Svenska Aralsjösällskapet
5a.
Manufacturing – sustainable production
Factory smokestacks. Kunda, Lääne-Viru county, Estonia 1993. CC Photo: Curt Carnemark / World Bank
In its beginning industrial production was connected to chimneys with dirty smoke, effluents to rivers and mountains of bad-smelling solid waste. This has been improved over the years but still in the end of the last century industrial production caused much pollution. This is obviously not sustainable and has to change. An equally important aspect is the resource use in industrial production, may it be metal ore, biomass such as wood, or the large amounts of energy, quite often fossil. In contrast sustainable production deals with how to improve and manage production in a manner which is resource efficient, non-polluting and produces products which themselves are environmentally friendly and sustainable.
The importance of developing sustainable production and consumption patterns cannot be overstated. It was singled out in the 1992 UNCED Rio conference as the main reason for the global environmental crisis and in the Plan of Implementation at the Johannesburg conference it was a main concern. In Agenda 21 we read: The major cause of the continued deterioration of the global environment is the unsustainable pattern of consumption and production, particularly in industrialized countries.
Production is part of a system. It needs to be seen together with the resources extracted, the products produced and how they are used, and finally the waste, which all products eventually will become. This is the life-cycle of a product. In this session on sustainable production and consumption we will cover each of these life stages from resources to waste. Here we will just note that the pattern of production in industrial society is using enormous amounts of natural resources, is often inefficient and leads to waste accumulation. To become sustainable production needs to be much more like what we see in nature: in nature resources are recycled, energy is based on sun, and products are extremely efficient.
Environmental impact along the life cycle is calculated according to well-established methods in a so-called Life Cycle Assessment, LCA. LCA is much used to compare different production methods or products. A classical question to be answered by an LCA is “Is it better to use a reusable glass or a through-away plastic bottle for drinks?” The comparison needs to take into account the resource used for producing the glass bottle including energy, transporting it back to the factory, cleaning it, while the plastic bottle only uses the oil to make plastic. In a classical analysis it turned out that the glass bottle needs to be reused 11 times to be better.
LCA results often show some 10 different parameters such as resource use, energy use, waste, different emissions etc. The difficulty is where to set the system borders, i.e. what to include, since each of the material used in turn have been produced and their effects need to be included. Even if a proper complicated LCA is not conducted each person should consider, be aware of, the life cycle of products. Life cycle thinking is the beginning of a systems approach to production. LCA can be seen as both a management tool and as a way to integrate environmental concern into product development.
"Life-cycle chain from extraction - through production - to consumption and waste.
Source: EEA, ETC Sustainable Consumption and Production.
Pollution from industries was long understood as merely a constraint from the environment and thus a burden and a cost for the production. The so-called end-of-pipe approach was used to combat pollution. End-of-pipe means that effluents, emissions and waste are treated to remove pollutants. But eventually it was understood that pollution was rather a sign that the production processes themselves were not working well. The resources should be used for products not pollutants! The change of production processes to non-polluting and resource efficient processes is called cleaner production, CP measures. Cleaner production is in the economic, environmental and social interest of producers and have since the 1990s been implemented in many industries.
The introduction of cleaner production methods, and related methods such as waste minimization, pollution prevention, etc is normally done using a management system. It asks for systematic measurements of the flow of resources, of products and by-products, etc. followed by systematic projects to deal with them, and a follow-up. Management cycles are based on the simple series “plan-do-check-act”, the so-called Deming cycle. One should repeat the cycle, most often each third year, each turn focusing on some important problem. The Environmental Management Systems, EMS, have since the 1990s been standardized to permit external checks, i.e. environmental audits, and the possibilities for certification. The most common EMS system is ISO 14001. ISO stands for the International Organisation for Standardzation; the system is recognised internationally. A company or other actor (such as a university) that has a certification according to 14001 is working systematically to improve its environmental profile; it is not necessarily yet very good in environmental performance, but certainly getting better.
The ideal production scheme should not only be non-polluting. Its products should also be possible to use for a new cycle of production. This is called C2C, or cradle to cradle. Here the resource flow does not lead from cradle to grave (too often the landfill) but rather becomes a new cradle. The resources used by the industry are then old (wasted) products. While the cleaner production methods aims to improve a process to be “less bad”, the C2C approach is to “be good”, that is contribute to the environment. It is not only a vision. Today many hundreds of companies have been certified as C2C companies.
When the outlets from one industry are used as a resource in another it is called industrial symbiosis or sometimes industrial ecology. This pattern of cooperation is most often seen in agriculture, but it can be done in many kinds of industries.
