| |
TNEP
Research Director Michael Smith interviewed on the
ABC
Scientists
and leaders from business and government met in Canberra
in May 2008 to discuss the need for action over climate
change. Tim Flannery explains the urgency and suggests
a radical solution. Tim Costello says climate change
is causing poverty and undoing 50 years of development
work in the world's poorest countries. The group discussed
the technologies available for saving energy, and
the options ahead for reducing carbon output through
carbon trading. Alexandra de Blas reports from the
forum.
 
Alexandra
de Blas
spoke
with
TNEP's
Michael
Smith on 7 June 2008.
Listen
to the interview from the ABC (Michael
at 16:58).
Alexandra
de Blas: There was a positive and flowing atmosphere
in the federal parliament's Great Hall. But the urgency
and seriousness of the task ahead escaped no-one.
The need for collaboration between scientists, business
and government couldn't be clearer, and the looming
threat of climate change is bringing this triumvirate
together in new ways.
Tim Flannery: Just imagine yourself in a world five
years from now, when there is no more ice over the
Arctic, when we stand under threat of a rapidly warming
Arctic Ocean, when we're starting to see the first
destabilisation of the Greenland ice cap, and all
of those things happening because we don't have a
solution, because if things advance that rapidly we
simply will not have a solution, in terms of reducing
emissions. Then you've got to start pulling in your
last-ditch efforts.
Sometimes we actually cut off a leg to save the patient,
and in this case, we may need to inject sulphur into
the stratosphere to cool our planet. It's going to
change the colour of our sky, it's going to change
the amount of sunlight we get; but we may need to
do it to buy ourselves a bit of time. Unfortunately
we have foot-dragged for so long that we are now in
a position where those very unpalatable remedies may
have to be resorted to, even if they are dangerous.
Alexandra de Blas: But couldn't we bring on global
catastrophe if that was to go wrong?
Tim Flannery: Absolutely you could bring on a global
catastrophe.
Alexandra de Blas: Can we take that sort of risk?
Tim Flannery: Well, if you're facing a global catastrophe,
stepping away from that place to anywhere else is
probably a good thing to do.
Alexandra de Blas: Professor Tim Flannery, from
Macquarie University School of Earth and Life Sciences
with a radical solution to solving the climate crisis.
Tim Costello, CEO of World Vision, prefers the waterbed
theory of climate change and poverty alleviation,
where pressure applied on one side of the bed directly
impacts upon the other. Having recently returned from
Burma and the havoc wreaked by Cyclone Nargus, he
sees our time now as the sweet spot in which to unite
the global village with a global ethic.
Tim Costello: It's in all of our self-interest. Once
you would see morality about being generous for the
sake of being generous, and charities giving the poor
a few dollars, and helping them up. Now it's in our
self-interest to help the poor because of global warming.
It's in our self-interest to actually say, 'We, too,
must respond.'
Alexandra de Blas: The National Business Leaders'
Forum began nine years ago and has introduced Australian
business to some of the world's key environmental
thinkers. It began with Ray Anderson, head of the
global carpet company Interface. And Al Gore presented
his famous PowerPoint presentation for the first time
in eight years at their Sydney meeting in 2003.
Well, after a period in the wilderness here in Australia,
with little government leadership on climate change,
the direction of government has now dramatically shifted.
But are we too late? Tim Flannery.
Tim Flannery: Up to 2005 it looked as if there'd still
be some sea ice by the end of this century in the
Arctic. But in 2005 the sea ice started to melt away
at about four times the rate of previous years, and
that's now continued. And this year, the start of
this summer has been just terrifying. The sea ice
is melting away at about 6,000 square kilometres greater
rate per week than last year. And if this summer follows
the trajectory of the last few summers, we stand to
lose about half the remaining sea ice by the end of
this northern summer. And that is putting us on a
trajectory to an ice-free Arctic within five years
or so.
Alexandra de Blas: And what are the implications
of that?
Tim Flannery: Well, the implications are profound
because once the ice is gone the surface levels of
the Arctic Ocean will start warming quite rapidly,
because it's a dark surface and it absorbs light energy
and turns it into heat energy. So the thermal balance
of the area around Greenland will change, we'll start
getting warming, so we can expect an accelerated rate
of melt in Greenland. And that ice cap has enough
water frozen in it, were it all to melt, to raise
sea levels by six or seven metres. So that's one thing.
