Community Group and Environmental Leadership

Throughout this module, there has been a reoccurring theme with community groups from all the case studies that Dr. Chuthatip Maneepong has talked about. Sustainability efforts from the community level require awareness, education, and leadership. In this last case study on Mae Kha Canal, Chiangmai, Thailand, Bio waste treatment initiatives, there needs to be awareness of the imminent issue of pollution in the Canal to get the community motivated in taking action, there needs to be education to help the community know how to treat their waste, and leadership to ensure that community members take action on sustainability efforts.

In addition, most of the case studies are based on developing countries in rural regions where individuals’ prime focus is to make ends meet to survive. If sustainability efforts can be linked with economic revenue, than there will be greater adoption of community sustainability efforts. Therefore, incentives and monetary support are also important factors in driving sustainability efforts with rural community groups in Thailand and Laos.

Lastly, I believe community groups are highly driven by the individuals. There needs to be coherence in a community group. Therefore, sustainability efforts also require tackling the softer issues such as building connections between individuals through community meetings, bonding activities, and vision sharing.

Environmental Awareness- My personal take

The Positive Message of 'Love the Environment' at I Light Marina Bay 2012 Festival

I believe to gain grounds on environmental awareness across the mass public requires cities to reach out to the public in creative ways other than broadcasted as oppressing issues on prime time news. Through the years, I have learned about environmental issues from seeing images of natural disaster around the world on prime time news and this has made me afraid of the future of our environment. As a result, over time I have shunned myself from the realization of environmental issues. However, the ‘I light Marina Bay’ festival in Singapore has made learning about environmental sustainability a lighter note.

Other than public awareness of environmental issues through prime time news, I think government need to invest in more creative communication channels within the local context of the community to reach out to the public. In addition, I believe environmental issues should be showcased to the public in a more positive light that engages the public rather than to make them afraid. The ‘I light Marina Bay festival’ in Singapore is a great example as it is able to reach out to individuals of all ages and educational background. Environmental awareness is communicated to the public through art installations that promote the exploration of energy efficient technologies. In addition, sustainability programs are set up for the public to explore sustainability in different ways such as ‘I Light Laughter’ story-telling, ‘Switch it’ painting workshop, and ‘Tip Me’ competition to allow the public to share ideas on energy efficiency tips. 

It provides a positive and fun experience that eases people into both environmental issues and current explorations in tackling them. Most importantly, I believe festival and events like this provides a positive and pragmatic experience that demonstrates to the public how they can make a difference in a local scale. For example, simply turning off their lights in their home more often or switching to more energy efficient lighting technologies. 

Image source

http://thelongnwindingroad.wordpress.com/2012/03/19/love-is-very-much-in-the-air-at-i-light-marina-bay-2012/

Community Adaptation

From week 11 lecture, the case study presented on Bang Khuan Thian (BKT) Bangkok, Thailand community adaptation measures have been largely dependent on community participation. However, in order to sustain the region of BKT, financial support from a larger system is needed to increase and improve ecological conservation. The community needs to diversify economic activities, besides aqua culture, to maintain economic livelihood. As well, the changing perspective of youths, who may not place as high a value on traditional economic economy of aquaculture will be less committed to community-based projects such as planting mangroves and building bamboo dykes. Therefore, I believe BKT can introduce eco-tourism as a community adaptation measure to generate economic revenue to sustain the community and the physical environment.

Jiuzhaigou Biosphere Reserve (JBR) in Sichuan Province is a case study of how eco-tourism can be introduced as a successful measure of community adaptation. JBR is similar to BKT, in that before eco-tourism was introduced, its economy was highly dependent on agriculture and grazing with limited source of income and the community was living an impoverished life. Eco-tourism was introduced into the region and the local income dramatically increased by 188% per capita in a span of 10 years. Not only did the community’s income per capita increased, it provided more diverse job opportunities for individuals and it decreases their dependence on agriculture. In turn, interviews conducted with local residents have responded that that their natural landscape improved due to villagers ceasing their agricultural activities due to revenues and benefits from the tourism industry. This shift from agricultural dependence to tourism has helped to improve the sustainability of JBR community as it is less vulnerable to resource depletion, provided a platform for economic revenue and brought awareness and importance to the community about ecological conservation.

In addition, I believe eco-tourism can promote the economic value of BKT at a governmental level. This will bring awareness to the national government to contribute resources towards ecological conservation and sustainability of BKT because of its value.

Reference 

Case Study of Jiu Zhaigou Biosphere Reserve in Sichuan Province (Chapter 5, p. 92 - 107)
http://www.scribd.com/doc/52891038/Ecotourism-and-environmental-sustainability

Greening Universities

Why do I feel the need to learn about environmental sustainability as a design student? I believe universities should integrate the learning of environmental sustainability into all faculties. I agree with the week 9 lecture, when Professor David Higgitt brought up the point that there are many evidences that a sustainability agenda is having a major impact on the labour market. In particular, the design field has shown a focus towards creating environmentally sustainable products. Sustainability is trickling into design thinking.

IDEO a leading design firm, in which most design student sought after is already integrating sustainability into their design process and thinking. Steve Bishop, the global lead of sustainability at IDEO, in a recent interview with the Atlantic, said that sustainability can be a tool for designers to innovate, is how we can define good design moving into the future, and is a new market demand. At IDEO they have a program called project vacation, where they set aside a day to take a vacation away from a client’s design brief to address sustainability in the project. However, he also mentioned that project teams are feeling ill-equipped to address sustainability topics confidently. Therefore, I feel like to gain a competitive edge as a design student, we must harness sustainability literacy in this new generation.