Textile industry in Poland. Photo (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0): Steve McNicholas.
As the effects of pollution and resource depletion have become more serious, the environmental laws of countries have become stronger. In particular European Union law has been of great importance for improving the environmental performance both of business and the public sector. The increasing environmental threats demand new measures to improve the management of economic activities. That, in turn, prescribes the necessity to take into account ecological requirements in production, development of new products, and management of technological processes, as well as personal and financial management.
Materials for session 5a
Basic level
- Read chapter 3, pages 59–69: Industry and industrial history in the Baltic Sea region in: Cleaner Production - Technologies and Tools for Resource Efficient Production (Baltic Sea region Industrial History; The Major Branches of Industry; Industrial Structure and Restructuring).
- Read chapter 1, pages 27-46: Industrial impact on the environment in: Cleaner Production - Technologies and Tools for Resource Efficient Production.
- Read chapter 1, pages 5-10 in A Sustainable Baltic Region. Session 5: Environmental challenges for industry in the Baltic Sea region.
- Read page 32 in A Sustainable Baltic Region. Session 5: Life Cycle Assessment - LCA of dipers.
- Read chapter 1, pages 19-25 Introduction: Cleaner production in Cleaner Production - Technologies and Tools for Resource Efficient Production.
- Read chapter 1, pages 19-26 Basics of environmental management systems in Environmental Management Systems and Certification.
- Watch Cleantech investments in Eastern Europe – NEFCO (YouTube film)
- A presentation by Lars Rydén on: Cleaner production
- A presentation by Lars Rydén on: Cleantech production and consumption
- Watch Ecoprint - a film on Ecoprint, a printhouse in Estonia (YouTube film)
- The Story of Stuff - This is a 20-minute, fast-paced, fact-filled look at the underside of our production and consumption patterns (YouTube film).
Medium level (widening)
- Basic concepts
Sustainable Consumption and Production (SCP) Targets and Indicators and the SDGs IISD International Institute for Sustainable Development (UN)
European Sustainable Consumption and Production Policies EU Commission DG Environment (EU) - Read chapter 11, pages 155-164 Green engineering in Cleaner Production - Technologies and Tools for Resource Efficient Production.
- Read chapter 12, pages 165-178 Green chemistry in Cleaner Production - Technologies and Tools for Resource Efficient Production.
- Read chapter 5, pages 87-96 Introduction to Life Cycle Assessment in Product Design and Life Cycle Assessment.
- Read chapter 2, pages 27-35 Overview of environmental standards in Environmental Management Systems and Certification.
- Watch William McDonough author of Cradle to Cradle (YouTube film).
Advanced level (deepening)
- Read chapter 4, pages 71-86 Cleaner Production Assessment in Cleaner Production - Technologies and Tools for Resource Efficient Production.
- Read chapter 9, pages 85-94 Integrated and simplified management systems in Environmental Management Systems and Certification.
- Study in some detail two cases – Select from Environmental Management, Book 4: Systems and Certification, Case studies:
- Study some cases of environmentally clever productions from the Blue Economy (ZERI in Action, Zero Emissions Research Institute).
References
Nilsson, L., Persson, P. O., Rydén, L., Darozhka, S. and A. Zaliauskiene. 2007. Cleaner Production - Technologies and Tools for Resource Efficient Production Environmental Management Book 2, Baltic University Press, Uppsala.
Strahl, J. 1997. A Life Cycle Assessment of Diapers. In: Strahl. J. (ed.). 1997. Sustainable Industrial Production - Waste minimization, cleaner technology and industrial ecology. A Sustainable Baltic Region. Session 5.
Weiß, P. and J. Bentlage. 2006. Environmental Management Systems and Certification. Environmental Management Book 4, Baltic University Press, Uppsala.
Zbicinski, I., Stavenuiter, J., Kozlowska, B. and H.P.M. van de Coevering. 2006. Product Design and Life Cycle Assessment. Environmental Management Book 3. Baltic University Press, Uppsala.
5b.
Consumption – sustainable use of products
The affluence and easy access to all kinds of commodities in our societies is certainly part of our welfare. But there is also a downside to this. Industrialized societies are consumption societies; consumption may even become a meaning of life. The flow of resources is enormous. Counted per capita, it is today larger than the carrying capacity of the Earth. We are living in an era of overshoot and over-consumption, which is not sustainable. The use of resources is often expressed by the so-called ecological footprint (See further Chapter 3c). It is the surface area of the Earth needed to create the resources used. It is expressed in global hectares (gha). In the Baltic Sea region, we use on average 3-5 gha per capita. The space available on earth (with 7 billion inhabitants) is about 1.8 gha/capita. Others have smaller footprints, as e.g. most Africans, but still for the planet as a whole the footprint is too large. In 2011 the global population used close to 1.5 planets.
