What does a community need to be sustainable?

All cities are made up of a series of communities or neighbourhoods, some where people are highly supportive of each other, others where there is hardly a sense of community at all. It is perhaps easier to focus on the negative and look at what an unsustainable community is. (10)

This may be one where the community has developed ‘artificially’ around the exploitation of an unsustainable resource (e.g. coal mining) or around the production of goods susceptible to changing global demands (e.g. steel production or textiles). Ironically, many such communities developed strong social sustainability features, due to their shared sense of identity - the disappearance of the common bond in a post-industrial phase has disrupted social relations. A community can hardly be said to be sustainable if there are huge inequalities in lifestyles, if people do not know their neighbours or live in fear or if they depend on exploiting others for resources or waste disposal.

The New Economics Foundation (NEF) produced a report in 2003 called 'Ghost Town Britain'. It outlines how the core of towns and villages is being destroyed by the closure of local shops, health facilities, schools, pubs, post offices and newsagents. It describes how money poured into businesses with no local base drains out of the community's economy. It also details the adverse effect of loss of green space, locally produced food and goods, public transport decline and top down decision making. The result is an increasing sense of isolation and disengagement from political and social processes.

"We do not consider non-participative communities to be sustainable communities."

The NEF has launched a campaign with a range of community, transport, environmental and social justice groups to set up vital, inclusive and sustainable communities. They are launching a Local Communities Sustainability Bill in Parliament with the support of a cross-party group of MPs.The concept of local sustainability is viewed widely to cover environmental protection, developing local economies, replacing social exclusion and increasing participation in democracy. www.neweconomics.org)

The Awareness-Action Gap

As the Unesco Report(12) notes people are not unaware of the social and environmental problems we face. However, there is a gap between awareness and action. Britain is supposed to be a nation of animal lovers, and people profess to be horrified by factory farming conditions; yet when they go shopping most people are prepared to buy cheap food that encourages such abuse of animals. Failure to connect the hygienically wrapped product with the living creature, and acceptance of the consumer culture, are factors in this apparent mismatch between professed belief and behaviour.

Similarly, appealing to peoples' sense of moral rectitude to protect the planet or reduce inequality has had only limited effect in recent decades. Campaigns often put the emphasis on the individual "doing their bit". This is clearly an important starting point, and one that gives a certain sense of satisfaction in playing your part in making a difference. However, the example of Bedzed, highlighted in the Stockholm Environment Institute research (13), shows the limits of such an approach.

Fair Earth Share

WWF(14) has estimated that a "Fair Earthshare" (the amount of productive land on the planet shared equally between each person on the planet) was 1.9 global hectares (1 hectare = roughly 1 soccer pitch) per person per year (gha/cap/yr) in 1999. The average for a "typical" UK home is 5.39 gha/cap/yr. The most ecologically active residents at Bedzed can reduce their footprint to 3.65 gha/cap/yr, a significant reduction of 32% over the UK average. However, this still means that the even the most active citizens in the UK's most sustainable housing scheme are still using nearly double their "Fair Earthshare".

Reducing Ecological Footprints
Ecologically conscious residents at Bedzed can reduce their energy footprint by 90% compared to the UK average, but their food footprint is only 26% less than the UK average - unless you are going to grow all your own food (a challenging task in many city living environments), it is very hard to purchase food products in the UK that are mainly locally sourced. The individual, in a high consuming culture, can have limited impact on the resources consumed by shared services (e.g. public administration and commercial services). Currently processes do not reflect the true environmental (and often social) costs. This may seem as if the individual's contribution is negligible. However, the collective impact of individual choices is important.

Community Needs and the Government
The current reality is that many government's nationally and internationally shy away from 'bold measures', as can be seen from the difficulties in implementing measures (such as increasing fossil fuel taxation) to combat climate change in the face of vested interests among oil producers and consumers. Some politicians are summoning the courage to use taxation to change behaviour. The decision by the Irish government to put a 15% tax on plastic bags in 2002 has led to a drop in usage by 95% - similar measures have been brought in from South Africa to Bangladesh. London's congestion charge has led to a dramatic reduction in car traffic.

As 'The Little Earth Book' points out, when it comes to Ecological Footprints "the rich wear big boots". The North could learn lessons from progressive communities in the South. People in Kerala state in India have per capita incomes of $566 compared to $34,260 for the USA. Yet their infant mortality rate is lower than in some European countries, life expectancy is 71 (higher than that of black people in the USA), 95% of Keralans over 7 years old can read and write, and it has a higher proportion of its population with postgraduate degrees than the USA. Its population is stable due to the high levels of female literacy. Much of this has been achieved through political commitment to equitable distribution of resources and a high level of community participation in politics. (16)

The 'over consumers' in the North need to learn, and set an example, about how to do "Better with less".

Citizenship
New ways also need to be found to engage people in active citizenship, such as the participatory budgeting process used in some states in Brazil, where people are much more closely involved in local spending decisions and therefore feel more of a part of local government.

18(18) The Learning for Sustainable Cities project has shown the benefit of sharing approaches to learning for sustainability. As the group of project teachers in Curitiba discovered, they were going down what they felt was the wrong path in terms of their values as educators. They decided to make new paths, inspired by this quotation: