Parr - Hijacking Sustainability

Hijacking Sustainability

Hijacking Sustainability

Adrian Parr

The MIT Press
Cambridge, Massachusetts
London, England

2009 Massachusetts Institute of Technology

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Parr, Adrian.

Hijacking sustainability / Adrian Parr.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-262-01306-2 (hbk. : alk. paper)

1. Sustainable developmentSocial aspects. 2. EnvironmentalismSocial aspects. 3. Social change. I. Title.

HC79.E5P353 2009

338.9'27dc22

2008029420

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

To Lucien and Shoshana

Acknowledgments

In writing this book many people have generously and kindly given up their time to read over draft chapters and provide comments. I would particularly like to thank Ronald Bogue, Ian Buchanan, Felicity Colman, Mike Parr, Paul Patton, and Kenneth Surin. I have been lucky to have their feedback, especially considering they are the people whose own work has had a profound impact on me over the years. Versions of chapters 1 and 7 were published as part of the Seeking the City 96th ACSA Annual Meeting Conference Proceedings. In addition, I am most grateful for the graduates in the School of Architecture and Interior Design program at the University of Cincinnati who provided me with intellectual stimulation on a weekly basis. Their questions and lively discussions helped shape the final manuscript. Finally, I need to thank Michael Zaretsky, a talented architect committed to the principles of sustainable design, for providing me with endless resources, expert suggestions, detailed discussion, steady editing, unwavering support, and inspiration. I owe the completion of this book to him.

Acronyms

AMA American Marketing Association

BAN Basel Action Network

BFA Browning Ferris Industries

CFC Chlorofluorocarbon

DoD Department of Defense

EMA Environmental Media Association

ENR Environment and National Resources

EPA Environmental Protection Agency

FHA Federal Housing Administration

FSC Forest Stewardship Council

ICC Inuit Circumpolar Council

IDP Internally Displaced Persons

IPCC Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

IUCN International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources

LEED Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design

MDG United Nations Millennium Development Goals

NGO Nongovernmental Organization

NRDC National Resource Defense Council

OEOB Old Executive Office Building

OLPC One Laptop Per Child

OSHA Occupational Safety and Health Administration

SEI Strategic Environment Initiative

SIPRI Stockholm International Peace Research Institute

SRI Socially and Environmentally Responsible Investment

SUSG Sustainable Use Specialist Group

UNHCR United Nations High Commission for Refugees

VOC Volatile Organic Compounds

WCED World Commission on Environment and Development

WMI Waste Management Inc.

Introduction

Sustainability. Gone are the days when the word conjured up images of unapologetic veganism, dreadlocks, and mud-brick homes. From ecohippie to ecohip, sustainability is the new buzzword on the lips of many Americans. The corporate sector is going green, Hollywood is taking up the cause with a bang, cities are being ranked according to how sustainable they are, and popular media are increasingly shifting their attention onto the problem of how the United States can change color. Why have these disparate lines of cultural production begun to convert to the green cause? Some might say natural disasters such as Hurricane Katrina, which ravaged New Orleans on August 29, 2005, have pushed the issue of global climate change into the frontal lobe of the popular imaginary, engaging a deepened sense of environmental responsibility where previously there had been none (or very little). Others salivate at the prospect of new markets and growing profits, rubbing their hands together in anticipation of the loud cha-ching cha-ching that their new investments in green technologies ring forth.

So, amidst all the heated fervor what exactly does sustainability refer to? The most commonly upheld definition comes from Our Common Future, the 1987 report on the state of global natural resources and the human environment compiled by the World Commission on Environment and Development (WCED).

With the primary objective of inaugurating a new era of economic growth that demands a return to multilateralism, the Brundtland Report insists that people can build a future that is more prosperous, more just, and more secure. Emphasis is given to a new international economic structure that fosters long-term cooperation, one that assigns an important developmental role to multinational companies and multilateral financial institutions especially in respect to initiating sustainable development initiatives in developing countries. Yet how do we reconcile the great divide that emerges when international organizations, for all their supposedly good intentions, bulldozer local specificity in the name of international aid and large-scale intervention?

The macro perspective of internationally coordinated sustainable- development initiatives can be held in stark contrast to grassroots initiatives operating at the local level (what are commonly referred to as social and environmental justice groups, which use a bottom-up or microeconomic approach). Starting out with the disparities between groups with access to environmental goodssuch as unpolluted and sanitary living conditionsand those who carry too many environmental burdenssuch as communities in proximity to landfills and industrial wastethe thousands of local organizations that constitute the sustainability movement seek to eliminate the power structures underpinning the disproportionate burden of social and environmental ills underprivileged groups carry. Like the appeal to the rights of the human family to a healthy and productive environment made in the Brundtland Report, the sustainability movement also takes a rights-based approach. That is, the movement seeks justice for the underprivileged, including the right of the environment not to be destroyed. However, unlike recommendations made in the Brundtland Report, the solution proffered is not a multilateral global approach to the problem of sustainable development; instead these groups are often more interested in initiating and supporting local programs.

The irony, however, is that grassroots organizations still need to squeeze local specificity into a manageable and general rubric before the needs of disenfranchised groups can be represented in the political arena. In reality, power structures are challenged and critiqued only after representation is reintroduced into the political vocabulary, and its effectiveness depends upon the collaboration of large institutions (governmental and/or international) as much as it does the efforts and commitments of local actors. For these reasons, problems of representation and agency are what frame my discussion of sustainability culture throughout this book. I propose that the politics of sustainability culture arises in the way culture engages with problems of environmental exploitation and social injustices with a view to supporting and activating a sense of agency for disenfranchised individuals and groups.