[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.

Human Dimensions of Global Change

In my opinion, I don’t believe the majority of individuals understand their impact on Global Change.

Global Change is understood when disaster strikes close to their home such as flooding, erratic weather, and drought. For example in North America, in the summer when the water reservoirs  become too low, then the city would regulate household water consumption such as watering the lawn can only be permitted on odd days to conserve water supplies. It is not until these circumstances, that we understand that water supply is not infinite, but indeed finite.

Global Change seems to be a faraway issue that is hard to relate to as it is communicated through scientific terms and findings. There are many graphs on how global climate change is affecting us that looks disconcerting, but we do not know how to read or interpret the graphs.  

Global change is talked about in broad terms such as global climate change, war and conflict, drought, but global change can be felt in smaller scales such as soil in your yard becoming infertile and increasing sickness in your family.

Global Change is distorted through political agendas. Most people relate to Global Change as global warming, because most government initiatives and marketing campaigns are aimed at reducing carbon emissions to maintain the business as usual scenario. However, global change encompasses issues such as soil erosion that can lead to depletion of food resources.  

From our first learning portfolio entry, we learned that people learn in many different ways. People learn through their experiences, using metaphors and analogies to communicate how they learn. To bring the issues of Global Change closer to everyday individuals, I believe there needs to be improvement in the communication of Global Change in order to gain public awareness and support for the issue.

Bottom-up approach to sustainable waste management: Case Studies form Laos

From Dr Chuthatip Maneepong case studies of community based waste management projects from Laos presented in Week 6 Lecture, money and leadership from the government, International Development Agencies, and Community are the major factors in a successful bottom-up approach. The success of the efforts in Nong Duang Thong Village (Inner City Slum) is due to the network of leadership between CIDA that help establish a legitimate contract for the Village, Village Leader watches over the Community Environment Units to facilitate actions in the community, and Community Environment Units to support Villagers in their efforts. Money also played a key role in that it gave facilities and incentives for the community members to participate in waste management of sorting and recycling. Such as, allowing villagers to make revenue from selling recycled goods, making the project a sustainable practice. With leadership, I believe there needs to be a chain of leadership to support one another.  In the example of Sisatanak, the community project failed because there were no further actions on the project after it was implemented due to lack of leadership and funding. The project was administrated by a villager nominated by the village head, and had no support from the government or international agencies. With low funding and resources, the sole villager did not have the capacity to motivate the others. With no authoritative figure, it was difficult for a villager to have credibility to influence others in supporting the project. In addition, there was no prior established leadership in the community making it hard for the villager to reach out to a fragmented community.

After learning from these case studies, I questioned if a bottom-up approach of waste management is appropriate to all communities? From my perspective, I believe in a lower income community, the approach is viable because profit can be generated from recycling efforts in improving their quality of living. However, in middle class income communities and above, a top-down approach would work better. This is because they are more reliant on the municipal government to deal with the collecting and processing of their waste. As culturally, recycling efforts are regarded as activities of the poor and they would be less engaged in community waste management projects.

[Tutorial 1] Reflections on developing a hypothetically, 10 million USD Project

My experience in developing projects for hypothetically, 10 million USD in solving peri-urbanisation issues in Ayutthaya, Thailand exposed me to the amount of research needed to justify a project to be implemented by the government. Research in financial cost of project, technologies made for developing countries, current government issues, environmental context and many more are factored into making a well-rounded and persuasive project. Some teams researched into financial projection of a whole waste management facility, different types of water treatment technologies, expanding road mitigation and rerouting, GIS to track migrant workers, incentives for migrant workers to register with the government and case studies from other countries that can relate and strengthen their projects. A well-rounded project also considers both the hardware and software components. For example, my team worked on tackling water supply management issues in Ayutthaya. Our solution consisted of the hardware of implementing water management technologies such as rainwater catchment swells to be placed on rooftops, desalination station, and super sand to filter out toxins in water. On the other hand, we needed to consider the issues of decentralized policy that has made the government network in Ayutthaya fragmented, resulting in more pressure on local agencies to work on issues with insufficient funding and resources. We worked on the software of devising a three tier government network, where there is an extra level of agency in the middle to connect the national government to the local government agencies. As a result, better communication and inter-dependence between the national level and local level can be established. In addition, research can come from many disciplines of studies. Such as, from design, we have the idea of think tanks where individuals gather together to collaboratively work on issues and problems. I suggested to the group, that the middle agency could act like a think tank, where they receive issues and feedback from the national government and local agencies and they would work as a workgroup to find solutions. Therefore, solutions from local agencies may be reported or filtered to the national level or the national government solutions and resources maybe infiltrated to solving local issues. In creating a well-developed project, there needs to be sound research into diverse factors, technologies, knowledge fields, disciplines and case studies from other countries that can strengthen the project idea. It is not only about implementing physical solutions, but also taking account of social issues and influences.