compounds (VOCs), endrocrine disruptors, “all of these things hurt our kids.” Transparency “helps us make better decisions.” So, Fedrizzi announced a new campaign to get building product manufacturers to “prove that their products are the best and healthiest.” This effort also got a major boost with the announcement that Google would be providing USGBC with a $3 million grant to research materials and public health.

In an earlier speech, San Francisco Mayor Edwin Lee said San Francisco has become the greenest city in the US in part because of its full embrace of LEED. The city now has 48 million square feet of LEED buildings and recently won an award for its green building policies from an international green building group. Lee wants to further improve the city’s already impressive indicators. San Francisco diverts 80 percent of its waste from landfills and has the highest rates of compost and recycling in the nation. “We also have the best compost. Our compost is sent to Napa Valley to create the nation’s best wines.” The mayor then highlighted efforts to create a LEED platinum city center through retrofitting existing infrastructure and buildings and creating a new multimodal transportation hub.

Image credit: ASLA 2009 General Design Honor Award. California Academy of Sciences, San Francisco / image copyright Tom Fox

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With Hurricane Sandy, Climate Change Is Back on the Agenda

Posted in Climate Change, Ecosystem Services, Landscape Architecture, Urban Design on 11/12/2012 | 1 Comment »


President Barack Obama and Republican candidate Mitt Romney didn’t discuss climate change once during the three presidential debates. However, Hurricane Sandy, with the immense loss of life and $50 billion in damages it caused, seemed to once again raise the specter of climate change, at least for Americans. With the storm and Mayor Bloomberg’s last-minute endorsement of President Obama — largely because he felt Obama would better address climate change — the issue was put back on the national agenda. In fact, the deadly storm, along with Bloomberg’s endorsement, seemed to single handedly raise the profile of the climate, at least in political circles, after it had taken a back-seat for many years.

Following Bloomberg, Governor Cuomo then quickly made the following statement: “climate change is a reality. Given the frequency of these extreme weather situations we have had, for us to sit here today and say this is once in a generation and it’s not going to happen again, I think would be shortsighted.” Then, just a few days ago, Senate Majority leader Harry Reid also noted that Americans want Congress to focus on climate change legislation again.

So, did climate change actually contribute to the ferocity of Hurricane Sandy? According to The New York Times‘ well-respected Green blog, climate scientists won’t know exactly if that’s the case for a few months, but initial signs point to yes. Interviewing a few leading climate scientists, the blog writes: “A likely contributor to the intensity of Sandy, they said, was that surface temperatures in the western Atlantic Ocean were remarkably high just ahead of the storm — in places, about five degrees Fahrenheit higher than normal for this time of year. In fact, part of the ocean was warmer than it would normally be in September, when accumulated summer heat tends to peak.”

The Atlantic came out with an even bolder statement, arguing that “there’s no question that climate change made Sandy stronger.” This is because climate change has led to rising sea levels, so even more damaging waves when the ocean hit the land. They write: “According to sea level expert Ben Strauss of Climate Central, the sea level in the New York harbor today is 15 inches higher than it was in 1880. Now, to be sure, not all of that is due global warming—land has also been subsiding. Strauss estimates that climate change—which causes sea level rise both through the melting of land-based ice, and through thermal expansion of warm ocean water—is responsible for just over half, or eight inches, of the total.” Still, those 8 inches caused a lot more damage.

With the incredible destruction in New Jersey and New York, talk is now heating up about how to invest billions to make cities and coastal communities climate resilient and protect them from future storms. The innovative ideas of Dland studio to create wetlands around the city and landscape architect Kate Orff, ASLA, SCAPE, to mitigate storms with man-made oyster reefs were even just featured in a cover story in The New York Times, while the case for using green infrastructure to deal with heavy rain has now gotten more attention thanks to Kaid Benfield’s excellent piece. However, will policymakers now see the value of putting natural systems in place to address flooding and storm risks, or will New York City and others invest in expensive, “hard” infrastructure like sea walls that often fail to do the job of protecting people and property?