The affluence, which makes this possible, was in the West largely created between 1955 and 1975. In this period the flow of material of all kinds – energy, water, minerals, fertilizers, etc – increased by about 3 times or more. Later, the flow levelled off to increase much less steeply. Since the early 1980s the world as a whole is in a period of overshoot, meaning that we use more resources than are created; that is, we live on loans. The overshoot is due to fossil fuel use, overfishing, deforestation etc. The overshoot is still increasing.
Shopping is an important part of life in the consumer society
Several ways have been tried to address the problem of overconsumption. We will touch on those, which are concerned with the products themselves, in this session. The question of consumption and lifestyle is treated in Chapter 10.
Decoupling means that you may deliver a service or goods while consuming fewer resources than before. A typical case is if instead of travelling to see someone, you meet virtually using the Internet. This is increasingly used and reduces travelling. But as many more meetings are made, travelling is still increasing. This is called the rebound effect. The relative number of travels per meetings is reduced, but the total number of travels is still increasing. In many areas we have in this way obtained relative decoupling, but much more seldom absolute decoupling. (See further Chapter 3c)
Another way to reduce resource flow is to use products together instead of individually. Thus, if many use a common printer instead of each one having his/her own, the material flow decreases. Another example is if many car owners use bus instead of their individual cars, the footprint of everyone is decreasing dramatically. In real life, the tendency is the opposite: each one who can afford has his/her own car. And overshoot increases! An opposite trend is, however, car sharing or car-pooling, increasingly common in large cities.
Product design can make much to reduce footprints. Eco design is a systematic method to design products not only according to form, colour or material, but also desirable environmental properties. Eco designed products may be dematerialized, that is having less material, be more compact, than ordinary products; they may have less toxic materials; they may have longer lives for example by being easy to repair; be more energy efficient during use; and they may have a better end-of-life, e.g. be easier to recycle. Some aspects of eco-design we meet daily, e.g. energy efficient lamp bulbs, smaller computers, toys without toxins. Some of these properties are mandatory according to environmental law.
A very important aspect is a product’s end-of-life. The waste management hierarchy tells us that best is reducing (fewer products, e.g. by sharing resources), next best reuse (repairable products) and then recycle, which means that the material in the product can be reused.
Environmentally friendly products are often called green products. There are a number of organizations, which provide green products with an eco-label to indicate that they meet set standards for that label. Well known labels include that European Union flower and the Nordic Swan, developed by the Nordic Council.
The big consumers, such as municipalities, state authorities and large companies may adopt a policy of buying green products, quite significant since they buy for the millions or billions. This is called green procurement, meaning that they choose a product or a service that has a lower environmental impact in comparison with other products or services fulfilling the same functions. Life cycle costs calculation is used as a basic. Companies which pride themselves for thoughtful care of the environment may use green procurement to ensure that they do business in an environmentally responsible way. Also, as a private person, one may decide to buy green products. It sends a clear signal to the producer that there is a market for such products, and they will increase compared to the less green alternatives.
According to much research the largest environmental impact we make as consumers is caused by our living (houses and how they are heated for example), our food (e.g. meat has a much larger footprint than vegetarian meals) and travelling (air travel has the largest footprint per km while e.g. biking is very environmentally friendly). These areas need to be looked at with some care to be sure that all possible improvements have been made. Best is if one makes a proper estimation of the ecological footprint or a similar measure to quantify the differences.
Materials for session 5b
Basic level
- Read chapter 7, pages 111-115: Ready-made methods for life cycle impact assessment methods in Product Design and Life Cycle Assessment.
- Ecological footprint – global footprint network
- Overshoot and carrying capacity. Earth Overshoot Day is coming!
- Read chapter 2: Resource flow and product design in Product Design and Life Cycle Assessment.
- Read the last chapter, Decoupling and rebound in: A Sustainable Baltic Region. Session 9.
- Read chapter 3: Strategies for ecodesign in: Product Design and Life Cycle Assessment.
- Read chapter 13: Green marketing and eco-labelling in: Product Design and Life Cycle Assessment.
Medium level (widening)
- Read chapter 15: Product-related environmental policies in Product Design and Life Cycle Assessment.
- Read chapter 4: Implementing eco-design in Product Design and Life Cycle Assessment.