The second thing is of course that the entire climatic
zonation of the northern hemisphere is held in place
by the thermal gradient between the pole and the equator.
That's why we have deserts where we have them in the
northern hemisphere, and we have forested areas where
we have them and tundra where we have them. And when
I look at the melting tundra, the advance of the forest
northwards...Greece and its forest fires that look
like that area's becoming hostile to the sort of vegetation.
I think we're seeing the early stages of a shift in
that zonation. Once the ice melts away entirely and
we get a rapid warming of the Arctic Ocean, that's
when you'll see those sorts of changes potentially
start shifting much more quickly.
Alexandra de Blas: If the sea ice is gone, say,
within five years, how rapidly will we expect the
Greenland ice cap to start melting?
Tim Flannery: Again, it's just not possible to answer
that question, principally because ice doesn't just
melt away as you might imagine an ice cube sitting
on a bench would. It melts away, in part at least,
by large-scale collapse. So ice shelves tend to collapse
into the ocean and then fragment and then melt much
more rapidly than they may otherwise do. And that
sort of collapse is just impossible to model. We've
seen it occur in the Antarctic Peninsula with the
Larsen B ice shelf, but it is just impossible to model
so we don't know. But people are now I think quite
realistically talking about sea level rise, if nothing's
done, of several metres this century.
Alexandra de Blas: Which will be astounding.
Tim Flannery: That will mean probably hundreds of
millions of people displaced, a lot of the world's
best agricultural land lost, some of the world's great
cities threatened or under water, places like Shanghai
and Amsterdam and London and so forth. Amsterdam's
about two-and-a-half metres under water as it is,
just held up by the dykes. And Singapore and so forth.
So the changes, if you want to sum them up, that's
the end of our global civilisation. The stresses that
would be placed upon the global political system and
economic system would be such that it simply couldn't
endure them.
Alexandra de Blas: Tim Costello, of World Vision,
believes climate change is now undoing 50 years of
development work in the world's poorest countries,
and global warming is morphing into global poverty.
Tim Costello: Well, they are now two sides of the
one coin. The truth is that global warming and post-2012
targets for the developing world look insane just
to them, just as they're lifting their own poor out
of poverty, about to have their own industrial opportunity
and revolution, yes, with all the attending costs
of pumping carbon into the atmosphere, and we're saying
no, sorry, it's going to affect the next generation
and the planet, you can't do it.
So to them it's a development issue, a justice issue
rather than simply a global warming issue. So a global
ethic actually has to avoid siloed thinking. We know
that the global village is a waterbed; if you press
down in one place it comes up in another. So when
we press down and say, great, agricultural land for
biofuels, we'll fuel our planes, great for global
warming; that has produced a world food crisis. A
shortage of rice and grains so that we can no longer
feed the world's poor. We have to think with a global
perspective rather than a siloed perspective which
morphs global warming...poverty.
Alexandra de Blas: So you've just come back from
Myanmar, from the incredible damage from the cyclone.
How did that bring this to the fore for you?
Tim Costello: Well, the Burmese have never seen a
cyclone like this. They didn't think it could happen.
For them it's a little bit like what happened in Brazil.
Brazilians are the best informed on global warming,
because they all knew...cyclones don't hit Brazil;
never have, never would. Until the cyclone hit. Suddenly
they said global warming. That's a little bit of the
thinking of the Burmese. They're going...where did
this come from, a cyclone?
Alexandra de Blas: There are some interesting
new technologies and you talk about one that's been
operating, a fuel stove in Darfur. Tell me how that
works, and how you see that fitting in to a whole
carbon trading system.
Tim Costello: Yes, it was driven not by global warming
but by the fact that women in the camps going out
to collect wood would be raped and mutilated, and
the University of California said, why? Because they
need all this wood to burn. Let's come up with a stove
that stops them having to go out and collect wood.
And it's a stove that still burns wood but 70% more
energy efficient. They have to go out 70% fewer times
and don't get raped.
The great thing about the stove is that it massively
reduces respiratory diseases. One-and-a-half million
people each year die from respiratory diseases from
these wood-burning stoves, and that's 4,000 a day.
