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Introduction: Rights of Nature, Sacred Lands and Sustainability in the Western Tradition
Published in Cameron La Follette, Chris Maser, Sustainability and the Rights of Nature in Practice, 2019
This necessitates defining the overused term ‘sustainability’, which has been stretched to fit so many situations that it has nearly lost all meaning. As corporate sleight-of-hand, ‘sustainability’ is often merely another word for a sophisticated form of ‘greenwashing’, by which companies parade environmental images that mask environmentally damaging activities. But four inviolable concepts underlie the true sustainability at the core of the Rights of Nature concept: (a) true sustainability prohibits mitigation or substitution of any kind for political or monetary gain; (b) sustainable projects create sustainable levels of human use and do not maintain current levels of overconsumption; (c) sustainable use shrinks the human footprint on Earth and does not expand it; (d) true sustainability fluctuates with climate, biological cycles, human population, economic needs and other factors, but always maintains Nature's integrity.20
Motivations for technology assessment
Published in Armin Grunwald, Technology Assessment in Practice and Theory, 2018
While unintended and negative consequences of this huge process were observed at the regional scale in early times, e.g., by pollution of local waters in the neighborhood of mining sites, the most relevant issues today are consequences on the global scale. Climate change, loss of biodiversity, the ozone hole, acidification of the oceans, or the depletion of resources – all these phenomena and many others (Harremoes et al. 2002) are largely attributable to technological progress in combination with economic growth over the past 250 years. They have been recognized as global phenomena since the 1970s (e.g., Meadows et al. 1972, Schellnhuber/Wenzel 1999, Kates et al. 2001). At least at the level of chemicals in water, glaciers, soil, and air, the human footprint on the environment is probably measurable in every place on Earth (Steffen et al. 2007). The notion of the Anthropocene (Crutzen/Stoermer 2000, Davies 2016) expresses the diagnosis that humankind has developed into the dominant force on planet Earth, which has largely happened via unintended effects.
The Problem of Technology
Published in Cameron La Follette , Chris Maser, Sustainability and the Rights of Nature, 2017
Cameron La Follette , Chris Maser
While solar panels are passive in their collection of sunlight, they cause damage, frequently large-scale damage, by disrupting the ecological rhythms of the land on which they are installed. The current industrial-scale model of alternative energy is itself misusing the positive potential of biomimicry. Placing solar panels across thousands of acres of fragile desert habitat hitherto unexploited by humans disrupts ecological processes in the name of sustainable energy. It violates a key principle discussed earlier in this book: true sustainability does not increase the human footprint. Solar panels erected on a small scale (Figures 8.4 and 8.5) or installed on individual buildings (Figure 8.6) fit the framework of Nature’s Rights much more closely. But such is not the case with wind power.
SIMA Austral: An operational information system for managing the Chilean aquaculture industry with international application
Published in Journal of Operational Oceanography, 2019
Andrew D. L. Steven, Santosh Aryal, Patricio Bernal, Francisco Bravo, Rodrigo H. Bustamante, Scott Condie, Jeffrey M. Dambacher, Sven Dowideit, Elizabeth A. Fulton, Rebecca Gorton, Mike Herzfeld, Jonathan Hodge, Eriko Hoshino, Erin Kenna, Diego Ocampo, C. Ingrid van Putten, Farhan Rizwi, Jennifer Skerratt, Amara Steven, Linda Thomas, Sharon Tickell, Paula Vaquero, Dan Wild, Karen Wild-Allen
Outputs from this model include maps and time series for each major indicator, such as biomasses per stock, biodiversity, fish catch, aquaculture production, disease levels, production per industry, population, human footprint, income and revenue.