A 2009 report by the Army Corps of Engineer and Port Authority of New York and New Jersey looked at the feasibility of recreating 18,000 acres of tidal wetlands “on the margins of the islands and the coastline, [which] act like sponges, slowing and baffling tidal forces,” to replace the massive sea walls, which had actually taken the place of the original 300,000-acre wetlands in the outer boroughs of New York City. The problem the engineers were looking at: sea walls don’t actually function that well when protecting areas below sea level (see New Orleans and Katrina). The original perceived benefit of the sea walls was that they would enable more land to be developed closer to the water.

A proposal by Dland Studio and Architecture Research Office would put a set of wetlands around lower Manhattan and we would hope all the other boroughs. The New York Times writes: “To prevent incursions by water, Mr. Cassell and his planners imagined ringing Lower Manhattan with a grassy network of land-based parks accompanied by watery patches of wetlands and tidal salt marshes. At Battery Park, for instance, the marshes would weave through a series of breakwater islands made of geo-textile tubes and covered with marine plantings. On the Lower East Side of the island, Mr. Cassell and his team envisioned extending Manhattan by a block or two — with additional landfill — to create space for another new park and a salt marsh.” A complementary set of green streets would also boost absorptive capacity within the city.

Another exciting proposal by Orff would use oysters to create decentralized storm mitigation infrastructure in the low-lying Buttermilk Channel and Gowanus Bay that swelled and severely flooded some neighborhoods during the storm. Orff’s argument is that “the era of big infrastructure is over” and needs to be neighborhood-centric and actually embedded into daily life. The New York Times writes: “Ms. Orff’s proposal [...] envisions a system of artificial reefs in the channel and the bay built out of rocks, shells and fuzzy rope that is intended to nurture the growth of oysters (she calls them ‘nature’s wave attenuators’).” The reefs would also help clean the water: each oyster purifies an amazing 50 gallons of water a day. Students at a local NYC school have also picked up on the oysters idea and area doing their own experiments to see how they would work.

Any of the nature-based solutions outlined seem as worthy of future study as multibillion dollar sea walls. New York City and other communities may even be able to leverage existing green infrastructure programs, ramping them up to deal with heavier water flow, while becoming more resilient across the board. All that added green space would improve other critical environment, social, and health outcomes.

In a New York Daily News op-ed, noted writer on cities Richard Florida, argues that resiliency needs to be built into all systems in New York City, New Jersey, and elsewhere by decentralizing and naturalizing infrastructure. To protect themselves from extreme weather events, New York City “must bolster its resiliency by creating a less centralized power grid with more built-in redundancy, passing regulations that discourage development on floodplains and encourage the restoration of barrier islands and wetlands that can buffer surges and developing technology that facilitates crowdsourcing of critical information.”

The New York Times recently hosted a comprehensive online debate on whether New York City should really invest the billions needed to build sea walls like London has. Apparently, Mayor Bloomberg argues that the investment will not be worth it, as it will not protect the whole city, while Governor Cuomo is pushing for a sea wall-based solution. What’s important is that all areas of NYC, rich and poor, benefit equally from any protection measures. Beyond New York City, smaller coastal cities like Atlantic City, which got hit very hard, must also invest in climate adaptation measures that benefit all in the community.

Hopefully, landscape architects will be part of the ongoing debate about how to adapt in a socially-sustainable manner and develop the out-of-the-box solutions that may prove to be the most sensible.

To learn more about how green and other “soft” natural infrastructure could work, check out ASLA’s animation, Leveraging the Landscape to Manage Water, and resource guides on green infrastructure and climate change adaptation.

Image credit: Dland Studio and Architecture Research Office

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Bloomberg: “Parks Are a Vital Resource”

Posted in Climate Change, Landscape Architecture, Urban Design, Urban Revitalization, Water Management on 07/18/2012 | 1 Comment »


At Greater & Greener: Reimagining Parks for 21st Century Cities, the 4th international urban parks conference organized by the City Parks Alliance, New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg told an audience of 900 city parks leaders, landscape architects, and activists from 210 cities and 20 countries that “parks are a vital resource.” Under Bloomberg’s administration, some 730 new acres of parkland have been added to the 29,000 existing acres of green space. Bloomberg thinks NYC’s high-quality parks also have a lot to do with the fact that for the first time ever NYC got more than 50 million tourists last year.