- Explore the concept of biomimicry (e.g. on Biomimicry Institute)
- Study some examples of sustainable products and judge how good they are (e.g. at Biothinking)
Advanced level (deepening)
- Read chapter 9: Applying LCA – Comparing two windows in Product Design and Life Cycle Assessment.
- Read Case Study 3: Eco-buildings – European projects for ecological building, Germany and Sweden in Product Design and Life Cycle Assessment.
- Study certification systems for buildings on the Internet LEED, BREEAM, Nordic Swan.
Additional Material
Eco-labelling is an important strategy within the European Union work for Sustainable Production and Consumption, as briefly shown in the first film. The second film shows the case of a small Estonian printing company, EcoPrint.
Film 1: Sustainable consumption & production: a greener world (YouTube film)
Film 2: Ecoprint (YouTube film)
References
Rydén, L. (ed.) 1997. The Foundations of Sustainable Development – Ethics, law, culture and the physical boundaries. A Sustainable Baltic Region. Session 9. Baltic University Press, Uppsala.
Wackernagel, M., Schulz, N.B., Deumling, D., Callejas Linares, A., Jenkins, M., Kapos, V., Monfreda, C., Loh, J., Myers. M., Norgaard, R. and J. Randers. 2002. Tracking the ecological overshoot of the human economy. PNAS vol. 99 no. 14: 9266–9271. www.pnas.org/cgi/doi/10.1073/pnas.142033699
Zbicinski, I., Stavenuiter, J., Kozlowska, B. and H.P.M. van de Coevering. 2006. Product Design and Life Cycle Assessment. Environmental Management, Book 3. Baltic University Press, Uppsala.
5c.
Waste – sustainable end-of-life of products
Wastes piling up
In the 1970s countries in Europe became alarmed by rapidly growing piles of waste. Landfills were expanding in many countries both by household waste and waste from industries. This was propelled by non-recyclable products from bars, kitchens etc. as well as the increasing number of packages used for all kinds of products in the shops. More than 50% of household solid waste consisted of packages. In the European Union the amounts of household waste is despite efforts over many years still increasing. It is now approaching 600 kg per year and capita.
Even worse is the too common habit of illegal dumping of waste, e.g. along the roads increasing with increasing costs. In addition to being ugly, it pollutes - sometimes seriously e.g. lead or mercury from old batteries - and threatens wildlife. A particular bad habit is to dump waste from ships right into the sea. The sea cannot accommodate all the waste from boats, and many times the waste turns into deadly traps for sea animals, such as seals. Especially plastic is serious since most of the plastic ever produced, non-degradable, is still there and pollutes. In the Pacific Ocean currents have concentrated plastic debris to a huge area called the Trash Vortex.
The costs of the growing piles of garbage and landfills mounted due to increasing land use and other resources being used up. Also landfills were environmentally problematic since they leaked to groundwater and emitted methane, a strong climate gas. For these reasons environmental legislation attempted to limit waste amounts and taxed waste sent to landfill.
An even more important aspect is that waste on landfills is a sign that the resource flow is linear, and therefore completely unsustainable and in fact a symptom of badly designed production and consumption patterns. In general the material flows in Europe were in the 1990s overwhelmingly, more than 95%, linear and going from resources to production, and use to waste.
The largest waste categories are mining and industrial waste. The management of this waste is discussed at Chapter 5a. The most sustainable option is industrial symbiosis when waste is used as a resource. Some wastes are used for building infrastructure (e.g. roads) while agricultural waste may be used for energy purposes. Construction waste is a special case since it is such a large waste category. Costs of waste have spurred building companies to be more inventive to reduce this waste category considerably.
In this sub-session we will mostly address household waste even if many of the options are also valid for industrial and agricultural waste. Another specification is that below we will deal almost exclusively with solid waste. Emissions to water and air, which also may be included in waste, will not be discussed here. There are several ways to deal with the increasing amounts of waste. Below we will summarize the most important ones. These measures should be seen in the contexts of product design (See Chapter 5b) as well as production (See Chapter 5a).
The European Union has listed the different options to deal with waste into a waste hierarchy going from best to worst:
Reduce, or waste reduction, reducing the product flow
Reuse, make products more repairable and with longer lives, or give to next user
Recycle, this most often refers to the materials in the products
Composing, for organic waste, the resulting compost may be used
Fermentation to biogas, also an option for organic waste, and biogas used for energy
Incineration, organic waste may be burned and heat taken care of, e.g. in district heating
Incineration, without recovery of the heat produced
Landfill
The most important way to deal with waste is recycling. Either to recycle the products themselves or the material they consist of. Recycling may be either internal or external.
