World Views and Sustainable Development

The National Planning Policy Framework document is a great piece of political compromise at the heart of which is the term ‘sustainable development’, a term of great creative ambiguity – it means whatever you want it to. The interpretation you put onto the term partly depends on your world view, specifically what you think of the environment and how fragile or robust it is.

In the figure the bottom right hand corner represents individuals who think the environment is very fragile, maybe even in a delicate balance which we humans can easily upset to produce catastrophic and irreversible changes. Move to the top right corner and this represents individuals who think the environment is fragile but not so fragile that we can not change things a bit, within acceptable limits. Once these limits are exceeded then problems will occur but as long as we work within these limits there should be no problem. Move to the bottom left and you have individuals who believe that the environment is pretty robust, it tends to survive whatever we do to it, so if there are limits they are quite a long, long, long way off. Whilst the top left represents individuals who just go with the flow accepting it doesn’t really matter what they think they can not do anything about the environment anyway.

A simple caricature I know but does this get at the nub of the problem with the term ‘sustainable development’ . Each world view can make sense of the phrase in its own terms. An individualist can view the environment as being able to cope with a lot of change and so can focus on the ‘development’ part of the phrase, whilst an egalitarian will focus on the ‘sustainable’ part of the phrase as they are concerned with not disrupting the balance of the environment. A local authority might view itself as hierarchist, ensuring that change happens but within well defined and scientific proven limits.

Problem is do we know what the limits are? The original definition of ‘sustainable development’ in the Brundtland Commission report in 1987 recognised that there were limits to sustainable development but these limits were not fixed.

‘The concept of sustainable development does imply limits – not absolute limits but limitations imposed by the present state of technology and social organisation on environmental resources and by the ability of the biosphere to absorb the effects of human activities’. (World Commission on Environment and Development, Our Common Future, page 8, 1987).

According to the figure some people will be concerned to find these limits, others will assume that the limits are so far away it doesn’t affect them and what they do. Partly your attitude or world view will depend on how you see yourself in society. The vertical axis is labelled ‘Grid’, this is concerned with how far you see your choices defined by society. Very individualistic individuals will see themselves as completely unconstrained and so able to do whatever they like. Following the rules and procedures to the letter puts you high up on the axis. The horizontal axis is labelled ‘Group’, this refers to the level of cohesion or solidarity there is amongst a group. Low group cohesion will tend to produce individuals who act for themselves, whilst high group cohesion will produce individuals with a sense of responsible to the group. Where would you place all the potential stakeholders involved in using and implementing the National Planning Policy Framework? Where would you put yourself? Do you think that affects how you understand ‘sustainable development’?

Schwarz and Thompson (1990) discuss the above type of figure in relation to environmental issues (amongst other things) in Divided We Stand: Redefining Politics, Technology and Social Class (1990)



Whilst Mary Douglas originally developed these figures in her analysis of cultural theory.



The Brundtland Commission reported in 'Our Common Future' in 1987

Sustaining Vagueness: Planning and Sustainable Development

Sustainable Development is the central pillar of the new National Planning Policy Framework. Judging from the positive various commentaries from business leaders, planners, conservation organisations and just about anyone else asked on recent news programmes, everyone is happy with this focus. Groups normally at loggerheads with each other seem content that the new document suits their purposes. How can this be?
The document itself does not really help much in explaining this strange contentment. The Ministerial foreword states that ‘Sustainable means ensuring that better lives for ourselves don’t mean worse lives for future generations’, whilst ‘Development means growth’ and ‘Sustainable development is about change for the better…’ Any clearer now about what the term means?
On page two the five guiding principles of sustainable development found within the UK Sustainable Development Strategy Securing the Future are reiterated. They are ‘living within the planet’s environmental limits; ensuring a strong, healthy and just society; achieving a sustainable economy; promoting good governance; and using sound science responsibly’. Any clearer now?