So there are a whole set of ripple effects from doing
something around energy efficiency that produces safety
and produces health.
Alexandra de Blas: The Climate Group works with
big business, CEOs, presidents, prime ministers and
governors, to advance the climate action cause. It
assists people like Rupert Murdoch, Richard Branson,
and California's Arnold Schwarzenegger to promote
change and to demonstrate leadership. One of the biggest
obstacles to unified global action is the lack of
agreement between developing and developed nations.
The Climate Group is working with former British prime
minister Tony Blair and economist Nicholas Stern to
progress this agenda. Rupert Posner is the group's
Australian director.
Rupert Posner: We know that we need an international
agreement that includes all of the world, not just
the developing countries. We know that we need targets,
we know that we need significant cuts in emissions.
But what we're really trying to get our head around
is what sort of global agreement is necessary to get
those sorts of cuts to happen. We don't have the answer
yet. We've got a paper that's going to be coming out
in a couple of months that starts that discussion.
But hopefully we'll work out some sort of solution
on how we go forward.
Alexandra de Blas: Now, there used to be a relative
agreement that we needed a 60% cut in greenhouse gas
emissions by 2050. What's the thinking now?
Rupert Posner: That is an absolute minimum, but I
think the science tends to indicate that we're going
to need bigger cuts in emissions. I think we're going
to be needing to head towards an economy that has
next to no emissions by the middle, towards the end
of this century. And so that's the sort of path that
we're going to need to do.
Alexandra de Blas: So if you're thinking a 90%,
100% cut in greenhouse gas emissions on our 1990 levels,
how do-able is that? Have we got a chance of being
able to achieve something like that?
Rupert Posner: Well, we have to. It's not a matter
of can we, it's that we have to do it. But the thing
is, we don't have to do that all at once. What we've
got to make sure that we do is we start now on a trajectory
towards that. News Limited here in Australia went
through all of its facilities and found a minimum
of 25% cut in emissions that could be made straight
away. They even found in one of their facilities where
they'd already made an almost 60% cut in emissions
a little while ago and could make another 20% cut
in emissions. So there's lots of things that can be
done right away, and if they can do it in their business,
there's no reason why every other business can't do
that as well.
Alexandra de Blas: We're now in the process of
designing an emissions trading system here in Australia.
How effective do you think a trading system can be
in terms of cutting our emissions?
Rupert Posner: Well a trading scheme is a really important
element in reducing emissions. It's not the only thing.
The critical part of an emissions trading scheme is
the cap. It's not so much the trading; the fact that
it actually sends a limit on the amount of carbon
that can go into the atmosphere. It's really good
for those technologies that are available right now,
and there are loads of them available that we can
take up. But other sorts of programs are going to
be necessary to invest in the new technology that's
not commercial yet; technologies that can transform
the economy.
Alexandra de Blas: So are you looking at putting
incentives in place to help get these new technologies
over the line?
Rupert Posner: Yes absolutely. For example, solar
photovoltaic panels that you can put on your roof.
If we could get the cost of solar panels down to a
competitive rate, perhaps by, say, about 2020, then
you could get to the situation where you mandated
for every house in Australia and then that can make
a significant difference. So we need to look at policies
that won't put, say 10,000 roofs with solar panels
on there, but how do we actually transform the market
so that the costs come down, that we can then put
it on every single house and make a really substantial
difference.
Alexandra de Blas: When a new government comes
into power, you've got about six to twelve months,
they say, to get your voice heard. Well a team of
Australia's leading environmental scientists have
seized upon this opportunity by publishing a book
which highlights the top ten things that need to be
done in each key environmental area. The book is called
Ten Commitments: Reshaping the Lucky Country's Environment,
and Professor David Lindenmayer is one of the project's
coordinators.
David Lindenmayer: Oh, there's quite a lot of new
stuff that came out that was really very surprising.
For example, in the chapter on mining written by Gavin
Mudd from Monash University, he indicated that the
change in the concentration of ore bodies that are
being mined in Australia has meant that we're producing
an enormous amount of additional waste rock every
year. In fact it's about a billion tonnes of waste
rock that comes from the mining industry annually
now, and certainly most environmental scientists would
have very little idea that such an enormous emerging
problem is occurring.