Recycling bottles is environmental friendly and easy.
Internal recycling is when in a factory the material discarded in a product step is taken care of and, often after some kind of processing, fed back into the production chain. This is a very important part of Cleaner Production strategies and has reduced waste from industries and increased efficiency considerably.
External recycling, or open loop recycling, is when the material is coming back to the production chain after having been used. A typical case is paper, which is sent back from the consumers after e.g. the newspaper has been used and read. The old paper is then washed to take away ink from printing and used for new paper products. Theoretically a cellulosic fibre can be recycled 6 times before it is too short to be useable for paper. Then it is sent to incineration. This process is also called downcycling, as the quality of the material decreases at each cycle.
Recycling is never perfect but in some cases they may be close to 100%. Thus recycling of lead-containing car batteries is very well organized in some countries to make such a technical recycling loop close enough to perfect to allow the use of the quite toxic lead in society. We would like to see the equally perfect recycling of all kinds of batteries but this is not yet the case.
Recycling of household waste ask for a good waste sorting already in the households themselves. Good household sorting gives 6 basic fractions (compostable, burnable, paper and cardboard, plastics, metal, glass). Of course this has to be followed by proper processing at the later stages, which is not always in place. In addition special waste, such as batteries, light bulbs etc has to be managed in addition to the six categories mentioned.
The many toxic components in different kinds of ordinary household equipments have prompted the European Union and other countries to introduce strict legal requirements on waste management of many products. Best known may be the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment, WEE, Directive. This prescribes how to properly take care of all kinds of electrical and electronic equipment, such as computers, refrigerators etc. It puts large responsibilities on the responsible authorities most often the municipalities. This is however only a small part of the whole. The European strategy for prevention and recycling of waste is one of the presently seven environmental themes in the EU and is backed by the Waste Framework Directive, which includes a long list of special directives.
Recycling is also backed up by economic incentives, most importantly the deposit and refunding system. In this system the customer when buying a beverage pays an amount of money for the bottle or can. He/she is then refunded when the empty bottle or can is returned. In this way more than 90% of aluminium cans in Sweden are recycled.
Increasingly often the producers also are legally required to take care of the wasted products. This is called Extended Producer Responsibility, EPR. In many countries it applies to a large number of electric and electronic products, large equipments such as cars, and equipments with some toxicity, e.g. light bulbs.
Some waste can be bought and sold, that is, it has a market value. Thus scrap metal is quite valuable on the market, and sometimes scrap plastic is also sold. Quite expensive is scrap copper. Also some bio-waste is sold and bought, e.g. forest residues. More recently other products have entered the market, such as used car tires. Of course any kind of used items (cars, furniture etc), which are offered on a market belong to this category, and some municipalities make considerable efforts to make this second-hand market functional. In the waste hierarchy it belongs to reuse.
Recycling reduces the material flows, but also improves energy management as the waste stream includes a considerable amount of energy. This is particularly clear for metals: to produce a metal object from scrap metal rather than from the virgin ore is much less energy requiring. Thus to use scrap iron consumes 6 times less energy, scrap copper 30 times less and aluminium 50 times less energy compared to virgin ore. To use recycled paper instead of fibres from wood uses about 6 times less energy. It is obvious in all cases that virgin resources are saved, for example many trees in the case of paper production. Likewise waste to energy is important: Solid waste is incinerated and the heat used for district heating and coproduction of electricity; compostable waste is fermented to give biogas for energy purposes (See Chapter 2a).
Developments: during the last decade in EU the number of landfills has decreased and those remaining are strictly regulated and are subject to the IPPC Directive (Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control). Instead waste stream are managed according to increasingly more careful legal control. Recycling is increasing and material which cannot be recycled are more often sent to waste incineration in power plants for energy recovery. Still, amounts of household solid waste per capita continue to increase.
Materials for session 5c
Basic level
- Read chapter 18, pages 551-555: Soil protection and solid waste management in: Environmental Science.
- Read chapter 18, pages 556-559: Soil protection and solid waste management in: Environmental Science.
- Read chapter 10: Waste management and product design in: Product Design and Life Cycle Assessment.
- Read chapter 10: Waste reduction in: Cleaner Production - Technologies and Tools for Resource Efficient Production.
Medium level (widening)
- Read chapter 18, pages 559-562: Soil protection and solid waste management in: Environmental Science.