Parks are a “haven” from a busy world but they also make communities more vibrant and attractive. Beyond that, these social green spaces can spur economic growth. With $3 billion in capital investment in parks over the past 10 years, Bloomberg clearly thinks all this money is well-spent: “The investment is paid back multiple times.” As an example of what a park can do, Bloomberg said the High Line, the now world-famous park in Chelsea, has generated $2 billion in private sector investment. “Revitalizing infrastructure can simply mean recasting it in new ways,” he added. Lots more investment will go into “reconnecting New Yorkers to their waterfront.”

New York’s parks mayor outlined three points he said were critical to the city’s recent success with parks:

1) Expand collaboration within city government. Instead of preserving the silo-based approach wherein parks, transportation, and water departments work in their separate domains, Bloomberg forced them to collaborate.  One result of this collaboration, PlaNYC, the city’s far-reaching sustainability and climate change plan, has called for every New Yorker to be within a 10 minute walk of a park or playground. While many scoffed that this goal was unrealistic when the plan was first announced, the city has been methodically making this happen through collaborations within city government.

In another example, water, transportation, and parks departments now partner on creating green streets, which are now being rolled out across thousands of sidewalks. These systems, which help with stormwater management, can also make more streets — key public domains — more appealing. The city is so serious about this that they are investing a big chunk of their $1.5 billion green infrastructure budget in swales, mini-street parks, and deep tree pits.

2) Partner with the state and federal government. One example Bloomberg mentioned was the 18,000-acre Jamaica Bay park project, where the city will work with the National Park Service to create a more sustainable park, with a new multimillion dollar research center on urban parks sustainability.

3) Maximize public-private partnerships. Bloomberg said the High Line could never have happened without private sector developers. The same story goes for Brooklyn Bridge Park, which was financed with city, state, and private funds.

He said even NYC’s massive tree planting campaign, Million Trees NYC, is being “spearheaded” by well-endowed non-profits like Bette Midler’s New York Restoration Project. To date, more than 600,000 trees have been planted, with some 100,000 trees each year (in comparison with just 7,500 each year prior to the campaign).

In earlier comments, Katherine Nagel, the head of City Parks Alliance, made a similar argument as Bloomberg, saying “parks are more than just fun and games — they are essential urban infrastructure. This infrastructure is part of a larger social, ecological, environmental, and political system.” In parks, she added, “our culture happens. This is where we awaken to the natural world.”

Mickey Fearn, deputy director at the National Park Service (NPS) for communications and community assistance, also made a powerful case for connecting urban youth to parks. He said “we need to prepare our children for the world” by offering creative, nurturing experiences for them in parks, while “preparing our world for our children” by making parks safe and accessible to all. Parks can help kids “build self-esteem, hope, and strengthen relationships.” These spaces help them create a “sense of mastery.” Fearn said, like everyone, kids need “power” but power that is disconnected from violence. He said the real challenge for NYC and many other cities in the 21st century will be creating a “sense of power in multicultural diversity.” Multiculturalism is the real asset.

Given kids will be the future environmental stewards, they also need to feel connected to nature and understand parks as “habitat, ecosystems.” Fearn pointed to one program in the Bronx as a model: Rocking the Boat, a fascinating program that teaches youth how to build watercraft to use on the Bronx River, NYC’s only freshwater river. “Once they learn about shipbuilding, they learn about watersheds, then they learn about careers in conservation.”

Image credit: Central Park / Wikipedia

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Global Pessimism Before Rio+20

Posted in Climate Change, Environment, Policy and Regulation, Wildlife on 06/20/2012 | Leave a Comment »

Twenty years ago, the Earth Summit was held in Rio de Janeiro, a hugely important event in the history of global action on sustainability. The conference was attended by 108 heads of state and 2,400 representatives of non-governmental organizations (NGOs). A total of 172 governments participated. The summit called for a transformation in the way we live and brought the concept of sustainable development to the mainstream. Covering such issues such as climate change, biodiversity, toxic waste, alternative energy, public transportation, and water scarcity, the conference produced a comprehensive environmental action plan, Agenda 21.

Now 20 years later, the Rio+20 conference, a foll0w-up on the original summit, seeks to address many of the same issues and check in on progress. The conference identifies its two main themes as: “a green economy in the context of sustainable development poverty eradication; and the institutional framework for sustainable development.” Additionally, the conference identifies seven priority areas, including green jobs, sustainable energy, sustainable cities, food security, accessible water, ocean management, and disaster resiliency.

