Sustainability and Policy Making

1. How do you believe sustainability should be defined for policy-making?

A combination of strong and weak sustainability should be the goal for policy making with strong sustainability (although challenging) as the primary goal. Strong sustainability requires us to leave our future generations as well off as we are ourselves but acknowledges that capital cannot always replace natural resources – so leaving future generations with a lot of money and a fast-paced economy in place of natural resources will not do the trick. The weak sustainability mentality believes that a sum of money can be equivalent to an irreplaceable species. Strong sustainability argues that certain resources are irreplaceable. For instance once a certain habitat is gone we cannot bring it back because with it will disappear hundreds if not thousands of species along with it. We need to recognize that we are at such a fragile point in our planet’s economic development. For instance, if only one forest in the wrong part of the planet is swept with fire or overdeveloped it could be a significant percentage of species gone forever.

At the same time as promoting strong sustainability, we should honor certain aspects of weak sustainability in our policy making by understanding that making future generations as well off as we are requires a healthy economy in addition to natural resources so this collatoral is exchangeable to some extent. We should be careful not to slow the economy while seeking to protect the environment. Planning needs to be done in a way that maintains and even creates jobs instead of making people worse off in order to improve the environment.

2. What are the difficulties associated with making sustainability a policy goal?

Sustainability is a difficult policy goal to have because one does not see results in the short term and since legislative and presidential political positions have 2, 4, and 6 year electoral periods it is hard for them to get votes based on sustainability as a campaign issue. Sustainability requires a significant financial investment and money in policy is often spent where there are immediate or short term results. Additionally, especially during this time of economic crisis, other issues tend to take precedent over environmental issues.

3. If you had to design a practical framework to help a state environmental agency (e.g., Arizona Dept. of Environmental Quality) achieve ecological, economic and social sustainability, what would the framework look like?

The framework would be both applicable to industries and individual households. For more long term goals I would work with industries in two ways. I would facilitate the design of a program that would help industries decrease the pollutants that are created and released via their production methods. Secondly, I would work with them to create products from recycled materials and that produce less waste themselves. To promote economic aspects with this program I would either provide funding or incentives such as free publicity to companies who participate in this program.

I believe that in order to make a big impact with the environment in the long term we need to change the behavior of industries yet at the same time we need to change what the public is demanding. I would help create “lightweight” methods for the public to participate in (such as making recycling more accessible) and distribute easy and fun to read educational materials to help the public understand issues surrounding packaging and smart consumption. When it comes to promoting participation in environmental protection, education is key. People do not know what they need to to follow a policy unless it is clearly and easily articulated to them - even for the brightest of us. For instance, people will not know that you need to rinse recyclables unless you somehow tell them. They will not know that they shouldn’t tamper with a certain endangered plant unless they know what that plant is. A great way to access a generation of people is in the classroom. I would collaborate with the state department of education to create programs for learning about the environment and sustainability.

4. Voters and politician often want short term results, but many argue that sustainable development calls for a long-term policy plan. How do we take the long term view that sustainable development requires in this political environment?

A long term view requires a significant backing by the public in order to motivate politicians to take sustainability up as a campaign issue. Politicians, likewise, can also motivate the public to take sustainability up as an issue they believe in knowing that in turn the public will pressure politicians to take this up as an issue to focus lawmaking and government purses on.

Take for instance Al Gore’s strong advocation of the environment with his documentary “An Inconvenient Truth”. Millions of people have watched his powerful and persuasive documentary. While there are some right-wingers that still do not believe that the environment has suffered from our over-consumption of the planet, most people who watched did get the message. As a result, we are closer to convincing a number of politicians to take up the environment as a focus.