- Read pages 208-209, part B: European Union environmental legislation in: Environmental Policy - Legal and Economic Instruments.
- Read pages 211-212, part B: European Union environmental legislation in: Environmental Policy - Legal and Economic Instruments.
Advanced level (deepening)
- Study Case 1 Kunda Nordic Tsement in: Environmental Management Systems and Certification.
- Study some cases which use the C2C (Cradle to Cradle) approach, e.g. McDonough Braungart Design Chemistry MBDC.
References
Klemmensen, B., Pedersen, S., Dirckinck-Holmfeld, K.R., Marklund, A. and L. Rydén. 2007. Environmental Policy - Legal and Economic Instruments. Book 1 in a series on Environmental Management. Baltic University Press, Uppsala.
Nilsson, L., Persson, P. O., Rydén, L., Darozhka, S. and A. Zaliauskiene. 2007. Cleaner Production - Technologies and Tools for Resource Efficient Production Book 2 in a series on Environmental Management. Baltic University Press, Uppsala.
Rydén. L., Migula, P and M. Andersson. 2003. Environmental Science - understanding, protecting, and managing the environment in the Baltic Sea region. Baltic University Press. Uppsala, Sweden.
Weiß, P. and J. Bentlage. 2006. Environmental Management Systems and Certification. Book 4 in a series on Environmental Management. Baltic University Press, Uppsala.
Zbicinski, I., Stavenuiter, J., Kozlowska, B. and H.P.M. van de Coevering. 2006. Product Design and Life Cycle Assessment. Book 3 in a series on Environmental Management. Baltic University Press, Uppsala.
BUP Sustainable Development Course
6a.
The living world
The many millions of life forms on our planet form the basis of all life and our future. Sorry to say, the most obvious impact of the growing human society is reduced biodiversity, the diversity of life forms. For many, the beginning of work for a sustainable future was a growing concern for so many threatened species and environments. The alarm clocks were first rung by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, IUCN (today called International Conservation Union) and soon after by the World Wildlife Fund, WWF, already after the Second World War. Diversity decreases on three levels: genes, species, and ecosystems.
Today, the threats towards our living world are even more serious. The extinction of species is estimated to be between 100 and 1000 times faster than before the big impact of human societies. Behind this are three main and many minor changes. Firstly; the ongoing disappearance of natural environments, biotopes, the most serious being tropical forests, coasts, and wetlands. Secondly; the spreading of species to environments where they did not exist before, not the least marine species, which travel with the water of big ships. These new alien species most are often not able to establish themselves, but some grow without control and become invasive and destroy existing ecosystems. Thirdly; pollution may be disastrous to species, which are sensitive to chemicals for which they do not have any defence.
The different life forms have a large value to humans, not always recognized. They form the base for our production of food and many species are the origin of pharmaceuticals, which form the base for healthcare and our capacity to cure diseases. The efforts to preserve genetic diversity have taken the form of gene banks, where species threatened by extinction are stored for the future. The value of a living and rich environment allows us to enjoy nature and its beauty. A green and natural environment is important for our wellbeing, as has been shown repeatedly in much research.
The services which nature provides to societies and in general to the planet are called ecosystems services. The ecosystems services are productive, such as growing of food, or regulatory, such as natural cleaning of water or pollination of plants or regulation of weather. There are also aesthetic ecosystems services such as the beauty of nature or individual species and our possibilities to enjoy nature. Some of these ecosystems services are today drastically decreasing, e.g. the pollination of fruit trees is very bad in some areas, with grave economic consequences, due to diminishing populations of pollinating insects.
A complete review of the state of the planet's ecosystems was initiated by the UN in the year 2000. More than a thousand researchers all over the world contributed to the report published in 2005, the Millennium Ecosystems Assessment, MA. They concluded that 60% of the ecosystems are in decline, some of them seriously so. The Assessment is seen as complementary to the reports by the Climate Panel and will be continued.
The traditional way to safeguard biological diversity and protect individual species from extinction is nature conservation efforts. This includes protection of parts of the landscape as national parks or through similar arrangements. The EU system Natura 2000 with many thousands of individual sites together protects around 18% of the land in the EU countries. These include all kinds of states of protection. Important parts of the system are sites for the protection of birds and wetland areas. The IUCN has established a red list of species in different degrees of threatening. Red listed species are being protected in many countries.