Paragraph 7 on the same page states that there are three dimensions to sustainable development: economic, social and environmental. The economic role focuses on building a strong, responsive and competitive economy which will ensure that land of the right type in the right places if available at the right time to support growth and innovation. The social role is to support strong, vibrant and healthy communities by providing housing to support the needs of the current and future generations. Is it a bit clearer now – is that what you thought sustainable development meant?
I will look at the planning document in more detail in another blog but one of the key problems and the reason why everyone seems so happy is that the term ‘sustainable development’ is so vague and flexible that everyone reads into the term what they want to. An excellent article by Robert Kates, Thomas Parris and Anthony Leiserowitz (2005) discusses this problem in detail. Since the initial brief definition by the Brundtland Commission in 1987, the term sustainable development has become hijacked, interpreted, reinterpreted and so imprecise that anyone or any group dealing with the environment can shape the term to mean whatever they hope it means. The Brundtland Commission defined sustainable development as: ‘ability to make development sustainable – to ensure that it meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’.

This definition has what Kates et al. call a ‘creative ambiguity’, a great term for vagueness. Kates et al., identify that there are three distinct things that can be developed within the term; people, economy and society. Each has a different time scale associated with its development and each places a different emphasis, depending on who is talking, on the ‘sustainable’ part or ’development’ part of 'sustianbel development'.

Kates et al. also suggest that ‘sustainable development’ can be defined in terms of what each group seeks to achieve. There are goals – what we seek to achieve. There are indicators – what we use to measure the achievement of these goals. There are the values that underlie these goals and then there is what we actually do, the practice of sustainable development. I may be naïve but my guess is that business groups and environmental organisations may share the term ‘sustainable development’ but the goals and values that drive them are different as are the indicators they would use to assess the success of sustainable development. The use of such a creatively ambiguous term as ‘sustainable development’ may be politically useful to achieve consensus but will become a minefield for implementation.


Some useful texts on sustianble development are below:




The origin of the term can be found in the Brundtland Commission report 'Our Common Future':

Beijing Atmospheric Pollution now online

On 23rd January the Beijing Municipal Environmental Monitoring Centre began to release atmospheric pollution data online (see this site but a knowledge of Chinese helps in navigating and understanding the data http://translate.google.co.uk/translate?hl=en&sl=zh-CN&u=http://zx.bjmemc.com.cn/&ei=EBVjT5LAIKXS0QWE-JT1AQ&sa=X&oi=translate&ct=result&resnum=5&ved=0CH4Q7gEwBA&prev=/search%3Fq%3DBeijing%2BMunicipal%2BEnvironmental%2BMonitoring%2BCenter%26hl%3Den%26biw%3D1707%26bih%3D1121%26prmd%3Dimvns ).





The hourly data had previously only been available for laboratory use (http://www.china.org.cn/environment/2012-01/06/content_24337033.htm) but the release of the data seems to be a response to public concern over air quality and the mismatch between government statistics and public perception of air quality. Some of this perception may have resulted from the release of atmospheric pollution data by the US Embassy from a rooftop monitoring station(http://ecocentric.blogs.time.com/2012/01/22/political-pollution-how-bad-air-equals-social-unrest-in-china/ for report and http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/07/world/asia/beijing-journal-anger-grows-over-air-pollution-in-china.html?_r=1 for a discussion of the halting of the tweets in July 2009 and http://twitter.com/#!/beijingair for the tweet). The mismatch between official announcements about good quality air and the tweet caused some friction between officials and the embassy.



So what are we to make of the release of this data? Firstly, it is handy to know Chinese to interpret the site but then again the site is not aimed at an English speaking foreigner but at the Chinese inhabitants of Beijing so this is a fairly lame criticism. Secondly, the data release may be a political decision but at least the data is out there and can now be assessed by the public and by other scientists around the world working on air pollution – surely a good thing in its own right. Thirdly, should the data be questioned? The US embassy site seems to have taken on the role of arbitrator in assessing the data quality (at least in Western press releases). The US embassy is just one site with monitoring equipment at a specific height (not necessarily standardized to the height of the Chinese monitoring stations) so any spatial variation in air quality would not be picked up by data from one site. Even asking the question about data reliability is political. It suggests that the Chinese data will somehow be affected by the political powers that be (as if the US act of monitoring pollution isn’t political as well?!) Details of where the monitoring sites are located, the accuracy and standardization of the monitoring equipment, etc are reasonable scientific questions to ask both of Chinese pollution data and the pollution data of any monitoring network wherever it is. Such questioning ensures comparability of datasets. By releasing the data the Chinese scientists and authorities are putting themselves within this scientific debate. Criticising a dataset does not mean the data set is wrong; questioning and clarification and refinement to ensure compatibility is merely part of the scientific process.

