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Puerto Rico Sustainable Communities Research Project
Citation:
Bradley, P. AND W. Fisher. Puerto Rico Sustainable Communities Research Project. Presented at Annual U.S. EPA, ORD, Caribbean Environmental Protection Division (CEPD) Meeting, August 09 - 14, 2012.
Impact/Purpose:
To provide an update on completed work and current research activities to Regional personnel.
Description:
The goal of EPA’s Sustainable and Healthy Communities Research Program (SHCRP) is to inform and empower decision‐makers to equitably weigh and integrate human health, socio‐economic, environmental, and ecological factors to foster community sustainability. Puerto Rico is an excellent location for EPA’s Office of Research and Development to conduct their research: it is a spatially-limited geographic system, as an island it is highly dependent on coastal resources, and it has a long-term history of research, monitoring and assessment by territorial, federal and academic scientists. EPA’s Office of Research and Development is conducting research at two scales: territory-wide, and in a targeted watershed. The large-scale research is studying whether the cumulative decisions of communities are moving Puerto Rico toward or away from sustainability in environmental, economic and social terms. This issue is being addressed through four metrics that capture the basic properties of a system and represent human burden on the environment (Ecological Footprint Analysis), economic well-being (Green Net Domestic Product), flow of available energy through the system (Emergy Analysis) and overall system order (Fisher Index). A Sustainability Symposium and Workshop was held June 5-7 in San Juan. Participants (>60 registered) included academics, non-governmental organizations, Puerto Rico and US Federal Agencies. The two-day symposium was designed to discuss sustainability; present ongoing sustainability research/work; discuss what researchers think policy makers can do to move Puerto Rico toward sustainability, relative to their research; and discuss what is necessary to implement their research island-wide. Topics included habitat/land use, biodiversity, coral reefs, renewable energy, and environmental justice. Participants noted that the symposium created a missing forum for scientific discussion. The follow-on workshop captured outcomes