Like the first conference, Rio+20 is huge in scale. Described as, “a once-in-a-generation opportunity” by U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, it’s expected to draw upwards of 50,000 participants, with representatives from 180 countries. Yet unlike the original conference, many important world leaders are conspicuously missing. German Chancellor Angela Merkel, British Prime Minister David Cameron, and U.S. President Barack Obama are all not attending the conference.

This apparent lack of enthusiasm on the part of the United States and Western Europe has been blamed on recent economic and politic turmoil. In an interview with The New York Times, Jeffrey Sachs, director of the Earth Institute at Columbia University, said: “Europe has been the great leader of environmental action but Europe is hardly functioning now.” Similarly, former head of the U.S. E.P.A. William K. Reilly told The New York Times: “The international community is going to have to learn never to hold a big global conference during an American presidential election year.”

Others have blamed the lack of western enthusiasm on a general loss of idealism. When President George H.W. Bush attended the Earth Summit in 1992, he was riding a wave of idealism following the end of the Cold War. John Vidal in The Guardian writes that, “the days of hope and idealism are over. Rich countries have little new to offer, and China, Brazil, India and other rapidly emerging economies are now in the development driving seat.”

Today, with sustainability firmly in the mainstream, we are left to consider the tangible environmental consequences of the 1992 conference. Despite increasing awareness, many do not see actual environmental progress being made. With record greenhouse emissions, melting polar icecaps, and a rapidly expanding global population, environmentalists argue that existing policies have done little to alter the trajectory of development and environmental degradation. In a pre-recorded video speech to the Rio+20 conference, Prince Charles stated, “Like a sleepwalker, we seem unable to wake up to the fact that so many of the catastrophic consequences of carrying on with ‘business-as-usual’ are bearing down on us faster than we think, already dragging many millions more people into poverty and dangerously weakening global food, water and energy security for the future.”

Some of the harshest criticism has come from World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Director General Jim Leape, who condemned the recently released draft text on green global development, stating “despite a late night negotiating session, the revised text is a colossal failure of leadership and vision from diplomats. They should be embarrassed at their inability to find common ground on such a crucial issue.” He went on to criticize the text’s lack of hard language, concluding, “World leaders ‘recognized’ problems 20 years ago, and they’ve done little about them since. How long are we going to accept ‘we’ll look into it’ as a solution?”

Despite the prevailing negativity, some people are still hopeful that the conference will have a positive impact. In a green energy forum hosted by The Atlantic magazine, former head of the E.P.A . and recent climate change czarina Carol Browner acknowledged that the enthusiasm of twenty years ago simply no longer exists, though she still holds out hope that the conference will produce “measurable, concrete steps.” Furthermore, Browner was optimistic regarding the future of sustainable energy in general. She expressed that now is the time for the United States to support the nascent clean energy industry, discussing the ways smart environmental regulation can lead to innovation in new technologies and produce economic growth.

Still, the meeting does serve as a useful tool for keeping sustainable development high on the international agenda. And many countries do use these conferences as goal posts, deadlines for achieving significant environmental progress. As an example, just days before the meeting, Australia recently announced it had created the largest marine nature preserve in the world. If only the U.S. and European countries were able to make similarly grand commitments — either to finance developing countries’ efforts to improve their environment or to do more good in their own backyard.

This guest post is by Benjamin Wellington, Student ASLA, master’s of landscape architecture candidate, Louisiana State University, and ASLA 2012 summer intern.

Image credit: Australian Marine Preserve / Australian Geographic. Getty Images.

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New Rankings on Environmental Performance

Posted in Climate Change, Ecosystem Restoration, Ecosystem Services, Environment on 06/05/2012 | 2 Comments »

Since 2000, Yale University and Columbia University have been ranking countries’ environmental performance, releasing their comprehensive results and trend reports every two years. Responding to the need for “rigorous, data-driven” measurements, the index is meant to “add to the foundation of empirical support for sound policymaking.” The universities, which have collaborated with the World Economic Forum, also wanted to create an independent report that could aid government reformers who must show “tangible” results for all their environmental investments. Preserving and even enhancing the environment costs money these days, but, as a recent UN report argues, can also pay off big-time in terms of improved human health, ecosystem function, and green job growth, providing net (and long-term) gains for any economy. Moving to a more sustainable economy could mean millions of new local jobs each year, particularly in low-income countries. 

