Sustainability Targets, Reports, and News
The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs) are the heart of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, adopted by all UN Member States in 2015. The 17 goals are calls for action for ending poverty and other deprivations along with improving health and education, reducing inequality, and spurring economic growth. UN SDGs The National Academies has published a report on Strengthening Sustainability Programs and Curricula at the Undergraduate and Graduate Levels (2020). Some excerpts from the report follow.
We are at a hinge moment of urgency. Now is the time to turn around unsustainable environmental, economic, and social trends … Higher education plays a crucial role in meeting this grand challenge. … Sustainability higher education needs to help students understand the intersections and interdependencies in their social and organizational contexts and identify the leverage points that can enable transitions toward sustainability. Through sustainability education, students should understand how built, social, and organizational environments are shaped by the requirement of goods, services, and infrastructures that meet human needs and wants, and that these requirements affect and are affected by the natural environment and ecosphere. Students then need to act in ways that balance human and social development in relation to environmental goals. … Student learning in higher education sustainability programs should include experiential learning opportunities with business, government, nongovernmental, or other civil society organizations. It should also include other community engagement opportunities … to foster … technical expertise and interpersonal skills for collaboration to address sustainability challenges from local to global scales… Benefits of experiential knowledge include a deeper understanding of subject matter, the capacity for critical thinking and application of knowledge in complex or ambiguous situations, and a recognition of the value of lifelong learning, including learning in the workplace.
For a daily guide to environmental news and emerging green technologies, subscribe to the Green Daily newsletter. (Note that direct web access to stories on the Bloomberg Green site requires a paid subscription, although one can read the headlines. For the UMD community, you can get access to these stories through Bloomberg Education (enroll here) and then typing “NI GREEN” as the search.)
A Sustainable Economy
Sustainable economics as developed by Herman Daly at the University of Maryland is based on several observations.
- The economy is a subsystem of the ecosystem, which is finite (constant in materials).
- Solar energy powers the ecosystem; it is not growing.
- Materials and energy used by the economy are entropically degraded: low-entropy resources are extracted, degraded, and returned as waste. (Some of that waste may be further processed.)
The conclusion is that there are physical limits to growth of the economic subsystem. For further reading, see Ecological Economics and Sustainable Development, Selected Essays of Herman Daly
Recently, the concept of doughnut economics has been introduced by Kate Raworth. She discusses balancing the basic needs of all the world’s people while remaining within the constraints of the ecosystem. She recommends their obsessive focus on GDP growth and instead, aim to create economies that are regenerative and distributive For further information, see Kate Raworth: Creating a 21st century economy – Doughnut Economics
The circular economy is a necessary part of a sustainable future. Waste is put back into the production stream. Explore the idea and current examples here: Ellen MacArthur Foundation Circular Economy
The European Commission adopted the circular economy action plan (CEAP) in March, 2020. EU CEAP
Engineering Education
What is required to change in our current engineering curricula to enable students to tackle complex, real-world problems? A 2020 article by former UMD President Dan Mote, “Engineering in the 21st century: The Grand Challenges and the Grand Challenges Scholars Program” Engineering, 6 (7), 2020, 728-732. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eng.2020.06.001.
The humanistic and social science parts of engineering education were openly of lower priority and even disconnected from the technical parts. This reality has had renowned negative consequences. First, engineering education disconnected engineering students from the users of engineering, and the users of engineering disconnected from engineering too. By not recognizing that serving users, people and society, is the explicit responsibility of engineering, engineering education was incomplete, or worse yet, misleading.
A 2018 report by R. Graham, out of MIT, “The global state of the art in engineering education”.
The key innovations that are likely to define the next chapter for engineering education are the mechanisms by which such features can be integrated across the curriculum at scale: delivered to large student cohorts under constrained budgets.
Current State of Progress
It is likely that your mental picture of the world is incorrect. This talk by Hans and Ola Rosling “How not to be ignorant about the world” explains why, and it shares some statistics on such things as health and income.
Work by Other Organizations
Sustainability
George Washington University, Sustainable GW
Arizona State University, School of Sustainability
Virginia Tech, Master of Natural Resources
BioGals, increases the visibility of women of color solving complex problems that lead to sustainable solutions. Open to UMD students. Study abroad projects.
Climate Change
Wondering what it will take to impact climate change? En-ROADS is an interactive, freely-available policy simulation model that shows how various changes in energy, transportation, etc. could limit future global warming. Made by Climate Interactive, which grew out of MIT. Test your own ideas.
Two other MIT sites on the topic of climate: MIT Climate Portal, MIT Alumni for Climate Action
From the U.S. Federal reserve: US Federal Reserve, Notes on Climate Change and Financial Stability, US Federal Reserve, New Climate Committee
Breakthrough Energy, a coalition of private investors established in 2015 by Bill Gates to address climate change. Cipher, a publication by Breakthrough Energy.
Sustainability Education in the DC Area
American University, Kogod School of Business, MS Sustainability Management
George Washington University, Sustainability Minor