Haddon Matrix: Getting The Message Across

The Haddon Matrix is a tried and trusted tool for thinking about managing risk, particularly in public health. The basic matrix contains 3 key elements: the host, the agent (or vehicle) and the environment (subdivided into physical and social). These form the columns of the matrix. The rows refer to pre-event, the event and post-event activities.

	HOST	AGENT	ENVIRONMENT
PRE-EVENT
EVENT
POST-EVENT

In a previous post I illustrated this with a road traffic accident example as below.

This is useful but does it get across two important aspect when trying to manage risk: which of the cells in the matrix is the most significant AND which of the cells is it most effective to try to influence?

Not all the cells and their contents affect the risks of a hazard equally. From public health take the example of smoking - it could be argued that the social and cultural norms that an individual grows up in have a huge impact on their propensity to smoke. The host or individual smokes but what chance did they have given their environment. In other words the environment cells, particularly pre-event (the event being the cancer caused by smoking) has a massive impact on the risk. Likewise, survival of the event depends greatly on the level of health care available including catching the cancer early on, so both the event and post-event are greatly influenced by the environment. Visually the Haddon Matrix might look as below.

	HOST	AGENT	ENVIRONMENT
PRE-EVENT
EVENT
POST-EVENT

This alteration of cell size to match the perceived level of influence of host, agent and environment can help to get across the message as to which of the three is most important.

A second aspect, however, is which of the different elements to try to influence. It could be argued that changing a social or cultural environment is a long-term and difficult process but the one that has the greatest imapct on smoking levels. Effectiveness cna be defined in many ways and it maybe that in the short term targeting the host to change their behaviour is much easier (and cheaper) to produce and places responsibility firmly in the lap of the person smoking. As well as being cheap for health authorities and potentially politically more palatable as it highlights individual responsibility (depending on your political persuasion) altering cells sizes to reflect this, as below, does highlight to the individual that they do have potential control over their fate (whether this is an illusion or not is another question).

	HOST	AGENT	ENVIRONMENT
PRE-EVENT
EVENT
POST-EVENT

So for risk analysis and management maybe it is worthwhile changing the sizes of the cells when discussing both degree of influence and effectiveness of potential actions however this is defined. This may help in targeting resources effectively for the ends in mind.

Going Places With Geography!

Following on from thinking about what you can do with Geography there are a couple of very useful videos produced by the RGS (Royal Geographical Society) available on Youtube that are a little old now (4 years and counting) but are still very worthwhile looking at.

They are 'Going Places With Geography Part 1' and, the unsurpirsingly named 'Going Places With Geography Part 2'!

These videos are good, general introductions to the possiblities that geography opens up for graduates as well as illustrating the use of the 'transferable skills' the subject can provide. A quick thought on 'transferable skills' as well - lots of subjects provide a great deal of the generic transferable skills that you hear about such as the abiltiy to write for different audiences, numeracy, data analysis and presentation skills. Mentioning that the subject provides them is fine but what evidence do you have that you ahve acquired them? How do you show someone, an employer maybe, that you have acquired these skills? View the videos in this light - do those involved show these transferable skills? Do they focus on general skills or do they show these transferable skills through their discussion of subject specific skills? Maybe the confidence you get from studying a subject you enjoy and understand helps you to demonstrate 'transferable skills'. Skills without this sort of context maybe difficult to demonstrate.

So What Can I Do With Geography?