Alexandra de Blas: What about carbon accounting
for our native forests, how can that change the way
we manage our biodiversity?
David Lindenmayer: This has come from some of our
own work at the Fenner School, where we've looked
at what amount of carbon is actually tied up in native
forests, including forests that have had very little
human disturbance, either Aboriginal disturbance or
white disturbance. And the extraordinary thing that's
coming out is that some of those native forests, the
wet forests of Victoria, for example, have over 2,000
tonnes of carbon per hectare in the above-ground biomass.
Now, these are astronomical numbers that are far larger
than, for example, the IPCC was using as its default
value of 90 tonnes. These are far larger than we ever
thought was likely to occur in these kinds of forests.
So it means that in a carbon economy those forests
have massive values in terms of their carbon storage,
and so we really need to rethink how we treat those
forests. And it may well be that those forests have
a very, very important carbon offset role in a country
like Australia, which is one of the biggest coal exporters,
one of the biggest iron ore exporters anywhere on
the planet.
Alexandra de Blas: Some of the forests, like that
in Tasmania, will be feeding a new pulp mill.
David Lindenmayer: That's right, and that's why we
need to rethink those kinds of proposals very quickly,
because the carbon value of those forests may well
far exceed the value that we're going to get from
something like a pulp mill.
Alexandra de Blas: Can you put some dollar values
on it?
David Lindenmayer: Well, just a quick back-of-the-envelope
calculation comes from where Westpac Bank and AGL
talked about a carbon trade of about $19 a tonne for
carbon. So it's sitting down and thinking about what
$19 times 2,100 tonnes of biomass per hectare in a
wet forest in Victoria by 200,000 hectares of that
wet ash forest in Victoria, gives you a number pretty
close to $80 billion. It's a big number. The royalties
to the Victorian government from those wet forests
in the Central Highlands of Victoria are approximately
half a billion dollars per year.
Alexandra de Blas: So 80 billion versus half a
billion. What else did the scientists recommend when
it came to climate change and creating social and
ecological resilience?
David Lindenmayer: That's one of the key issues that
we don't have answers to at the moment. What makes
an environment resilient, what makes a human society
resilient, what makes institutions resilient in rapidly-changing
climates? What we do know is that in the past there
are some human cultures which have collapsed. We know
that there are others that have survived and persisted.
One of the most tragic examples comes from interior
British Columbia. There, the mid-boreal forests, which
are massive expanses of native forest, are basically
being killed by the mountain pine beetle. Now that
beetle is surviving over winter because there hasn't
been deep, cold winters for many years now. And in
Alberta over 11 million hectares of lodge-pole pine
forest alone have been killed by this beetle, and
there are now massive salvage logging operations to
remove that dead timber.
So within a span of seven to ten years, those boreal
forests are being converted from forest through to
almost cleared land, and will become grazing country
in some places. So this has had massive implications
for the timber industry, massive social dislocation,
massive losses of biodiversity, and massive emissions
of carbon. So there's a system that really is buckling
under the changes in climate in a very short period
of time. And remember that this is at 385 parts per
million CO2, relative to what some people are starting
to forecast, that we might end up at 700 or 750 parts
per million. So these are pretty scary thoughts.
Alexandra de Blas: Professor David Lindenmayer,
from the Australian National University. And the Ten
Commitments will be available through CSIRO Publishing.
The
top call to action in the Climate Change chapter is
to 'mitigate, mitigate, mitigate' our carbon emissions.
And Professor Ian Lowe in the Energy section asks
us to accept a 40% cut in our emissions by 2020. And
then scale that up to a staggering 95% by 2050. Achieving
targets like these seems almost impossible, particularly
when you consider the short, five to ten year time-frame
Tim Flannery was talking about. But the work of the
Natural Edge project makes me feel optimistic. This
team of four young engineers with an extraordinary
set of global networks has produced a three-part
bible on how to reduce your emissions. It's enormous,
but don't be put off by the size. It's designed so
that you only need to read the chapters that relate
to your business. Michael
Smith is one of the Natural Edge team.
Michael Smith: Most businesses are still yet to really
get going in terms of reducing their greenhouse emissions.