The Environmental Performance Index (EPI) ranks 132 countries on 22 performance indicators spanning ten policy categories, which track performance and progress on two broad objectives: environmental health and ecosystem vitality. The index is heavily weighted towards indicators of ecosystem vitality (70 percent), with the rest of a country’s performance determined by numbers from environmental health indicators. Categories include environmental burden of disease; water (effects on human health); air pollution (effects on human health); air pollution (ecosystem effects); water resources (ecosystem effects); biodiversity and habitat; forestry; fisheries; agriculture; and climate change.

As to be expected, the top ten is taken up by European countries with high per-capita income levels, with the incredible exception of Costa Rica (#5), a middle-income country that has made significant investments in sustainable development, preserving its natural resources, and reducing pollution. Switzerland topped the charts because it “leads the world in addressing pollution control and natural resource management challenges.” Major European economies, such as France, the UK, and Sweden, also made it into the top 10.

The U.S., which ranked a sad 61st place in 2010, is now 49th, which is still much lower than it should be. Despite progress on reducing emissions from cars in the past few years under President Obama, U.S. rankings were further dragged down by its near-bottom-of the list performance on climate change, at 121st place. Interestingly, the U.S. ranks #1 in the world though for air pollution control for human health. On ecosystem vitality, which covers agriculture, air’s impact on ecosystem performance, water resources, and biodiversity, the U.S. averages out at 100, pretty low on the list. On water resources alone, the U.S. ranks a poor 104 out of 132.

The report authors acknowledge that “wealth matters” so comparing developed and developing countries may be a bit unfair. Performance within the index is clearly linked to GDP per capita, although there is a “diversity of performance within every level.” As an example, there are high income countries with pretty poor performance like the U.S. and middle-income countries with amazing results like forward-thinking Costa Rica. 

While the quality of ecosystems may have a slightly looser connection with GDP, ”the environmental health scores reveal a significant relationship with GDP per capita.” This makes sense given many developing countries are, well, developing, undergoing significant programs of industrialization that reduce air and water quality, create waste, and negatively impact human health. According to the report, developing countries also face major challenges “associated with poverty and underinvestment in basic environmental amenities, such as access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation.” These countries are under immense pressure to deliver increased standards of living to populations that demand them, while also moving towards more sustainable production processes and consumption patterns.

For the first time, the group of universities also created a trend report designed to show whether countries are moving forward or backward over time. While most countries are trending upwards, there are some that fell during 2000 to 2010. ”Estonia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Russia were countries with the worst negative trends. Russia, at the very bottom of the Trend EPI ranking, has suffered a severe breakdown in environmental health as well as performance declines related to over-fishing and forest loss. It shows declines in every category except for slight improvements in sulfur dioxide emissions, though levels are still far below target.” (In fact, it’s so bad IKEA was just accused of taking advantage of Russia’s lax environmental regulation to harvest Russia’s old-growth forests for their cabinets and desks). Iraq also continues to rank dead last as air quality spirals downward and water becomes increasingly scarce.

For the one-third of the planet who live in China and India, the rankings don’t offer any good news either. Already, in China, which comes in at 116th place, health experts see air pollution as the greatest threat to public health. The Guardian highlights some scary data demonstrating the poor air quality in China’s cities: ”Lung cancer rates are two or three times higher in cities than in the countryside, even though smoking rates are the same.” Unfortunately, India’s air pollution may be even worse; that country comes in at 125th. The OECD estimates that bad air will now kill 3.6 million each year by 2050, with most of those deaths in China and India. Unless those countries’ governments begin to take reports like these more seriously and finance a real shift to sustainable development, the number of pollution-induced deaths will only increase.

Explore the rankings for 2012 and read the full report.

In other bad news, there are now 400 parts per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide in the world’s atmosphere, at least in the Arctic. For years, scientists have said 350ppm is really the safe upper-most limit. According to NASA scientists, the planet has not reached 400ppm for at least 800,000 years. The connection with current unsustainable development practices is pretty clear to all: The International Energy Agency just reported that global carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels hit a record high of 34.8 billion tonnes in 2011, up 3.2 percent.

Image credit: Costa Rica Rainforest / Jet Guer. Flickr

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