I feel that the idea of sustainability is also being emphasized in the current design modules at NUS and at my home university. Though, sustainability is only included in our design brief as a criteria for our projects. However, we lack the knowledge and information to understand what sustainability encompasses and jump to the conclusion of designing for environmental sustainability. However, this module has taught me that sustainability also includes tackling issues of society, governance, human behaviour, in addition to environmental impacts.

References
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2011/12/ideos-steve-bishop-on-the-future-of-sustainable-design-thinking/249225

[Virtual Tutorial Reflection] (In)Equity, (In)Equality and (In)Justice

Q1) Quality of life is where resources are allocated in an equitable manner. I believe all individuals of all social-economic standing have an opportunity to achieve satisfaction and happiness, in addition to having a good human development index. Allocating money resources to individuals provide equal opportunities in pursing education towards better job placements, with skill training advancement, thus brings greater satisfaction to individuals.

This may require the efforts of a justice system that regulates the allocation of resources. For example, the idea of “tradeable carbon quotas” from Wilkinson and Pickett’s reading to redistribute income from rich to poor is something that the government can implement to bring about equity.

Q2) Rights to quality of life should be applied to all individuals, as inequality, inequity and injustice brings about many consequences (eg. environmental impacts, war and conflict and famine). As individuals who are part of a society, we need to have more empathy towards others. Consequences should be made more transparent for individuals; thus, stimulating individuals to have concern for others and to work together to achieve equality.

Q3) Equal societies can foster better creative and innovations to address environmental issues in terms of having more human resources with greater education, funding, and resources. However, inequality can spark greater creativity and innovation as they are driven by limitations and constraints.

Q4) I think inequality increases pressure to consume even among poorer individuals. Less affluent individuals would find alternatives such as purchasing clothes from a thrift store, electronics through eBay, or purchasing replica goods. Though some of these examples benefit the environment, by reusing products, it still promotes consumerism. This consumerism demand places demand on manufacturers to create alternative or replica product. For example, in Kuala Lumpur’s China Town, street vendors sell replicas of branded goods such as Louis Vuitton, Gucci, and many more. In turn resources and fuel are used in the manufacturing of these goods.

Overall, I felt the virtual tutorial was unsuccessful with the ANU campus as my team only received one response from the ANU team, while all of us contributed to answering the questions. The response we received from the ANU team lacked detail and was less insightful. However, I thought it was interesting to be able to read detailed answers from all my team members. We all took our own unique angle in answering the questions and therefore it provided me with new ways to look at (In)Equity, (In)Equality and (In)Justice.

[Tutorial 3 Reflection] Campus Sustainability

Often times, we do not know that our current behaviours are unsustainable, unless someone intervenes and bring awareness. For example, in Canada when I purchase canned soft drinks, a recycling tax imposed by the government would be embedded at my point of purchase at a local supermarket. Therefore, it encourages me to bring the cans to a recycling depot to be given back my money.

One way to change behaviours on a local scale is to involve businesses to embed sustainable practices in there activities, so that consumers can learn from their daily transactions. Business can intervene by providing incentives and rewards for their customers. This challenges our current behaviours and allows us to understand how to become more sustainable through being rewarded for doing the correct thing. For example, in our collaboration with ANU, a student provided the example of Project Tumbler which is a Starbucks campaign held at the NUS campus store. Students receive the reward of 50 cents off their drink when they collect 5 stamps, on a stamp card that each student was given by Starbucks. As a result, we can see more students bringing in their own tumbler and a reduction in disposable coffee cups in the campus.

Moreover, business also needs the motivation for adopting more sustainable practices. Therefore, I believe that national government would also need to intervene by providing regulations and incentives for companies to engage in sustainability practices. Changing behaviours on a local scale with local businesses requires the leadership from the national stage. For my research on how Hong Kong combats carbon emission for my collaborative project, the Hong Kong government provides incentives for the two power companies (Hong Kong Electric and China Light & Power) based on their energy performance from their energy audits and sets it into their licensing agreements. This encouraged the power companies to take their own initiatives to increase their power performance. Indeed, they did it through setting up a loan fund that engages their non-government customers to implement energy saving initiatives (1).

Incentives when given as a reward for doing the right thing can be a useful tool for changing peoples' behaviours on environmental sustainability.

References

(1) http://www.info.gov.hk/gia/general/201106/01/P201106010153.htm

Image Sources

http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5266/5621463078_fde965cae6.jpg

[Tutorial 2] Tragedy of the Commons

From Hardin’s reading Tragedy of the Commons describes resources held in common are vulnerable to massive degradation from humankind through over consumption. We need to bring about exclusion and regulation of use and users to prevent over exploitation of common resources/ welfare of others. However, in tutorials we learned that exploitation can also be affected by culture/tradition. Therefore, in addition to Hardin’s proposed solutions, we need to bring awareness of traditions and norms that also influences the impact of tragedy of the commons, to propose new balanced lifestyles that is able to sustain resources for future generations. For example, we discussed about the culture of having shark fin soup for Asian cultures. We learned that the act of partaking in shark fin soup is to celebrate a special occasion, to give respect to the host who served it, and a symbol status of wealth. What can we do to bring awareness without being disrespectful to a culture, but may have an impact on others? There are those who can silently refuse to partake, but their share would be transferred to another guest who will then consume it.  A more proactive way, that a student mentioned was that in weddings, the host can choose not to serve shark fin and indicate their stance on shark fin and bring awareness to family and friends. As well, by taking a stance, they are able to set new standards in their community of family and friends. Through the discussion, I began to believe a top-down approach is needed to re-adjust cultural values and traditions. The bottom-up approach of refraining from consuming a certain good would only mean that others would have the opportunity to take your share. On the other hand, a top-down approach such a regulations imposed on a community can impact more individuals, bringing greater awareness to the issue. People would work more collectively to readjust the issue.