Price Waterhouse Coopers did a survey of 300 CEOs
in Australia of medium-to-large businesses, and of
those over 80% had not done very much at all. And
they said that part of the reason for that is that
they genuinely didn't know where to start. They didn't
know where they could either make the biggest greenhouse
emission (reductions) or where the emissions could
be most cost-effectively reduced.
Alexandra de Blas: There are three different modules.
Give me an overview of how it actually works.
Michael Smith: We've tried to make this as simple
and easy to use for everyone in business. So the first
module gives the business case for action and helps
business to get started. It gives them access to free,
online resources to help them do basic energy audits
of their business. Then the rest of the first module
has step-by-step solutions to help reduce emissions
in their buildings but also, if they're in industry,
has different information to help them reduce energy
use in different (commonly used) technologies.
The second module has been designed to help a busy
CEO or a busy person in business just find what they
need for their sector, specifically. So if you work
in the mining sector, if you work in tourism or fast
foods or if you work in food processing, there is
a resource for you that has literally A-Z steps of
the best, most cost effective ways to reduce your
emissions.
Alexandra de Blas: Why did you make it free and
open-source?
Michael Smith: Very simply we don't have time to muck
around. The latest science from James Hanson published
three months ago in the top scientific journals argues
that we barely have ten years to avoid the dangerous
tipping points on climate change. There is a need,
we believe, for every country in the world to create
resources like this so that not just Australia, but
China, all parts of the world, can rapidly skill up
their workforce so that they're ready to seize the
cost-effective energy (efficiency) opportunities as
fast as possible. This is terribly important, because
the faster we can seize and implement energy efficiency
opportunities, the more rapidly we can stop needing
to build new coal-fired power stations around the
world. This is absolutely critical, not just in Australia
but particularly in China and India, where they're
building new power stations, we're told, every week.
Alexandra de Blas: You've focused on energy efficiency
first, and then you go into offsets and that sort
of thing. Why have you done it in this order?
Michael Smith: Energy efficiency saves business money.
Energy efficiency improves their bottom line. There
are some companies around the world where their energy
efficiency savings are in the order of $1 to $2 billion
per annum after ten years of work on energy efficiency.
We're talking about the larger companies here. But
even for small companies, the sorts of money they
can save through energy efficiency can be roughly
the same as their profit margins.
Robyn Williams: So it's well worthwhile. Michael Smith
from the Natural Edge. And Alexandra de Blas's report
from the National Business Leaders' Forum ends with
these thoughts from the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd.
Alexandra de Blas: The first action the Rudd government
took when it came in to parliament was to ratify the
Kyoto protocol. But it's now copping some flak over
its decision to means test the photovoltaic rebate.
Despite this, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd hopes to use
government leadership to reduce greenhouse gas emissions
on a number of fronts.
Kevin Rudd: The government accepts its own responsibility
to provide practical leadership in our response to
climate change, with practical measures to reduce
our own environmental footprint, and measures to harness
savings from more efficient use of energy and water.
In March this year I established an internal government
task force to examine a range of options to improve
the sustainability of the government's own operations;
reducing energy and water use and increasing the recycling
of waste. I've received a draft report from the task
force in recent days. It shows that government agencies
have a long, long way to go in implementing sustainability
practices, and a long way after that. The report notes
the National Audit Office data stating that only 21%
of government offices had energy-efficient lighting
installed. Something we need to change very soon.
The Audit Office has also estimated that government
could save $10 million annually if agencies simply
were more proactive in energy and water efficiency
measures. We need to look at new and innovative ways
of financing sustainable practices and ensuring the
right incentives are in place to reduce our environmental
footprint across government.
This practical action on our own sustainability challenges
complements the government's broader long-term strategy
for tackling climate change across the nation and
globally. The time to act on climate change has come.
Let us act on climate change together.
Robyn Williams: That report from Alexandra de Blas
at Parliament House in Canberra.