Back to blogging after focusing on teaching this term. A question that seems to arise more and more through Open Days and discussion with both students and parents is what can I do with Geography? With fees in the UK about to go up to between £6,000 and £9,000 pounds, there is an understandable concern that both students and parents don’t want to waste their money on degrees that are in their view ‘worthless’. Ideally you would want a degree that places you in the right hand box of Figure 1 (taken from the website of the University of the West Indies). This box is a good place to be in a job market which is relatively static and in which you can be relaxed about the future but if you specialise too much is there a risk that if the economic or technology change then you could swiftly move into the left box or even bottom right box? Selecting a degree is as much about retaining flexibility in employability and in employable skills into the future as it is about choosing the right degree for your immediate career ambitions.



Figure 1 Employability matrix

Most geography departments in most universities will have a policy on employability and will either incorporate transferable and employability skills into their curriculum or provide separate units that tackle employability. The problem for a subject like geography is that, unlike something like Pharmacy or Engineering, there are few individuals who call themselves Geographers that you can point to and say ‘look see that is what you can do’. Like a lot of degrees geography provides essential transferable skills that employers seek as several websites note and as outlined in Table 1.



Table 1 General Employability Skills in a Degree

In addition, Geography offers a set of skills that are subject specific and which can help students gain jobs in different sectors such as those discussed on the GEES (Geography, Earth and Environmental Science) website. The skills are outlined below and divided into knowledge, skills and competencies. On some degree courses particular practical skills will be emphasised more than on other courses so if you want a particular skill for a particular career then it is important to select a course with this in mind.

Knowledge, Skills and Competencies

Knowledge
• Cultural, political, economic and environmental issues incorporating local, regional and international perspectives.
• Moral and ethical issues arising from an understanding of diversity in people and places.
• Issues of globalisation, environmental sustainability, multiculturalism and citizenship.

Thinking Skills
• Expertise in integrating, analysing and synthesising information from a range of sources, gained by working with complex environments and issues.

Practical Skills
• By routinely working in teams on laboratory, desk and field-based research, geographers are versed in project management including planning, execution and evaluation; this involves skills such as time-management, risk-assessment, problem solving and analysis.
• Geography requires the generation and use of a diversity of data types (text, numbers, images and maps). They therefore have well-developed literacy, numeracy and graphicacy skills and are accustomed to manipulating and presenting these various data using a range of ICT formats, including geographical information systems (GIS).
• The complex ‘real-world’ nature of geographical research requires geographers to be flexible and adaptable – they must have the confidence and initiative to be able to deal with the unexpected.

To access a word document produced by my colleagues at Portsmouth, Dr Brian Baily,please click HERE. This document provides prospective and current undergraduates with advice and links to a range of website dealing with employability for Geography. I hope you find this a useful resource.

Risk and Heuristics

The perception of risk affects how people behave. People tend to simplify the world; to use simple heuristics to help them understand risk and how they should behave in the face of risks. These simple rules affect how much insurance they buy, where they live, how dangerous they believe modern life is. Quoting facts and figures may do little to alter people’s behaviour or the hold of these heuristics. Studying the types of heuristics people have about risk has been a fruitful are of research since the 1970s when Tversky and Kahneman undertook their early studies (e.g. 1974, Judgment under uncertainty, Science, 185, 1124-1131). Amongst the numerous heuristics that have been researched I want to consider just three in this blog – representativeness, availability and anchoring – in the light of environmental risk.

Representativeness refers to people’s ability or tendency to view risk in one area as comparable to risk in another if the two areas, at least to them, resemble each other. Crime, whatever, its complexion may provide a convenient category for people to fear even if the causes of terrorism are different from bag snatching. The classing of both as crimes may connect the different activities as comparable in people’s minds. A previous blog discussed the media hype behind the BP oil spill. Media reports kept comparing the spill to the Exxon Valdez, forming a comparability connection in people’s minds. Both are oil spills, so they must be comparable. A closer examination of the causes and characteristics of each casts some doubt on their comparability. One was tanker spill, the other a massive, destructive blowout; one occurred in a confined water body, the other a dynamic ocean; one was associate with stark images and immediate of dying wildlife, the other with less obvious and visually striking losses of livelihoods. Yet, calling each an oil spill implies similarities in nature and similarities in response. Pointing out differences may do little to make people think that the things are different.

