You are here:
ADJUSTING DEVELOPMENT TO SUSTAINABILITY CRITERIA
Citation:
HANSEN, V. E. AND R. G. STUDER. ADJUSTING DEVELOPMENT TO SUSTAINABILITY CRITERIA. Presented at CABERNET 2005: The International Conference on Managing Urban Land, Belfast, UK, April 13 - 15, 2005.
Impact/Purpose:
to present information
Description:
Sustainability in any ecosystem is conditioned by properties established by nature. Intervention into ecosystems for the purposes of developing the built/socio-physical environment involves value judgments regarding human well-being. Therefore, if development is sustainable, it must meet human values/goals within conditions set by nature. Because it is not possible to create the built environment without costs to natural systems and the need to create the built environment rises exponentially with population growth, whether developing more efficiently or with reduced ecological costs per project will cumulatively result in higher ecological costs. The ultimate limit to natural capital depreciation is that enough natural capital must remain to provide goods and services that sustain human life. Within a steady-state ecological worldview, the ability to compensate for natural capital losses due to socio-physical development is fundamental to achieving sustainable environments. Therefore, sustainability is possible only if all socio-physical development is counteracted with quality added to ecological systems so that cumulative ecosystemic losses are zero or non-negative. Restorations of natural systems at the site may be necessary, but they are insufficient to balance ecosystemic losses. Because development projects occur at the site level and natural systems exist at global, continental, regional, landscape, and local ecosystems contexts, the opportunities for site level land-use decisions to positively affect ecosystems contexts are few. Individual land-unit development sites are no longer in contact with larger ecosystem structures, functions, and processes, e.g., native species and their habitats. Such isolation limits opportunities at the proximate site-level to make decisions that elevate ecosystem quality; and land-use decisions to develop individual urban sites can negatively affect natural systems accounts, but alone can do little to positively affect them. To do so, it is essential that land-use decisions at the proximate site level are balanced with decisions that improve ecosystem quality at the distal scale. The purpose of this paper is to illustrate how ecological systems can be enhanced by site level decisions and extending their effective reach.