The UN Convention of Biological Diversity (CBD) from the 1992 Rio Conference is a most important initiative to protect our living world. Today, the convention has 192 nations and the European Union as partners. The convention covers all ecosystems, species, and genetic resources. At its COP 10 in Nagoya, Japan, in October 2010 a Protocol on sharing of genetic resources was agreed on. The COP 11 was organized in Hyderabad in India in 2012. A number of other agreements exist, but the results from these are weak and implementation is often lacking. To strengthen the process, the UN announced the period 2011-2020 to be a decade for biodiversity.
The concept of Ecosystems health has recently gained support as an integrated concept describing the interlinked issues of biodiversity, ecosystem services and carrying capacity. A healthy ecosystem includes plants and animals that produce organic matter and simple organisms that break it down. A healthy ecosystem has a large diversity and is capable of self-restoration after external disturbances (resilience). The ecosystem health concept frequently also includes concern for human health and good agricultural practices, as humans are seen as part of the ecosystem. The concept includes a dimension of philosophy (see e.g. the Gaia philosophy) and ethics (for example deep ecology) and respect for life forms.
Materials for session 6a
Basic level
- Read chapter 8, pages 240-246: Changing the living world, Biodiversity in Environmental Science.
- Read chapter 8, pages 247-251: Changing the living world, Strategies for protection of biodiversity in Environmental Science.
- Read chapter 7, pages 206-211: Society and landscape, Landscape ecology and biodiversity in Environmental Science.
Medium level (widening)
- Read chapter 8, pages 222-239: Changing the living world in Environmental Science.
- Read chapter 2, pages 39-51: Landscape Functions and Ecosystem Services in: Rural Development and Land Use (Ecosystem Health and Sustainable Agriculture Book 3).
- Read the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) Synthesis Report, pages 16-54 (pdf-file).
- Study Difference Between a Biome & an Ecosystem in Sciencing.
Advanced level (deepening)
- Study the Convention of Biological Diversity, CBD.
The official Convention of Biological Diversity website.
The IUCN website. - Study the IUCN world conservation strategy (pdf-file).
- Study the concept of Ecosystems Health as applied to the Baltic Sea in the report Ecosystem Health of the Baltic Sea (pdf-file) of Helcom (Baltic Marine Environment Protection Commission).
References
Karlsson, I. and L. Rydén (eds.) 2012. Rural Development and Land Use. Ecosystems Health and Sustainable Agriculture: Book 3, Baltic University Press, Uppsala.
Reid, W. V. et al. 2005. Millennium Ecosystem Assessment Synthesis Report. Island Press.
Rydén. L., Migula, P and M. Andersson. 2003. Environmental Science – understanding, protecting, and managing the environment in the Baltic Sea region. Baltic University Press. Uppsala, Sweden.
BUP Sustainable Development Course
6b.
Land and water
We all live on and by the land and the water of planet Earth. To care for land and water, so it may host us and feed us, is an important part of sustainable development. The surface of our planet has some 30% of land, some green and productive; others less so, like mountains and deserts, glaciers and tundra. All of these are dramatically changing: forests are shrinking; deserts are spreading and glaciers melting. The Global Footprint network estimates that there are 12.5 billion so-called global hectares, that is, bio productive land areas. This means there are 1.78 global hectares per capita to produce our food, energy, and fibres and to take care of our waste. The per capita global hectares are decreasing, both due to population increase and the destruction of land.
In the western world we see an overuse of land. Human activity dominates 43% of the land surface of the Earth, and we affect twice that area. One-third of all available fresh water is diverted to human use. A full 20% of the net terrestrial primary production of the Earth, the sheer volume of life produced on land every year, is harvested for human purposes. We use more than our fair share of bio productive land, in Europe about 3 times more and in the US 5 times more (see further Session 4). The Global South use much less resources, but this situation still constitutes an overexploitation of natural resources, especially of fossil energy and forests. Land resources start to become scarce, and we may expect a lack of food in the world in the future. This is corroborated by a steeply increasing price of both food and land and by accelerated foreign investments in land, especially in Africa (land grabbing).
In addition, productive land is decreasing. Present land management practices decrease productive land and leads to loss of topsoil and desertification. It is estimated that the loss of topsoil is several hundred times larger than the build up of new soil and new organic content. Global warming in some areas leads to dramatically decreased precipitation and extensive droughts, making large areas unfit for production. In addition, land management practices increase emissions of GHG, especially carbon dioxide. Carbon is released through drainage of wetlands, ploughing, and all procedures, which increase the access to air, and oxidation of the organic content of topsoil.
The availability of water is equally shrinking. The overuse of surface water e.g. for agriculture, which represents 70% of water use, has lead to sinking groundwater tables, sinking water levels of the large lakes, such as the Aral Sea in Central Asia, Lake Victoria in East Africa, and also dramatic changes of the largest rivers, e.g. Colorado River in North America. Melting glaciers give less water to the rivers and thus influence agriculture in the drainage areas.