Science
Show Archives: http://www.abc.net.au/rn/scienceshow/
TNEP
links: http://www.abc.net.au/rn/scienceshow/stories/2008/2263755.htm
|
|
| |
TNEP
Research Director Michael Smith interviewed on the
ABC
Geraldine
Doogue: Now
its book recommendation time on Saturday Breakfast
and I'm going to tell you about a book called The
Natural Advantage of Nations. It's a remarkable
book just out about how to develop a sustainable economy
and society. It is packed full of local and international
innovations and solutions and I'm well advised that
it's sure to become a must read for anyone with an
interest in the field. It was put together by The
Natural Edge Project, it's a young Australian engineering
think tank and it recently won a Banksia
Award for Environmental Leadership, Education and
Training.
Alexandra
de Blas
spoke
with
the book's
co-editor,
Michael
Smith on 18 June 2005.
Listen
to the interview from the ABC until Saturday
the 23rd of July 2006.
Michael
Smith: "As the UN
Millennium Ecosystem Assessment showed; already
two thirds of the world's eco-systems are in serious
decline, to the point that Kofi Annan said that 'we
can no longer assume that the world's life supporting
eco-systems will continue indefinitely'. Sustainability
therefore is about sustaining the things that matter
to us, like the essential life supporting systems,
like our judicial systems, like the things that we
value, but it's also about achieving genuine progress
on those things that need improvement.
To really achieve sustainability will involve innovating
to achieve really exciting big changes, like the sort
of changes Arnold Schwarzenegger announced two weeks
ago where he committed California to 80% reductions
in greenhouse emissions, and Bob Carr just this week
has committed NSW to achieve
60% greenhouse emissions. It's exciting times.
We see sustainability as the key thing that will drive
innovations this century".
Alexandra
de Blas:
I really like the way the book ranges so widely across
business, education, government and civil society
and it
integrates the theory and the practice very well.
You've got a lot of Australian examples in the book,
were you surprised to find so many cases of sustainable
leadership here in this country?
Michael
Smith "We weren't surprised on at least half of it
because thanks to shows like ABCs
Earthbeat, like the Green Olympics, the Sydney
Olympics, Australia
's innovation on sustainability, schemes like Landcare
have actually been well covered in the media. But
what we were surprised to find is that there is a
wealth of innovation coming out of CSIRO
and our universities. Most people don't realise that
Australia spends 23% of our R&D budget on either
eco-innovation or better understanding and managing
the environment. (And) There's so many stories there
that hadn't been told that are now in this book.
The
leadership is coming in so many different forms and
(if I could just point out for instance) even a profession
such as accountancy, that people normally don't see
as the vanguard of sustainability, an Australian academic
at ANU, Roger Burritt, his environmental management
accounting framework, developed with German professors,
has been adopted as the model by the International
Accountancy Standards Committee that they're recommending
globally.
Whilst
a lot is already known we found so many other key
pieces of puzzle actually already there and already
moving that give us great confidence. (These give
us great confidence) that Australia, particularly
in the Asia Pacific region - where China and India
are such exciting countries in terms of the challenge
of achieving sustainability - Australia has got such
an exciting role to play in the future in our region".
Alexandra
de Blas: Talking about the region, you look at some
very interesting examples. In Goa , the move to develop
a sustainable city in thirty years is a very good
one, tell me a bit more about that.
Michael
Smith: "The work
from the Indian group that submitted for the International
Gas Union's Sustainable Cities Competition has been
described as some of the most innovative work in years
by the leading German sustainability expert Ernst
Von Weizacker. The team in India
has worked out that it literally is possible, economically,
socially, technologically to transform the region
of Goa in India to sustainability within thirty years.
This is terribly significant. Asia as a whole will
have ten of the fifteen largest cities in the world
by 2015. Newsweek in October last year said that how
Asia does sustainable cities and urbanisation will
make or brake the region economically".
Alexandra
de Blas:
One of the greatest barriers to creating a sustainable
future is institutional inertia, if we're going to
find new ways to use resources more efficiently and
to treat the environment better as we're doing it,
we're going to need some radical innovation. Now Paul
Weaver talks about some cutting edge work in the Netherlands
where they're designing for sustainability, tell me
how they're doing it?
Michael
Smith: "What was new about the Netherlands
work
is they realised that to achieve the sort of reductions
in energy use, the sort of reductions we need to truly
bring global warming under control, to restore our
natural environments will involve bigger changes than
currently most governments and most R&D programs
dare to look at. Because the Netherlands
is a very resource dependant country, it imports most
of its resources from around the world, it has one
of the biggest ecological footprints of any country
in the world. Hence from their base line studies they
realised they actually had to - to truly be sustainable
and live within the planet's limits - achieve what's
called a factor 10 or factor 20 gain. This means that
they're actually trying to find ways to use their
water ten to twenty fold more productively.
Now
this isn't unique to the Netherlands, Australia 's
CSIRO
flagship program's water flagship also has its
goal to achieve a ten fold improvement of water productivity.
What was new about the Netherlands , back in 1993
when they started this, is it was the first time any
nation, having done this study then committed to it.
They committed to seeing how they could achieve factor
ten to twenty type improvements, that is a factor
ten or twenty reduction in the negative environmental
load on the planet".
Alexandra
de Blas: But I like the way they brought all those
different elements of society together and they looked
forward fifty years and then they cast back to say
'ok if that's our goal, how are we going to start
from here?' Just the way they designed it and the
way they formed new partnerships and interactions
was really very exciting.
Michael
Smith:"Indeed, and we need to do exactly what you've
just described, we need a broader approach to innovation,
we need to involve new partnerships and we need to
back cast as you've described from the future in terms
of how - not just over five to ten year time horizons
but over fifty year time horizons - how we can redesign
our urban water systems, how we can redesign our agriculture
systems, how we can redesign
the built environment. It is truly a landmark
work and we were really excited that Paul Weaver for
the first time linked all of that work to how any
nation can learn from it and integrate their lessons
into any nation's national systems of innovation".
Alexandra
de
Blas:
It's not just a book that you've created, you also
have a website and you're producing a number of training
modules, some of which are already being trailed with
universities, how would you like the training component
to take shape?
Michael
Smith: "The training component has already taken shape,
the first batch
of training modules that were funded by the Environmental
Engineering Society of Australia have been trialled
already in fourteen universities successfully in Australia.
The training modules are designed to reach key sectors;
business, government, professional bodies and the
next generation in universities, in line with the
recommendations of UNESCO and the UN for the UN
decade of Education in Sustainable Development,
that runs from 2005 to 2015".
Alexandra
de
Blas:
Why is it important to target the professions like
engineers, architects and accountants?
Michael
Smith: "A lot of key decisions in our society are
made now by companies. Companies and corporations
make up over 50 of the 100 biggest economic entities
globally. The boards of those corporations and companies
comprise accountants, engineers and other professional
people, therefore, we think it's really vital to reach
those professions because their members comprise many
of the key decision makers in society.
But
also there is so much opportunity for those professions
to lead. There is now a field of engineering called
Whole Systems Design Engineering that shows that on
almost anything, including the everyday fridge - we
can still improve the everyday fridge's efficiency
50% very simply with the latest innovations coming
out of Europe
material design. Engineers can be the new green heroes.
Similarly
built environment; our built environment, our cities
are responsible for 50% of greenhouse emissions. Therefore
our architects, urban planners, surveyors, all these
professional bodies, that make up the Australian
Council of Professionals, all have a key role
to play. To date they've been relatively unsung on
what they're currently doing and also under-appreciated
in what they could do.
But
finally I want to emphasize it's this institutional
strength we have in Australia in these professional
bodies that The Natural Edge Project; Cheryl
Paten, Nick Palousis, Charlie Hargroves and myself
believe Australia could lead the UN decade of
Education in Sustainable Development. We have formal
commitments to sustainability from many professional
bodies in Australia and these professional bodies
accredit university courses. They have huge capacity
to supply materials to help universities change their
curricula.
Therefore
The Natural Edge Project is constructively working
with the universities, with these professional bodies,
with the school education networks to build a coalition
for Australia
to really provide a unique model to the world".
Geraldine
Doogue: "Michael Smith, a very passionate young
man, member of The Natural Edge Project and co-editor
of The Natural Advantage of Nations and
Alexander de Blas assures me it is a truly inspiring
book. You can find links to their particular website
at www.abc.net.au/rn,
just follow the prompts to Saturday Breakfast and
we'll have all the details for you."
Earthbeat
Archives: http://www.abc.net.au/rn/science/earth/default.htm
TNEP
links: http://www.abc.net.au/rn/talks/saturday/stories/s1394533.htm
|
|