The ongoing floods in Pakistan are another example. Third world floods, again, may be the immediate response of some readers and viewers. The same sort of floods seems to happen every year, somewhere over there, surely by now they should know what to do? Classifying the event as a flood brings with it the risk of comparison with other events in the same class. By comparison the death toll seems small, by comparison the event seems slow, by comparison it happens a long way away. Such comparisons can become a convenient short-hand to explaining or justifying a lack of action or the vigorousness of a response. Classing an event may help to understand it but there is also a danger that we assume that as it is a member of that sort of event, we understand what it should do and how we should behave towards it. At the crudest level, for example, how many people should be dead to make it an important flood, rather than looking at the individuality of each event. Floods are different in causes, consequences and solutions; one size fitting all is as inappropriate for environmental hazards as it is for understanding most things.

The flood example is also an illustration of availability bias. Availability bias refers to the tendency for people to respond to risks more vigorously when examples of that type of risk are readily available to them. Availability may be from individual or community memory, from the media, from their beliefs about the world and any number of other sources. The Pakistan floods are compared to the impact of other floods we call to mind most readily whatever their cause. Similarly, the BP oil spill is contrasted in the media with the Exxon Valdez, as the latter is viewed as a key environmental event and so a sort of benchmark for other events, however inappropriate or appropriate the comparison might be.

On a more personal level, the fact that you may have experience a flood of your home in the last two or three years, may make you more wary of the flood risk and so more likely to purchase insurance or to try to at least as insurance companies using the same bias may raise premiums to match the increased perception of risk in your local area. Statistically, the local flood may not alter the probability of future flooding by much, if at all, but does it feel like that to you as you wade through your sodden possessions?

Anchoring refers to an individual’s or community’s starting point for assessing risk. Usually people start from a particular value that they belie is associated with a particular type of risk or event and then adjust their estimation of the risk (or its seriousness) in the light of further information. The adjustment will, however, always be in relation to that initial starting value. In other words, for the same physical risk or event, two individuals, one with a low initial estimate, the other with a high one, will interpret any further information about the risk or event in the light of their initial starting values. After the event, it is likely that both will have moved from their initial estimates but the person with the initial low value will still have a lower estimation of the risk than the person with the initial high estimation.

Once again the two recent disasters of the BP oil spill and the floods in Pakistan can be interpreted as examples of anchoring. How do you judge the impact of the BP oil spill? Initial estimates by the company and environmental groups varied. BP trying to downplay the incident, some environmental groups proclaiming nightmarish scenarios for the future of the Gulf. As the event has unfolded how have each side changed its rhetoric? BP has slowly admitted the spill was worst than initial thought, at least in terms of the amount of oil released into the ocean. Images of environmental annihilation of the Gulf have not emerged. So do you adjust your assessment of the damage wrought by the oil spill up or down as evidence and opinion have increased? Does it depend on where you started – as a committed environmentalist or as a company supporter? Does it really matter where you start, doesn’t the evidence speak for itself? Evidence is always interpreted so these heuristics are important.

Aid for the floods in Pakistan may have suffered from an anchoring effect. The areal extent of the disaster is huge and the impact and suffering caused by the floods is both massive and real, but the initial death toll seemed minor in comparison to other disasters in recent memory, such as the Haitian earthquake or the Boxing Day tsunami. It may be simplistic but impact and death toll may be related in people’s mind and a low death toll anchors the flood disaster relatively low down in a mental pecking order or recent disasters. Subsequent media coverage, celebrity appeals and governmental and UN urging for aid may be interpreted in the light of this initial anchor point.

As an additional thought, what is your individual anchor point in the ongoing ‘discussions’ about the need to reduce expenditure on public spending to clear public deficits? The debate seems to have moved beyond do we need to? The debate only seems to be how severely do we need to? Accepting the need is as much an anchor as setting an amount. I may be overly cynical but if leaks suggest a 40% cut in the spending of a government department and a review finally recommends only 30%, then you can’t help but feel a little relieved it is lower than you expected. Anchoring is a very strong tool in setting agendas both for environmental issues and for politics in general.