A Programme Framework

The following outlines some conceptual thinking for a programme looking for solutions within the linkages between ecosystem services, governance and sustainable development. Use if useful, comments are most welcome.

Vision & Mission

Sustainable societies are ones where the voice and rights of every individual are assured.

Sustainable development will deliver on this vision for this and future generations.

Objectives

- Balance power

- Promote peace on a platform of assured rights

- Redefine growth

- Move beyond incremental change toward transformative change

- Establish the validity of qualitative measurements

- Encourage resource productivity

- Encourage new models of decision making

- Move past the limitations of Cost-Benefit Analysis

Principles

- Precautionary Approach and Polluter Pays

- Externalities must be identified and internalised

- Sustainability of society must serve to enhance the voice and rights of it’s members

- Quantitative measurement enforces a rigidity of direction and entrenches short-term horizons

- Growth is in transition (http://www.growthintransition.eu/)

- Sustainability is currently about transition, about reversing unsustainable trends

- Transformative change happens when system becomes subordinate to sustainable development agenda

Foresight & Transition Management

- Transitions are structural societal changes resulting from interacting cultural, economic, technological, behavioural, ecological or institutional developments.

- Transitions provide a key for achieving a more sustainable and innovative society. http://www.drift.eur.nl/about/about/

- Need to avoid tipping points & irreversible environmental and social impacts

Human Rights Perspective

- John Ruggie – protect, respect, remedy framework (www.srsgconsultation.org/)

• State duty to protect
• Corporate responsibility to respect
• Access by victims to effective remedy

- Governance of ecosystem services is often skewed in favour of the most salient and influential parties, often private sector interests, at the expense of individual human rights, especially those of marginalised people.

Climate Change Perspective

- Rising stress on water and productive land

- Food security and widening disparity

- Estimated population growth of 2.3 billion additional people by 2050

- Policy talks on mitigation are vitally linked to the right to development

Digital Democracy & the MDGs

- The forces of globalism are increasingly overwhelming the rights of ordinary citizens and the public commons

- Mobile phones enable information flow supporting a range of endpoints

- Improved Governance helps address

• Uncertainties
• Complexities

- Inclusion of poor and marginalised people

Water Management in Watersheds

- Unites cities and their associated regions

- Connects political and natural jurisdictions

- Natural quasi-closed system enables carrying capacity calculations

• Ecosystem services
• Population projections
• Employment
• Food etc consumption needs
• Management of uncertainties

Urban Sustainability

- Cities are fundamentally unsustainable and must be viewed in a regional context

- Current urban forms do not necessarily offer flexibility in the face of looming uncertainties such as climate change and economic downturns

- The long-term costs of servicing sprawl should be brought into decision making

Energy Perspective

- The sun provides essentially unlimited amounts of accessible energy

- The cost of energy embedded in all aspects of our economy fuels poverty and creates division

- Ongoing human existence requires a new, less wasteful but still vibrant economy