The interface between land and sea is especially critical. Many coastal areas are threatened by pollution and most seriously eutrophication, that is, an oversupply of nutrients, nitrogen, and phosphorus. The nutrients stimulate the growth of algae, which consumes available oxygen and may lead to anoxic bottoms devoid of all higher life forms. In this way coastal areas in Southeast Asia, crucial for the food for billions of inhabitants, are destroyed, as are thousands of lakes and rivers in the world.
Most of the surface of the planet 70%, covered by water, makes up the seas of the world. Also, these are severely changed. The productive capacity of the seas of the world is reduced both by these changes in the conditions of the environment and also by over harvesting, especially of fish. The world oceans are furthermore facing increased acidification due to increased concentrations of carbon dioxide turning into carbonic acid when dissolved in the water. So far, about 50% of CO2 emissions have been dissolved in the oceans. The changes are especially serious to coral reefs, very special ecosystems that harbour some 50% of marine biodiversity.
In the long term, coastal areas face yet another difficulty. Due to global warming, sea levels will rise. According to predictions of climate models, low-lying coastal areas, for example in Southeast Asia, will be flooded as this will happen towards the end of this century.
Several measures to safeguard land and water have been introduced. Landscape protection, included as one measure in the Biodiversity Convention, cover about 20% of all land surfaces on Earth. Improved land management measures, such as agroforestry, minimum tillage or use of bio char, have also been implemented to keep topsoil intact and retain the productive capacity of land, e.g. in several projects in Asia and Africa. Tree plantation is done on a large scale in many places, both for climate mitigation and to improve ecosystem services. New techniques for irrigation in agriculture may dramatically reduce the need for water. Most importantly, restoration of ecosystems is possible also at large scale and in areas severely degraded and barren. Such restoration projects demonstrate how soil, greenery, and water can return, people get new livelihoods as food production, economic life and wellbeing is strengthened.
Of the international conventions introduced to protect land and water of the world, the most significant are the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, UNCCD. It is regrettably the weakest of the Rio conventions, as it is lacking its own financing. Agreements on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) are included in the Climate Convention, as it has a great influence on GHG emissions. Wetland preservation is covered by the already old Ramsar convention. This convention is focused on the preservation of biodiversity rather than on the productive capacity of land and water. There is no convention to protect the oceans of the world, which thus face e.g. unregulated fishing, in addition to e.g. dumping of waste, most seriously plastics which remain in the water. EU directives protect landscape, meadows, and surface waters.
The landscape with its land and water, forests and fields, are of immense importance for the wellbeing of us humans, not only for its physical services such as providing food and water, but also as a living environment, for its cultural and spiritual significance, and as the means by which we are connected to the past and the future of humankind. We should leave planet Earth to our children and grandchildren to enjoy just as much as our ancestors and we have.
Materials for session 6b
Basic level
- Read chapter 7, pages 187-195 and 196-201: Society and Landscape, History of landscape change in Environmental Science.
- Study the basics of footprint science on Global Footprint Network homepage.
Medium level (widening)
- Read chapter 1: Water Resources and Water Supply in: Water Use and Management.
- Land Resources planning (LRP) to address land degradation and promote sustainable land management (pdf-file). Food and Agricultural Organisation of the United Nations
- The world's remaining great forests by Jessica Aldred, the Guardian
- Wikipedia: Biome.
- Living Planet Report 2022
- The Baltic Sea, a film by Markus Nord (YouTube film)
- Green Gold – Environmental filmmaker John D. Liu documents large-scale ecosystem restoration projects in China, Africa, South America and the Middle East, highlighting the enormous benefits to people and planet of undertaking these efforts globally (YouTube film).
Advanced level (deepening)
- Study Desertification and the UNCCD by Phillip Cullet, University of London, and at the home page of the UNCCD.
- Study Deforestation: Facts, Causes & Effects at Livescience.
References
Grooten, M. (ed.). 2012. Living Planet Report 2012 – Biodiversity, biocapacity and better choices.
Lundin, L. C. (ed.) 2000. Water Use and Management. Sustainable Water Management book 2. Baltic University Programme, Uppsala.
Rydén. L., Migula, P and M. Andersson. 2003. Environmental Science – understanding, protecting, and managing the environment in the Baltic Sea region. Baltic University Press. Uppsala, Sweden.
BUP Sustainable Development Course
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